Optimizing for AI Bots: Prepping Your Content for the ‘Post-Google’ Search Era

The Salespreneur
6 days ago
2 min read

Summary:

As startups like Athena and Profound optimize for AI chatbots rather than Google, this article explores how businesses should update SEO strategy: structured data, AI-friendly content, and schema markup to ensure visibility in AI-generated answers.

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In today’s rapidly evolving AI‑driven ecosystem, companies such as Athena and Profound are challenging traditional search dominance by optimizing content for AI‑powered chatbots rather than classic web crawlers. This shift requires a recalibrated SEO strategy centered on structured data, answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO).

Why structured data is now critical

Search engines once indexed pages based on crawlable content and backlinks. Today’s AI bots digest data semantically. When you embed JSON‑LD or FAQPage schema, you’re giving these bots a clear signal about your content’s structure and intent — and that can translate into citations in AI answers. Tools like schema.org, JSON-LD, and HowTo markup aren't just technical cosmetics — they’re visibility levers.

A recent Financial Times article showed that 80% of consumers now use AI‑generated content for 40% or more of their searches, while traditional organic traffic could drop by up to 25%.

Building AI‑friendly content

Structure explanations with headings and lists that align with FAQ and HowTo schemas.
Adopt a factual, authoritative tone that aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T signals — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.
Organize content into clear sections to facilitate AI summarization and extraction.

SEO expert Cyrus Shepard reports AI visibility now accounts for 10–15% of his SEO efforts, potentially rising to 50% by year’s end.

Technical underpinnings

Ensure mobile-first performance, fast loading, and HTTPS — core signals that influence AI bot ranking.
Validate structured data via Google’s Rich Results Test.

Leverage AEO and GEO tools

Startups like Athena, incubated by former Google engineers, and Profound, backed by Kleiner Perkins, are pioneering platforms that analyze how AI chatbots parse content.

Athena’s GEO tool ingests over 3 million real AI responses to deliver actionable advice for metadata, prompt phrasing, and schema tweaks.

Expert insight

Athena co‑founder Andrew Yan notes, “That version of Google is changing very fast, and it is changing forever.” Meanwhile, AEO thought leader Ethan Smith explains that AEO “focuses on structuring content to be directly referenced by AI-powered answer engines and voice assistants,” as described in this Wikipedia article on AI SEO.

Schema Tags and AI Visibility

Schema Type	Benefit
FAQPage	Direct answers in AI results
HowTo	Step-by-step guides appear in rich results
VideoObject	Increases chances in AI video carousels
Article	Supports credibility and authority signals

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