Technical SEO Has Evolved—Has Your Website?
Hi there!
As we’ve seen, the search world has undergone significant changes. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other AI tools are how many people find content now. If you're not optimising for AI search, you're missing out on traffic.
The good news remains, though. You don't need to throw out everything you know and have implemented about Technical SEO. But you do need to layer on some AI-specific tactics.
What's So Different About AI Search?
Traditional SEO was about keywords and backlinks. AI search is about understanding context and meaning.
Instead of just Google's crawler, you're now dealing with an ever-increasing number of others, from a multiplying number of players in AI and AI search, including:
Google-Extended
GPTBot
PerplexityBot
ClaudeBot
These bots read your content like humans do—they understand nuance, context, and relationships between ideas.
The Critical Decision: To Block or Not to Block
Here's the thing: many businesses get it wrong. They block AI bots in their robots.txt file because they're worried about content being stolen.
Don't do this.
Block AI bots, and your website will disappear from AI search results. That means missing out on Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT searches, and other AI-powered discoveries.
Technical Foundations That Still Matter
The basics haven't changed:
Fast page speed
Mobile-responsive design
Clean site architecture
Updated XML sitemaps
Proper robots.txt configuration
Think of your website like a well-organised shop. If customers can't find what they need quickly, they leave. It’s the same for search bots.
Layering on AI-Specific Technical Adjustments
These are the big things.
1. Check Your Robots.txt—Review to make sure you're not blocking important AI crawlers.
2. Monitor Bot Activity—Check your log files to see how AI bots are crawling your site. Are they accessing your important pages?
3. Use HTML pages—AI bots need to see your actual content, not just code. If you need to rely heavily on JavaScript, consider pre-rendering options. But rendering pages in HTML is preferable.
4. Structure for Understanding—Use proper HTML structure:
H1 and H2 tags for headings
Clear bullet points
FAQ sections
Logical content flow
Website Structure That AI Loves
AI search often combines multiple queries into a single chain. Structure your content to support this—link related topics, answer follow-up questions, and provide depth. Some websites in particular market sectors will benefit from breaking Traditional SEO’s long pages into a network of smaller, highly topic-focused pages.
Get a site audit and a competitor audit. Dig deep into understanding how AI search is handling your content and structure or restructure accordingly.
For more about Content and AI search, see my previous newsletter.
Don't Forget Schema Markup
Structured data helps AI systems understand your content more effectively. Use schema markup to label:
Products and services
Events
Reviews
FAQs
Business information
You can stay updated with changes through resources like Sitebulb.
Images and Video Matter More Now
AI can "see" your images and "hear" your videos. This means:
Write descriptive alt text for all images
Add subtitles and captions to videos
Use consistent, accurate information across all content
Again, these steps will help AI bot understanding.
The Bottom Line
Technical SEO in 2025 isn't about choosing between traditional and AI optimisation—you need both.
Here’s a top-line comparison of Traditional Technical SEO and Technical SEO for AI Search.
Your action plan:
At a minimum, audit your robots.txt file; a detailed SEO Audit with a Competitor Audit will provide more valuable insights and ensure your Technical SEO for AI sets off on a winning foot
Monitor AI bot activity
Improve content structure and clarity
Implement or update schema markup
Optimise multimedia content
The fundamentals of good SEO remain unchanged, which is great for established websites that have those fundamentals already in place. But if you want to stay visible as search evolves, you need to adapt your technical approach. Businesses that get this right now will have a significant advantage as AI search becomes even more dominant.
This newsletter is a brief overview of Technical SEO for AI Search. There’s far more detail to dive down into and topics I haven’t the space to cover.
Talk to me if you want to make your website more effective in AI search. I can tailor your Technical SEO strategy and implementation to your website. Book a chat now, or drop me an email on david@davidrosam.com.
Next time: Where Content and Technical SEO come together for AI Search.
Thank you for reading.
David Rosam
David Rosam Digital Marketing
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