A couple of years ago, optimizing a website mostly meant making Google happy. Today, that's only part of the picture. AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are becoming another way people discover businesses online.
Over the past few weeks, I've been working on improving the technical health and search visibility of a few client websites, including 0900Dentist and StepUpAnalytics. While the goal started with improving SEO, the project quickly grew into something much broader.
Instead of focusing only on search rankings, I worked on making these websites faster, easier to crawl, and better structured for both traditional search engines and AI systems.
Here's what that process looked like.
Starting with the Basics
Before diving into AI-focused optimization, I wanted to make sure the fundamentals were solid.
That meant reviewing every page and cleaning up things that often get ignored:
- Improving page titles
- Rewriting meta descriptions
- Fixing heading hierarchy
- Removing duplicate metadata
- Improving internal linking
- Cleaning canonical URLs
- Optimizing URL structure
- Adding descriptive image alt text
- Making navigation easier for crawlers
None of these changes are particularly exciting on their own, but together they make a noticeable difference. A surprising number of websites struggle simply because these basics were never implemented properly.
Performance Matters More Than Ever
Once the technical SEO issues were sorted, performance became the next priority.
I used Lighthouse and Google PageSpeed Insights to identify bottlenecks and then worked through them one by one.
Some of the improvements included:
- Compressing oversized images
- Enabling lazy loading
- Reducing unnecessary JavaScript
- Optimizing CSS delivery
- Loading fonts more efficiently
- Removing unused assets
- Improving responsive layouts
- Reducing render-blocking resources
The websites didn't just score better in Lighthouse after these changes—they also felt noticeably faster while browsing.
That's ultimately what matters. Better performance creates a smoother experience for visitors, and search engines tend to reward that as well.
Improving Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are one of those things that seem intimidating until you actually start working through them.
Most of the fixes came down to removing small issues that added up over time.
I focused on improving:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
That involved reserving image dimensions, optimizing hero sections, deferring non-critical JavaScript, and making sure important content loaded as quickly as possible.
Sometimes a few small adjustments have a much bigger impact than a complete redesign.
Optimizing for AI Search (GEO)
This was probably the most interesting part of the project.
More people are starting to rely on AI assistants instead of opening ten different Google results, so I wanted these websites to be understandable not only for search engines but also for language models.
To support that, I implemented several GEO improvements, including:
- Creating an llms.txt file
- Improving semantic page structure
- Organizing content more clearly
- Writing better page summaries
- Making information easier for AI systems to interpret
The idea isn't to "rank in AI." It's to make your content structured enough that AI tools can understand it accurately and confidently reference it.
Preparing for Answer Engines (AEO)
People don't always search with keywords anymore.
Instead, they ask complete questions.
That's where Answer Engine Optimization comes in.
Rather than stuffing pages with keywords, I focused on making the content easier to answer from.
That included:
- Creating question-based sections
- Improving heading structure
- Writing concise, direct explanations
- Using semantic HTML
- Organizing information into logical sections
- Making important information easy to scan
The goal is simple: if someone asks an AI assistant a question related to your business, your website should be one of the sources it understands and trusts.
Updating Robots.txt for Modern Crawlers
Robots.txt usually gets configured once and then forgotten.
I revisited it to make sure it wasn't just optimized for traditional search engines.
The updates included reviewing crawl permissions, allowing supported AI crawlers where appropriate, cleaning outdated rules, and making sure important pages remained accessible.
It's a relatively small change, but it's another step toward making a website future-ready.
Metadata Still Matters
Even with AI becoming more common, metadata is far from obsolete.
I reviewed and improved:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- Open Graph tags
- Twitter Cards
- Canonical URLs
- Social sharing metadata
These details help search engines understand pages while also improving how links appear when shared across social platforms.
Optimizing Images
Images were responsible for a significant portion of the page weight.
To improve loading speed without affecting quality, I:
- Compressed images
- Used modern image formats where possible
- Added responsive sizing
- Improved file names
- Updated alt attributes
- Enabled lazy loading
- Added proper width and height attributes
These changes helped improve both performance and accessibility.
Optimization Never Really Ends
One thing I've learned is that website optimization isn't a task you finish once.
Every update, new page, or design change creates another opportunity to improve performance or fix something that slipped through the cracks.
That's why I regularly check websites using tools like Google Search Console, Lighthouse, and PageSpeed Insights instead of treating optimization as a one-time checklist.
Final Thoughts
Working on these projects reinforced something I've been thinking about for a while.
Modern optimization isn't just about SEO anymore.
A well-optimized website should perform well for people, search engines, and AI systems alike.
That means combining technical SEO, fast performance, clean architecture, structured content, GEO, and AEO into a single strategy instead of treating them as separate tasks.
The way people discover websites is changing quickly, and I think the websites that adapt early will have a real advantage over the next few years.
I'm curious—have you started making changes for AI search yet, or are you still focusing primarily on traditional SEO?
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