If you expect artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend your business to potential customers, you need to get involved, because AI is different from traditional search engine optimization (SEO). Most website traffic still comes from traditional, keyword-driven SEO, yet the more nuanced, conversational AIO — artificial intelligence optimization — is quickly emerging.
Even our smallest clients are already seeing leads generated by ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). That’s exciting and somewhat frightening too, because changes in the AI world happen almost overnight, and nobody likes surprises.
LLMs are increasingly used for research and comparison, and that inevitably leads to business recommendations. The challenge for businesses is that all of this is happening through AI chatbots that use conversational language. It’s time for your marketing to adapt to this shift.
Reframe how your website works
AI’s ability to consume and synthesize accessible information allows it to be hyper-focused on what customers want to know. That matters for landscape contractors who rely on trust, expertise and local relevance to win business.
Optimizing for AI is surprisingly simple, with your favorite LLM doing much of the heavy lifting for you. Even better, this process forces clarity about your ideal customers, the problems they are trying to solve and how your website’s content addresses them.
For example, unless you are well-known in the industry or your community, it’s likely nobody is reading your blog. That’s OK, because AI is reading it. Any content that’s accessible can be evaluated, summarized and used by AI to inform recommendations.
Start with the low-hanging fruit
The first step is understanding where you stand today. If you aren’t sure if your business is getting leads from ChatGPT or other AI tools, the simplest way to find out is to ask directly. Use this prompt — “Tell me everything you know about [your business name]” — and take a close look at what comes back.
- What are the sources? Is one of them your website?
- Where are the gaps? That is, the services that are not being recommended?
- What information is missing that only customers would know?
The real work is refining and strengthening that alignment by identifying the information sources and assessing their accuracy to complete your buyer’s journey. Forget about keywords as you do this and focus on clear, conversational communication.
Think of this as completing a business profile — almost like an executive summary. How does AI perceive your business as strong or weak, so you can double down on your strengths and address any blind spots?
These are the core elements we focus on with our clients.
- Services. What you do and what you don’t do.
- Ideal buyer. Roles, characteristics, location and decision criteria.
- Problems solved. The real pain points your customers face.
- Outcomes and results. What success looks like for your clients.
- Location and pricing context. Service areas and positioning.
- Credentials and trust signals. Certifications, experience and social proof.
Choose where this information lives
This content can live on a current website page, such as your “About” page. However, it doesn’t need to appear in your website navigation because that’s for humans. AI will find it if it exists and is well-organized. That’s why we often create a new page labeled something like “AI Training” and link to it in the footer with other secondary pages.
Don’t overthink this. Many True Nature Marketing clients already have basic AI training pages in place, and we continue refining them as we learn more. Like most other website decisions, getting this done and working for your business is far better than waiting for it to be perfect.
