One thing everyone is asking us about right now is AI search.
Instead of going to Google, users will increasingly use engines like ChatGPT to find information and services. So how do we make sure we appear in those searches? Here’s a quick guide.
1. Ask your AI about your business
Start by asking your AI what it knows about your business and website. Ask it if it would recommend you and if there are any details that appear to be missing. Once you’ve fixed any issues, keep coming back to this to find more areas for improvement.
2. State everything on your website explicitly
Just putting your professional body’s logo might show a human that you’re registered with them, but AI needs a more explicit connection. So make sure your website clearly states:
- What you do and what services you offer
- Your name(s), qualifications, years of experience, professional memberships and specialisms
- Where you are (if you provide in-person services)
- What problems or conditions you can help with
This last one is important but easily overlooked. If someone is looking for an ACL rehab physio and yours is the only local clinic which specifically mentions it, you stand much more chance of being returned.
3. Reviews & citations
Reviews are crucial to both GEO and SEO. Mention to patients that you will follow up asking for a review, and be systematic about doing so. If you can get them to mention the treatment or service they had, the problem they came in with and your town or city in the review, even better.
Citations, links and mentions elsewhere online are also important. The key here is not just volume but consistency. Make sure that everywhere you are mentioned online the information is exactly the same. If you moved address 2 years ago and some business directories still list your old address, that’s going to be a problem for your GEO and SEO.
4. Technical
General optimisation – good and accurate SEO tagging is important for AI just as it is for Google.
Schema data – good schema data is crucial for AI being able to understand your site. Don’t skimp here – the default schema from your WordPress plugin or website builder isn’t enough. Make sure you have the following schemas in the appropriate places:
- Homepage – organisation or local business schema. For clinics and medical businesses, there also exists medical organisation and medical clinic schema. Use the one most appropriate to you.
- Person pages – person schema
- Treatments – there are medical procedure and therapeutic procedure schemas, but we’ve had best results with product schema, which can also cause your 5* reviews to show under your result on the search page
- FAQ – FAQ or FAQ page
- Contact page – contact page schema
For more information on available schema types visit https://schema.org/docs/schemas.html
LLMS.txt – this functions like a sitemap for AI and is starting to be used by AI engines to find information on a site.
Understanding how to rank on AI
To really understand how to rank in AI search, think about what AI engines are looking for when returning results. Just like Google, they want to return relevant results with a high degree of confidence. Pretty much all the advice in this guide comes down to that.
Think about it – let’s imagine someone has just used ChatGPT to diagnose their tennis elbow and has asked it where they can get treatment locally
ChatGPT looks at the local clinics. Yours specifically mentions tennis elbow treatment, says that you’re a Chartered Physiotherapist with links to your professional listings, and mentions where you studied, what your qualifications are and how many years of experience you have. Your clinic is also mentioned in 50 other places online, with consistency between information on all of them, and you have 100 5* reviews, 2 of which say they came for tennis elbow treatment and are now better.
That’s a high degree of relevance and confidence. AI or Google can return you knowing there’s almost zero chance of getting it wrong. Keep this your focus when thinking about AI optimisation, and the rest will follow.
