My own site was nearly invisible to AI. Here's what I fixed
Small business owners ask me a version of the same question all the time: "I paid for a website, it looks great, so why isn't anyone finding it?" It's a fair question, and the answer is changing faster than you would believe.
When I first learned about SEO, Google first page rankings were the holy grail. How do I stuff my metadata full of keywords, how do I get enough backlink trust signals to show up on the first page of search results? Do I have enough extra data on my images, have I optimized my preview?
But, that was then. To read the industry news, people don't search and scroll anymore, they ask AI. It’s a question to an LLM, which does the searching for them without ever leaving the tool. They read the answer without ever clicking. If your site isn't built for that, you can have the prettiest website in town and still be invisible. Even Google, for those who deign to leave their AI platform of choice, presents you with a full screen AI summary before it takes you to any ‘old-school’ search results. All of that matters for someone trying to get eyes on their website, before anyone knows who they are to go directly to them.
And it’s a bit of a black box to me. So I did the uncomfortable thing. I ran my own website through the exact AI-search audit I'd run for a client. Here's what I found, moderately embarrassing because it's the same pattern I see on most small-business sites, so do as I say not as I do. Thankfully, the fixes are more doable than you'd expect.
My site wasn't broken. It was invisible.
Reassuringly, my site was technically healthy. I’d done what I was supposed to, per old school rules, to maximize what I was ‘supposed’ to maximize. Huzzah, I’m a decent web-builder. My site loads fast, it's mobile-friendly, search engines can crawl it, the AI bots aren't blocked. Before I ran the next generation checks, I’d have assumed I’d made a mistake, clicked a wrong button, left off a semi-colon.
Turned out that wasn’t it. The problem was quieter than that, and it came down to two things.
First, there wasn't enough there. I have pretty, informative technical pages and (at the time) two blog posts. This makes three. That's a beautiful front door on a house with two rooms. AI tools and search engines answer specific questions by pulling from pages that actually answer those questions. I hadn't written those pages, hadn’t specifically addressed my target client, so there was nothing to pull. You can't get cited for a question you've never addressed.
Second, my site didn't tell the machines who I am. I have a LinkedIn company page, a work Instagram, and a Google Business Profile. Good ones. But nothing on my website connected them, despite having used the platform’s ‘link your accounts’ feature. So, as far as an AI model could tell, "Marika Olson Consulting" the website, my IG, my LinkedIn, all of them were unrelated things.
(Ok, so there was also a small piece of behind-the-scenes code on my site that was supposed to introduce me to Google, and it had a typo that quietly broke the whole thing. It had been doing nothing for who knows how long. But it wasn’t the main issue and it’s fixed and I’m still embarrassed but not enough not to tell you).
What I changed (and what it costs: mostly nothing)
Here's the part I want you to take away, because none of this required a redesign or a bigger budget.
I updated the custom code behind my site so it now correctly tells Google and AI tools who I am, what I do, and that my LinkedIn, IG, and Google profiles all belong to the same business. One paste, that my AI assures me doesn’t have my daft human-error typos. It's now connected.
I told search engines and ‘robots’ that they're welcome to use my full content in their answers and previews. Search me. Put me in your answers. Let the clients find me.
I asked Google to re-read my site, because it was still showing an old version of how I describe myself. (It will do it, eventually - there’s no speeding up GSC and it’s pointless to even try. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills on that one).
The bigger work, the part that actually moves the needle, is the slow part: writing. Not churning out filler, and definitely not letting a robot generate hollow articles nobody wants to read. (Thank you for staying this long to read). I mean answering the real questions my clients actually ask, one honest page at a time. Hence this post, and a determination to be (somewhat) better at blogging.
What this means for you
If you're not getting traffic, the reflex is to assume something's broken and go looking for a technical villain. Usually there isn't one. Usually it's the two things I found on my own site: not enough content answering real questions, and a site that hasn't introduced itself properly to the tools people now use to find businesses. (We will ignore the code typo, human failings, etc.)
The good news is that both are fixable without starting over, and the most powerful fix is also the cheapest: publish the answers you already carry around in your head.
If you want to know where your own site stands, that's exactly what my free Business Health Check looks at. No pitch, no pressure, just an honest read on what's working and what's quietly costing you.
