How To Make Your Website AI Friendly
AI isn’t coming for your website. It’s already here, squinting at your copy and deciding whether you know what you’re talking about. Between ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and every other “smart” tool pretending to be your digital intern, your website isn’t just being seen anymore. It’s being interpreted.
That means if your site isn’t structured, readable, and built with clear signals, AI is probably confused. And confused AI doesn’t recommend you (or lead to more revenue).
Let’s help you fix that.
Step 1: Speak Clearly (AI Has Terrible Hearing)
AI doesn’t care that your site “pops visually” or that your hero image has just the right amount of lens flare. It reads your text. Literally, that is what it does.
So if your page is filled with vague phrases like “solutions for every need” or “innovative synergy across industries,” congratulations, you’ve written something an AI can’t use. That isn’t to say you should remove all of this custom language, but it does show you need to be more tactful in your approach.
Instead, think of your site like a transcript. Use plain, structured language. One H1, several H2s, and maybe a H3 or two when you’re feeling fancy. Tell the bot who you are, what you do, and why it matters in full sentences that make sense even when stripped of design.
AI doesn’t see “beautiful layout.” It sees “word soup” or “clarity.” Choose wisely.
Step 2: Feed the Machine (With Schema, Not Hype)
If you want AI to know your business is legit, you have to feed it data it can actually understand. That means schema markup.
Think of website schema as your site’s backstage pass. It tells AI where the real information lives: your business name, location, services, reviews, and contact details. Without it, you’re just hoping it guesses right (and spoiler alert: most of the time it doesn’t).
If you’re a local business, use LocalBusiness schema. Got service pages? Add Service schema. Hosting FAQs? Add FAQPage schema. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s the kind that helps you get invited to the AI afterparty.
And please, test it before bragging. Broken schema is like showing up with a fake ID. It only makes you look suspicious and invites stares and finger points from friends and strangers alike.
Step 3: Write for Humans, Format for Robots
Here’s the trick when optimizing you website for AI. AI doesn’t reward robotic writing. It rewards human writing that’s organized and laid out in an easy way for it to understand.
Use complete thoughts and sentences, explain industry terms, and keep your tone conversational. But format your content so AI can find what matters, fast.
If you’re explaining “full stack consulting,” don’t bury it in clever metaphors. Give one paragraph for humor, one for substance, and one for action. It’s like good UX for words!
And please don’t cram every keyword into one paragraph. AI models read context, not density.
Step 4: Be a Topic Authority (Not a Keyword Collector)
Here’s where most websites go wrong when it comes to their content. They build pages for services instead of topics, not both.
AI prefers sites that cover a subject like an expert. Wide, deep, and with supporting content that connects the dots. So if you only have one lonely “Web Design” page, don’t expect AI to crown you an expert. Build out supporting content around UX design, content strategy, branding, and app development. These are all parts of the wheel of Web Design and AI loves this.
When AI sees your site covering an entire ecosystem of ideas, it recognizes informational authority. In human terms, it trusts you more than the site that wrote “best web design Minneapolis” fifty times and called it SEO (we know because we made the same mistakes in the past).
Step 5: Be Fast, Accessible, and Kind to Mobile Users
You know what AI hates? Slow, bloated, unresponsive websites. It doesn’t matter how good your content is. If your load time drags, you’re invisible. Large images and videos are amazing, but not when it comes to site speed and the ability for AI LLMs to read it.
Test your site speed. Compress your images. Ditch outdated Wordpress plugins. Then check your site on your phone, because that’s the version AI usually indexes first (mobile first, right?).
Accessibility matters too. Add alt text that actually describes images and what someone may see, not just “photo1.jpg.” Use ARIA labels if possible. Make your site friendly for screen readers of all types. AI looks for accessibility signals when deciding if your content is trustworthy, even if most of your end users do not NEED accessibility features.
Bonus: humans will like you more too. We promise.
Step 6: Create Your “Entity Home”
This is the part everyone ignores until they realize AI keeps mixing them up with a totally different company. This is a good mix of oldschool tech and newschool philosophy.
Your Entity Home is your digital identity anchor. It’s the page that clearly defines who you are, what you do, and how you’re connected to everything else online, including social links, leadership bios, brand logo, and contact info. It’s basically a “Digital Footprint Landing Page” for you company.
If you don’t build one, AI will make one up for you. And trust us, it’s not always flattering and often convoluted (and not always truthful).
Step 7: Keep It Alive
AI rewards websites that look alive and are active. That means updating your blogs, service pages, and case studies regularly. Don’t think for a second you can set it and forget it.
You don’t have to post every week, but if your last “news” item is from 2021, you’re telling search engines your lights are off and to look elsewhere. Fresh (or updated) content tells AI, “We’re still here, still relevant, and still worth recommending.”
It’s like watering a plant, except this one feeds your traffic and conversions.
The AI Website Design Bottom Line
AI isn’t replacing websites or strong website design. It’s filtering them in a different way than many people have seen before. If your site is structured, clear, and human enough to be read by a bot and loved by a person or customer, you’ll win in both worlds.
Websites that thrive in AI search are the ones that know who they are, organize their thoughts, have a strong, technical based foundation, and occasionally make the algorithm laugh.
If that sounds like your kind of project, we should probably talk. We are experts at all things website, brand, and AI design.
AI Website Design FAQ
H3: Does making my website AI-friendly replace SEO?
No way it fully replaces SEO. It’s SEO 2.0. Same principles, different audience and end result. One of them just happens to be a large language model (that hopefully isn’t already turned into skynet).
H3: How do I know if AI “gets” my site?
Ask it. Literally. Drop your URL into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity and see how it describes your business and website. If it gets weird, your site structure probably needs work and tweaks.
H3: What’s the easiest AI-friendly change I can make today?
Clean up your headings across your entire website, fix your schema, and make sure your content actually says what you do, not what you wish you did.
H3: Do you help businesses with this transition to AI website design?
We never thought you would ask, but here we are. Of course we do! And on top of that we can make this work seamlessly with your existing website designs, especially when it comes to custom schema, sitemaps, and helping with indexing and tracking of success.
Meta Title:
How To Make Your Website AI Friendly | WebVolta
Optimal Word Count:
~1,400 words
Author: Jay Volak
Links: Jay still needs to add internal and external links
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NEEDS:
Update the @id, image, and logo URLs if your final slug or media path differs.
The datePublished and dateModified fields should match the actual publish date.
Keep the Article + FAQPage combo together — this hybrid structure performs strongly in AI-driven search (Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s SGE).
