7 Ways to Get Your Business Recommended by AI
ChatGPT just recommended your competitor. They're probably not better than you, their website was just easier to read. AI tools work like a very fast intern on day one: they skim, grab the clearest answer, and move on. They don't scroll down to admire your parallax. Here's how to get picked instead.
Table of contents
Answer first, explain after
Write headings people actually type
Add an FAQ to every service page
Add schema so AI can read what your page means
Give every service its own page
Get mentioned elsewhere, not just on your own site
Keep your most important content in text, not images or PDFs
FAQ
1. Answer first, explain after
Put the answer in the first sentence under each heading, not the third paragraph. If a heading asks "How much does it cost?", the next sentence should be "From $3,750," not three paragraphs about your passion for excellence first.
AI tools scan a page the way a very fast intern reads one on their first day: they skim, grab the clearest answer near the heading that matches what they're looking for, and move on if it isn't there fast enough. A human visitor will sometimes scroll and dig for context. A language model summarizing your page for someone else usually won't, because it's working through dozens of sites in the time it takes you to read this sentence, and it rewards the page that hands over the answer immediately.
This means rewriting the opening line under every heading on your site, not just your FAQ. "Our story began in 2019 when we noticed a gap in the market" is a nice sentence, but it tells a model nothing it can use. "Website projects start at $3,750 and typically take 3-4 weeks" does. Lead every section with the fact, the number, or the direct answer, then use the rest of the paragraph for the texture and story that humans still value once they're reading closely. You're not cutting the narrative, you're just moving it below the answer instead of in front of it.
The same discipline applies to your homepage hero, your pricing page, and your about page. Each one usually has an implied question behind it: what do you do, what does it cost, who are you. Answer each of those questions in the first sentence a reader or a model encounters, and let everything else build from there.
2. Write headings people actually type
Write headings the way people actually search, not the way you'd title a chapter in a memoir. "How long does a website take?" gets found and gets quoted. "Our Journey" doesn't, because nobody types that into ChatGPT and nothing matches it to a real question.
This matters more than it used to because AI tools match questions to headings almost literally. When someone asks an AI assistant "how long does a Squarespace rebuild take," it's looking for a heading or sentence that mirrors that phrasing closely, the same way visual hierarchy in web design guides a human eye to the part of the page that answers what they came for. A heading like "Our Journey" or "What We Believe" might read as warm and human, but it's invisible to a system trying to match intent to content, because it doesn't contain the words a real question would use.
Go through every page on your site and list the actual questions a prospect would ask about that page: how much does this cost, how long does it take, what's included, do you work with businesses like mine. Turn each question into the heading itself, word for word where it reads naturally. You'll likely find half your existing headings are describing a feeling rather than answering a question, and those are the ones worth rewriting first.
This doesn't mean every heading needs to be a question mark-ended sentence. "Pricing and timeline" works almost as well as "How much does this cost and how long does it take?" because it still uses the words someone would actually search. The test is simple: would a stranger type something close to this heading into a search bar or an AI chat box? If not, it's probably decorative rather than functional.
3. Add an FAQ to every service page
Add an FAQ section to every service page, not just a general one buried somewhere else on the site. Use the actual questions you get on sales calls, with short, honest answers, not the polished, evasive versions marketing teams tend to default to.
The questions you already answer out loud, every week, on calls are the exact content an FAQ section needs, because they're the real objections and uncertainties prospects have before they're ready to talk to a human. "Do you work with businesses outside our industry," "what happens if I'm not happy with the first draft," "can we make changes after launch," these are the questions worth writing down verbatim rather than inventing generic ones that sound professional but answer nothing specific.
Keep each answer short, direct, and honest. A vague answer designed to avoid committing to anything reads as evasive to a human and is useless to an AI tool trying to extract a concrete fact to pass along. "We offer unlimited revisions within reason" tells a model and a reader almost nothing. "You get two full rounds of revisions included, additional rounds are billed hourly" tells them exactly what to expect.
Put the FAQ on the actual service page it relates to, not only on a general FAQ page elsewhere on the site. An AI tool evaluating your rebuild service page for a comparison needs the rebuild-specific questions right there to cite, the way a strong landing page structure keeps everything a visitor needs on the page they're already on instead of scattering it elsewhere. If your FAQ content only lives on one central page, a model summarizing a specific service often won't find it or won't bother connecting the two.
4. Add schema so AI can read what your page means
Add schema markup to your pages. It's a small, invisible piece of code that tells search engines and AI tools "this is a question, this is the answer, this is who we are," structured in a format machines can parse directly rather than having to interpret from loose paragraphs.
Visitors never see it rendered on the page, it sits quietly in the code behind what a human reads. But an AI tool crawling your site reads every word of it, and structured FAQ or service schema gives it an unambiguous, pre-packaged answer to hand back to whoever asked the question, instead of having to guess at meaning from surrounding prose. This is one of the more mechanical fixes in this list, which also makes it one of the easiest to simply never get around to.
The most useful schema types for a service business are FAQPage schema for the question-and-answer content described above, and Service or LocalBusiness schema that states plainly what you do, who you are, and where you operate. If you're already building the content described in the SEO fundamentals for Squarespace, adding schema is the natural next layer on top: the content answers the question for a human, the schema answers the same question unambiguously for a machine. You don't need a developer for most of this; Squarespace allows custom code injection on individual pages, and a handful of free schema generators can produce the JSON-LD you need, you just have to remember to add it rather than treating it as optional.
5. Give every service its own page
Give every distinct service its own dedicated page instead of stacking everything under one page called "Services." If everything lives on a single page, an AI tool has to guess which part of that page answers the specific question it's working on, and it usually won't bother guessing.
A single services page that briefly mentions five different offerings forces anyone, human or machine, to piece together what each one actually involves, what it costs, and who it's for. A model summarizing "web design services near me" has no clean, isolated unit of content to point to, no single URL it can confidently say answers that exact query, so it either skips you or picks whichever competitor made the separation easy.
Splitting services into their own pages also means each page can carry its own heading structure, its own FAQ, and its own schema, compounding every other fix in this list rather than diluting them across one crowded page. A single "Rebuild" page can answer "how much does a website rebuild cost" directly and specifically in a way a combined services page never can, because the combined page is trying to be the answer to five questions at once and ends up being a clear answer to none of them.
This is also simply better for the humans reading your site, not just the AI tools summarizing it. A prospect looking specifically for a rebuild doesn't want to scroll past four unrelated services to find the relevant paragraph. Splitting services into focused pages improves clarity for everyone involved, the AI visibility benefit is a side effect of doing the more basic thing well.
6. Get mentioned elsewhere, not just on your own site
Get mentioned elsewhere: reviews, directories, and your Google Business Profile all count. AI tools trust what other sites say about you more than what you say about yourself, and to be fair, so do people.
Your own website is the one place you have complete control over the message, which is exactly why outside sources carry more weight. A glowing paragraph about your own quality on your own homepage is expected and largely discounted. The same claim showing up independently in a client review, a directory listing, or a case study on someone else's site reads as corroborated rather than self-reported, both to a human skimming for trust signals and to an AI model trying to determine whether a recommendation is actually warranted, the same logic behind a well-told client project showcase carrying more weight than a generic claim of expertise.
Concretely, this means actively collecting reviews after every project rather than hoping clients leave them unprompted, keeping your Google Business Profile complete and current with photos, services, and accurate hours, and getting listed in relevant directories for your industry or region where real prospects might search. None of these are flashy, and none of them live on your own domain, which is precisely the point: they exist as evidence outside your own voice.
If you've never systematically asked for reviews, start with your last five completed projects. A short, direct message asking for two minutes to leave a review usually gets a far higher response rate than people expect, especially right after a project wraps and the client is still pleased with the outcome.
7. Keep your most important content in text, not images or PDFs
Keep your most important content in text. Prices buried inside a PDF and a process explained only through an image might as well be locked in a drawer, because neither search engines nor AI tools can read them the way they read a paragraph.
A beautifully designed pricing PDF feels polished to a human who opens it, but it's effectively invisible to the systems trying to extract and summarize your offer. The same applies to a process explained entirely through an infographic: a well-shot, well-lit photo earns its place the way we cover in why photos on your business website matter, but an AI tool can't read text locked inside a flattened image the way it reads a paragraph, a heading, or a table built from HTML.
The fix is almost always to duplicate the content rather than choose one format over the other. Keep the polished PDF or infographic if it genuinely helps a visitor who wants that format, but also put the core facts, prices, timelines, included deliverables, directly on the page as real, selectable text. A photo gallery can stay a photo gallery, but anything carrying information a prospect or an AI tool needs to extract, pricing, process steps, deliverables, should exist somewhere on the page as plain text too, even if it's slightly less visually elaborate than the designed version.
This is often the single most overlooked fix on this list, because the PDF or infographic usually looks great and nobody questions whether it's actually being read by anything beyond the person who downloads it.
The bottom line
None of this is new. Clear answers, honest FAQs, and content a machine can actually parse have always made for a better website, AI tools are just finally making that discipline impossible to ignore. The seven fixes here, leading with the answer, writing headings people search for, adding FAQs and schema, splitting services into their own pages, earning outside mentions, and keeping key content in real text, cost far less than a full rebuild and compound with everything else we've written about structure and conversion. Which one is your site missing?
FAQ
Why does ChatGPT recommend some businesses over others that might be just as good?
AI tools skim for the clearest, most directly answered content rather than evaluating overall quality. A business with a clear, well-structured site often gets recommended over a genuinely better business whose website buries its answers in long paragraphs, images, or PDFs.
Does adding schema markup actually help with AI recommendations?
Yes. Schema gives search engines and AI tools an unambiguous, structured version of your content, such as "this is a question, this is the answer," rather than forcing them to interpret meaning from loose prose, which makes your content easier to extract and cite correctly.
Should every service really have its own separate page?
In most cases, yes. A single combined "Services" page forces an AI tool, and most human visitors, to guess which part answers their specific question. Dedicated pages let each service carry its own clear answers, FAQ, and schema.
Do customer reviews and directory listings really affect whether AI recommends a business?
Yes. AI tools weigh outside mentions, reviews, directories, and profiles like Google Business Profile, more heavily than a business's own claims about itself, since independent corroboration is harder to fake than self-promotion.
Is it worth duplicating pricing and process information as plain text if it's already in a nicely designed PDF or graphic?
Yes. A PDF or infographic can stay for visitors who prefer it, but the same core facts should also exist as real, readable text on the page, since neither search engines nor AI tools can reliably extract information locked inside an image or document.
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