What Is AI SEO? How to Get Your Business Found on ChatGPT and Perplexity
Google is no longer the only search engine that matters. A growing number of people — especially younger consumers — are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overview for recommendations instead of scrolling through search results. If your business isn't optimised for these platforms, you're invisible to an entire generation of potential customers.
What Is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the practice of structuring your website, schema markup, and online presence so that AI-powered tools can find, understand, and recommend your business. It's different from traditional SEO in one key way: AI models don't just rank pages, they synthesise information and generate answers. Your business needs to be in the data those models train on and retrieve from.
Why It Matters for Restaurants and Local Businesses
When someone asks ChatGPT "best halal restaurant in NJ" or asks Perplexity "top social media agencies in New Jersey," the answer it generates is based on what it can find and verify about your business online. If your website has no schema markup, no crawlable NAP data, and no structured content about your services, you won't appear in those answers.
Three Things You Can Do Right Now
- Add LocalBusiness schema markup to your website. This tells AI crawlers your name, address, phone number, hours, and what you do.
- Add FAQPage schema. AI models pull heavily from structured Q&A content when generating answers.
- Make sure your Google Business Profile is fully populated and consistent with your website NAP.
The Difference Between Google SEO and AI SEO
Traditional Google SEO is about ranking in a list of blue links. AI SEO is about becoming the answer. The goal shifts from "appear on page one" to "be the business the AI recommends when someone asks."
AMJ Marketing Group was one of the first NJ agencies to offer AI search visibility as a dedicated service. If you want your restaurant or business to show up when customers ask AI tools for recommendations, reach out at admin@amjmarketing.com or call (973) 200-0233.