This was a surprise while reviewing my website stats this month – two people had arrived on my site via ChatGPT.

Appearing in an AI response is the new holy grail of content listing, and appearing at the top of Google search results is no longer the primary goal of businesses and experts. Today it’s all about getting found and cited by AI, because that’s increasingly where customers are going with their queries, and how even the search engines are answering them too.

But in a very crowded and noisy internet, how do you get noticed by the AI engines scanning and responding to the questions they’re asked?

Well, if AI engines are going to reference you – put your words into the answers they give – your content needs to be structured in the best way for them to scan, understand and use. I’ve done some digging of my own into what that might look like, and this is what I’ve found…

1. Write Clear and Simple Answers to Real Questions

I might have mentioned this once or twice before, and it matters for AI readers just as much as it does for people readers. If you want to be found, write valuable content that answers the real questions your audience is asking. This is what you do to boost your search rankings in Google anyway, and AI looks for the same quality. The more directly your blog posts answer questions, the more likely they are to be identified by AI as useful.

Start with a strong headline and then get straight to the point. Don’t hide the answer deep within a long and rambling story. AI tools prefer text where the first few sentences plainly answer the question the heading poses, so it doesn’t have to dig too deeply – much like human readers, actually.

2. Structure Helps AI See Your Content

AI systems don’t read the way humans do – they search for specific words and analyse how they are used alongside and in context with others. That’s where using formatting to help them scan and analyse has an important role.

• Use clear headings in your published posts (H1 for the main heading, then H2s and H3s for the subheadings) that reflect the common questions and answers you’re writing about.
• Break complex ideas into short paragraphs.
• Include bullet lists or numbered steps for easy scanning.

Imagine each section as its own miniature answer box, because that’s exactly how many AI tools read it and treat it.

3. Give Your Own Original Insights

AI models have access to huge amounts of publicly available information. If your content just repeats and regurgitates what everyone else has already written, there’s nothing unique to separate your content from everyone else’s. That doesn’t mean you must come up with brand new things that no-one else has thought of (nice if you can, of course, but not essential!) – it just means you should season your articles with a sprinkling of your own examples, reflections, case studies or stats where possible. AI loves fresh perspectives that you’re backing up with expertise.

And this is an excellent time to reveal which of my own posts has been cited by AI, which then led to my two visitors clicking through to my site. It’s the little supernatural blog post that keeps on surprising me with its huge popularity – Where Did Jack Frost Come From? Many years ago when I wrote that, I must have ticked a whole host of boxes without even knowing it, because it is consistently my top performer every year. I can only think there must be schools setting it as research homework, or there are many other lovers of folklore research out there like me!

4. Keep Content Fresh and Updated

Search engines and generative AI models like up-to-date information. Posts that are relevant and accurate, especially if you review and update the pages regularly, are more likely to be referenced – so revisit older posts and refine them where appropriate, checking them against those heading and formatting tips as well.

5. Backlinks and Mentions Still Matter

AI wants to be accurate, so it won’t list the first thing it comes across without using something to justify its choice. Just like with Google searches, a blog that has well-established authority (ie, with good-quality backlinks to other sites, social shares or citations from reputable sites with authority) will mean it’s more likely to be featured when generating answers – it’s another guarantee of credibility.

The Power is in your Blog

When you get the writing right – clear, concise, and with enough of yourself in there to be different and interesting – your content can absolutely be in with a shout when AI tools are asked to find, summarise and cite information, and that will do wonders for your visibility, in Google as well as the AI tools your clients and audience are increasingly using every day.

So plan your blog and write it with clear purpose. Make every section count, and remember that the clearer you are for your human readers, the clearer you become to the machines that help bring your words to light as well.

And you might have noticed as you read this post that I’ve made some significant efforts to follow my own advice about using your blog to get found by AI. I’ve created this post to answer a question I’ve been asked repeatedly, and I’ve tried to answer it clearly with the right subheadings and a smattering of personal insight to my own modest ChatGPT citation success. Hopefully, it’s entertaining and informative for the humans it’s written for – and it will remain to be seen whether I start getting cited for this insight as well as Jack Frost!