As times have changed, and AI search has become the go-to method of researching information, many estate agency websites have failed to keep up. We look at why so many independent agents are missing out on the search potential of AI – and what you can do about it.

The rapid expansion of AI has changed customer behaviour in many ways, not least how people search for information online. Instead of using Google to search out ‘estate agents near me’ or ‘how can I sell my house quickly’, more people are looking to platforms like ChatGPT to ask these things, in a conversational way.

Businesses must optimise their content for AI too to keep ahead of the game.”

While traditional SEO is as important as ever, when it comes to boosting your agency’s presence on the search engine results pages, businesses must optimise their content for AI too to keep ahead of the game. This means having the right team in place to manage your website, with the skills to understand how search is changing and help you adapt.

Issues often occur when agents are too reliant on template websites that aren’t optimised for AI search. While this approach is a cost-effective way of having a nice-looking site that ticks many boxes, it is unlikely to give you the right presence on the AI platforms.

If you are commissioning a digital marketing agency to help you make the most of AI search, you need to be sure it has the skillset to build a website in this fast-moving sector. To help you understand what to look out for, we examine 10 crucial areas that can make or break good AI optimisation.

1. How good is your information architecture?

Information architecture is crucial to how AI crawlers understand your site. You want your information to be structured in a clear and sensible way – from homepage to sub-sections to content – rather than as a series of random posts competing against each other.

Make sure nothing is more than three clicks from the homepage and use logical internal linking to reinforce the site’s credibility.

2. Structure your data – understand the value of schema

Schema markup is a type of code that helps search engines understand your content better and represent it in search results. Without getting too technical, you need to incorporate the schema markup that helps AI systems understand both your site and your business.

3. Is your page structure designed for answer extraction?

AI tools don’t read pages in the same way as humans – they look for rich information that responds to searchers’ questions and extract it for their responses. This means they like good heading hierarchy, bullets, tables, consistent formatting and plain English. They don’t like long-winded narratives, big blocks of text or whimsical headings that don’t relate to the content below.

4. Does your site reflect who you are and what you do?

AI systems are ranking your business not just your content, so make sure your site is on brand and that your company information is strong and clear – on your history, values and narrative. Include things like staff biographies to signal expertise and have clear links to your social profiles and contact information.

5. Use internal linking to reinforce knowledge

Internal links teach AI what matters most, so make sure yours boost the authority of your site. Links should be contextual – ie no ‘click here’ and should take the reader (or crawler) from main pages to areas of deeper expertise, where topics are clearly defined.

6. Keep your content fresh

Make sure you refresh your site, pruning your content and regularly removing outdated information. Avoid presenting old content as new.

7. Text is not enough

An AI-friendly site uses text, photos, diagrams, video with transcripts, and proper alt text for images. Remember that good accessibility is vital for customer experience but works for AI crawlers too.

8. Can you be trusted?

The best AI sites signal their trustworthiness by demonstrating their HTTPS credentials, displaying clear privacy terms and avoiding intrusive features like too many pop-ups. Looking spammy affects how you are perceived by customers but plays out in your AI ranking too.

9. Boost your technical performance

Without delving into core web vitals, XML sitemaps and the like, remember that technical failings could mean crawlers miss your best content. So, you need staff with the skills to fix these issues for you.

10. Are you tracking your AI visibility?

Finally, think about your analytics – this needs to be about more than traffic to your pages. A good AI website tracks additional elements like featured snippets, AI citations and brand mentions to help you boost your visibility.

Want to see where your current website is missing opportunities? Book a free AI visibility review with Art Division.