SEO & AI Readiness
Getting Found on Google and Cited in AI Answers
Your customers find you in two places now, Google’s results and the AI answers that increasingly replace them. I help get you found in both.
The Two Halves of Getting Found
A good website is only worth building if the intended audience can find it. For most businesses that still starts with Google, and getting found there is the core of what I do, on-page SEO, local SEO, and the technical work underneath. That part is well understood and effective when handled correctly.
What’s changed is where else your customers now look. People increasingly ask a question and get a straight answer back from ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews or Perplexity, without ever scrolling a list of links. Being the business cited in AI’s answers by name is the newer half of the job, and it’s the half most of the industry hasn’t caught up to yet. I have, and I’ll explain it in plain terms below so you can see exactly what it means for you.
Getting Found on Google: On-Page and Local SEO
This is the work you already know by name, done properly. For most businesses in Ireland it’s still where the customers come from, and for plenty of them it’s all they need.
On-page SEO is the groundwork. Your pages written and structured so a search engine understands what you offer and who you serve, your titles and headings clear, your content answering what people actually type in. It’s what lifts you up the results for the terms that matter to your trade, and keeps you there.
Local SEO is what puts you in front of people nearby who are ready to buy, book or hire. When someone in Galway, or wherever you trade, searches for what you do, local SEO is what gets you onto that short list, your Google Business Profile in order, your name, address and phone consistent everywhere they appear, and your site telling Google exactly where you work. For trades, shops, restaurants and any business that lives on local custom, this is usually the single most valuable thing I can do for you.
The technical layer sits underneath both. A site that’s fully crawlable and indexed, loads quickly on a phone on a slow connection, and carries clean structured data so its meaning is spelled out rather than guessed at. It’s rarely the part anyone asks for by name, and it’s often the part holding a site back.
Backlinks are the other side of how Google decides who to trust, links from other websites pointing to yours. Here I’m firmly in the quality-over-quantity camp. A few genuine links from sources that actually relate to your business, a local directory, a supplier you work with, an association you belong to, a mention in the local press, are worth more than hundreds of cheap ones, and the cheap route can do real harm. It’s slow, earned work rather than a numbers game, and I’d rather build you a handful of links that stand up than chase a big total that doesn’t.
I use RankMath for the on-page and technical side, and I read the results in Google Search Console and Analytics, so decisions come from what’s actually happening on your site, not a hunch.
If solid, honest SEO is all you’re after, that’s a complete service on its own, and plenty of my clients stop right there. The next part is for when you’re ready, or just curious. There’s no pressure…. yet!
Getting Found by AI: What AI Readiness Means
Here’s the part worth slowing down for, because the term is new and most explanations of it are fog.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), or AI Readiness, is the work of structuring your website so AI search engines can find it, understand it, and cite it when they answer a question. That’s the whole idea in one sentence. Where classic SEO aims to rank you in a list of links, AI Readiness aims to make you the source the AI answer is built from.
It matters now because the way people search is shifting. A question that used to return ten blue links increasingly returns one composed answer, and that answer names a few sources and leaves the rest out. Being cited is the new version of ranking first. It doesn’t happen by accident, and it won’t happen just because you rank well on Google today.
What it actually involves, in plain terms:
- Structured data that states the facts about your business, what you do, where, and for whom, in a form machines read directly rather than infer from your paragraphs.
- Clear entity information, so an AI engine can tell who you are, connect you to the right place and the right service, and trust it has the facts straight.
- Content structured for retrieval, so your key answers are stated plainly and early, in one place, instead of buried halfway down a page. This is one of the things that most reliably gets a page picked up and cited.
- The emerging signals, like an
llms.txtfile and newer standards such asagents.json. Some engines readllms.txt(Claude and Perplexity do, Google says it doesn’t), and the agent standards are still settling, so I treat these as worth having and worth watching, not a magic bullet. Being straight with you about what’s proven and what’s still early is part of the job.
If some of that is unfamiliar, that’s kind of the point, and it’s why I lead with it instead of hiding it. Good SEO already gets you a long way, since a fast, well-structured, honestly-written site is easier for an AI engine to read too. AI Readiness builds on that foundation and finishes the job, so the answer engines can quote you directly. If you really want to get down into the weeds… Follow the Deep Dive link below.
How I Approach It, Start to Finish
I don’t work by guessing, and I don’t sell a black box. Every engagement runs through the same ordered steps, so you can see where the effort goes:
- Baseline. I measure where you stand before touching anything, so any change can be shown, not just claimed.
- Audit. A full read of the site, how it’s found, where it’s weak, what’s missing.
- Technical foundations. Crawlability, indexing, speed and Core Web Vitals, the plumbing everything else sits on.
- Content. Your pages written to speak to your customers and structured for how both Google and AI engines read.
- Structured data. The schema that spells out your business to machines, the piece most sites skip entirely.
- Measure. Re-check against the baseline, and keep watching.
The measuring is where AI Readiness really shows itself, because the old scoreboard is only half the story now. Alongside the familiar figures, pages indexed, average position and page speed, I track an AI-readiness score for the site, AI-visibility (whether the answer engines actually mention and cite your business when someone asks), and any traffic arriving from AI tools directly. Ranking on Google tells you one thing. Whether ChatGPT names you when a customer asks tells you the other. I watch both.
See Where Your Own Site Stands
I built a quick AI-readiness test that scores how ready your website is for AI search, the same first measurement I take on any project. It only takes a moment, and it tells you something most business owners have never been shown.
Check your site with the AI Readiness Test →
If you want the fuller picture of the AI side, how it works, what it takes, and what it changes, that’s set out in depth on my AI Readiness page.
Why Me for This
I’m one person, Paul Doyle, with 30 years in this industry, and you deal with me from the first conversation to the last. The SEO and the AI Readiness work are done by the same pair of hands that build and maintain your site, so nothing falls down the gap between departments, because there are no departments.
I won’t give you a flashy pitch about being a guru at any of this. It’s an emerging area, and plenty of people are still working out what it means. What I can offer is the plain, honest version of it, and the fact that I’ve already built for it while most haven’t.
Common Questions
What’s the difference between SEO and AEO?
SEO gets your website found on Google’s list of results. AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, gets your business found and cited by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity when they reply to a question. They overlap, since both reward a fast, clear, well-structured site, but they aim at different places your customers now look.
What is AI Readiness?
AI Readiness is how well set up your website is to be understood and quoted by AI search engines. It comes down to clear structured data, plain facts about your business, and content organised so an answer engine can lift the right answer cleanly. The more ready your site is, the more likely it is to be the source an AI answer names.
How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT or AI Overviews?
You make it easy for them to understand you and trust the facts. That means clean structured data, consistent business information, and answers stated plainly on your pages rather than buried in long paragraphs. It builds on good SEO rather than replacing it.
Does my website need structured data?
For AI Readiness, yes. Structured data spells out the facts about your business in a form machines read directly, instead of leaving them to guess from your text. It’s one of the pieces most sites skip, which is exactly why it’s worth getting right.
Do you do local SEO in Galway?
Yes. Local SEO is a core part of what I do, based in Galway and working with businesses across the West of Ireland. It puts your name in front of people nearby who are ready to hire, through your Google Business Profile, consistent business details, and a site that tells Google where you work.
Will AI search replace Google?
Not any time soon, and that’s why I work on both. Google still sends most of the traffic, so on-page and local SEO stay essential. AI search is growing alongside it, so AI Readiness makes sure you’re set up for where things are heading as well as where they are now.