We’re starting to see a shift in how people are searching for and researching companies and nonprofit organizations online. More and more, people are using tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini to research and even recommend products and service providers.
For most of our clients, the vast majority of their traffic still comes from Google searches, but we are definitely seeing an increase in the number of visitors coming from chatbots and AI-powered answer engines. And there’s no reason to think that the number won’t continue to increase as time goes on.
So how are we, as a marketing company, adapting to this new type of online searching?
Fortunately, a lot of the digital marketing tactics we’ve been using for many years serve our clients well with AI. Our research shows that we gain preference with AI answer engines by having a complete and well-rounded web presence. Here are some of the things that a well-round presence includes:
- A large website with good consumer information that is updated regularly with fresh content
- A good number of positive reviews across different websites (Google, Yelp, etc.)
- Unique, high-quality content
- Regular social media activity
- Targeted content
FAQ pages on a website are particularly helpful because queries on AI tend to be long form, rather than just a couple of keywords. For example, instead of simply Googling “Nashville plumber,” people are asking AI to find them a plumber in Nashville that is open on the weekends and has good customer reviews. If a plumbing website has an FAQ that asks, “Is your Nashville plumbing company open on weekends?” as well as one that asks, “Does your Nashville plumbing company have good customer reviews?”, and answers both of these questions in the affirmative, AI will be more likely to recommend that company than one with a website that doesn’t answer these specific questions.
If your website doesn’t already have FAQs on it (or if it only has a few), we should talk about adding some (more). We can use the FAQs on your site to answer common questions that people ask when using AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Another area we are focusing on with our current digital marketing clients to help them gain preference with AI is getting them more positive online reviews. As we mentioned in a recent blog post, we developed Moxly, a service that helps small businesses and nonprofits gain more positive online reviews with almost no effort on their part. Even if you aren’t one of our annual marketing clients, you can take advantage of Moxly at a very affordable rate.
Finally, we will continue to focus on high-quality, informative content for our clients. While many businesses are turning to AI itself to produce copy for their websites, we don’t think this is the right approach. While AI-powered content generators can churn out content quickly, it is typically not the type of unique, targeted content that gives websites an edge with AI-powered search tools, search engines like Google, or with potential customers.
