The Website Success Show: SEO & Website Tips For Beauty & Wellness Businesses Who Want More Website Traffic & Conversions

095: Three Simple Checks to Future-Proof Your Website for Search

• Jules White • Season 1 • Episode 95

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In this episode, Jules White shares three practical questions you can ask your web developer, VA, or yourself to check whether your website is truly ready for AI search - or if it's missing the basic building blocks. 

Jules explains why many websites, even newly built ones, often lack SEO foundations like clear page targeting, proper structure, and internal linking - and how this affects both traditional and AI-driven search. Drawing from real client experiences, she highlights the risks of assuming your website is “SEO-ready” without evidence, especially during a redesign or migration.

Whether you manage your site yourself or have a team, these checks will help you feel more informed and confident about what’s in place - and what might still need attention.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why being told “your SEO is all sorted” can be a red flag
  • Why SEO often isn’t included in website builds unless explicitly discussed
    Three clear questions to ask your support team (or yourself) to assess visibility
    The role of structure and internal linking in both Google and AI tools
    Why visibility in tools like ChatGPT and Gemini depends on solid foundations
    Encouragement to make small, consistent improvements without overwhelm

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Introduction and Overview

Good morning, good morning, good morning. Today, I want to talk about three questions that you can ask your developer, your web developer, or yourself. If you are doing everything yourself or your VA or whoever is your website support. Three questions you can ask to make sure that your site is ready for AI search.

Common Website Issues and Real-Life Example

I have this conversation time and time again with people where they think that their website has been set up in a way that it will show up in search, and then we have a conversation about it. We have a little look at their website and we realise that it's actually not.

Unfortunately, a lot of stuff hasn't been done. A lot of the basics haven't been put in place, which is fine. If you know it's not there, if you know that that hasn't happened, if you know you need to implement these things yourself or you need to get some help, then that's fine.

But it's when you don't realise that, when you don't even realise that this is a thing. I had this with a client a few weeks ago where we were having a look at their website. They were on WordPress.

They'd stayed on WordPress, but they'd had a big, big redesign, a whole new website built, really. Her old website was actually showing up on Google. It was actually doing okay. She was getting clients coming through it. They were getting recommended regularly, showing up in Google searches.

And then she had a big rebrand. She changed a lot of her messaging. She decided to have a new website built for her. So she had it built, and it was built by a designer.

There was no sort of discussion around SEO, and there wasn't really any discussion around messaging. It was only when we were sort of diving into things and actually looking at, "Well, what do you want to be showing up? What are the important things that need to come across on your website? How can we make your website more customer-focused?"

So it's not just a brochure site, basically. It's not just a brochure about you. It is about how you help your customers. It's how you make your customers the hero of the story.

It was a bit of a revelation moment for her, but also really frustrating, as she'd never had that conversation with her. This isn't about bashing developers because I think sometimes there is this expectation that everybody should know everything.

Actually, it's not the case. Sometimes you need a specialist. I think there are some basic things that need to be in place.

The Importance of SEO and AI Readiness

If it's something that actually you don't know, if you don't know these things, or if your developer doesn't know these things, then it's better to have a conversation about that so that you can make an informed decision as a business. So it is something that is really important if you're thinking about that.

If you're thinking about a website migration, if you're thinking about working with a developer or a designer or a VA or anybody to help you with your website, just make sure that you, as the business owner, are informed on these kinds of things. So you have an idea.

I sort of compare it to taking your car to the garage and they tell you this needs fixing, and you have to kind of take their word on it. We could go out and learn about how cars work and learn whether it's the right thing or not, I guess, but this is a lot easier than that.

These are sort of basic things that you can think about yourself, that you can then have these conversations with your developer, or as I say, ask yourself these questions as well, and not just assume this is all being taken care of. Not just assume that there's nothing that you can do as a business owner to actually help with this and as a website owner to help with this.

That's exactly why I'm sharing these questions today, because if you are not being guided, if you're not understanding these things yourself, then how are you actually going to make sure that you do future-proof your business and you do know what to look for, and that you do make sure that you are the business that's being shown up in search, regardless of whether that is Google search? AI or wherever people are searching for businesses.

Who knows what's around the corner? Maybe we'll have our robot butlers out there doing all the research for us on which businesses to choose to buy from. I've got an episode of the podcast you can listen to that is all about migration mistakes.

This kind of ties in with this. If you are having a new website built or if you're thinking about migrating your website, go and listen to episode 10, which is all about website migration mistakes that can sabotage your SEO. Certainly, this client a few weeks ago, if they'd been aware of these sorts of things, then it would've been so much, so much easier for them.

They could have preserved that valuable traffic that they already had on their old website, unfortunately. The big change right now is that tools like Gemini, Google AI overviews, we've got Google's AI mode.

If you're in the US, then you already have access to this, most people do. It is coming to the UK. They reckon it might be late this year. I log into a VPN and I can see how it works, and I'm excited for it.

I think it will blow a lot of people's minds. People aren't necessarily always keen on change, so I think there probably will be a bit of pushback about it. But Google has been doing lots of visibility about this.

If you've seen the adverts on Google, Google has been advertising about Gemini and the way you can use that on your phone. Also, I saw an advert the other day where Google was actually trying to help people understand that they can now have conversations in search. They can ask long questions and they'll get those more specified, more specific answers to them.

It's interesting. My husband was a bit like, pushed back against it actually. He wasn't too keen on it. He's like, "Well, I'd just like to see the links that I want to, you know, and I can go and do my research myself."

I think there probably will be a bit of that actually as people kind of get used to it. But I think in general, people will embrace it as long as it's easy. If it's there on their phone and it's part of the habits that they're already using, then I definitely think they will embrace this.

I have a few times where I think, "Oh, if Amazon had just got on board with this and had built it into the smart speakers." Quite often, I'm sort of doing something and I just think, "Oh, I want to just ask ChatGPT a quick question," and if I could, because quite often with the smart speakers, you'll ask it a question and it's, "I don't know how to help you with that," which is really frustrating.

I kind of feel like actually they really missed a trick with that of actually being there. They were already there in everybody's home. If they could have got in with that.

Anyway, that's me digressing. That's my digression for this morning. So, yeah, we're starting to think about these AI tools and how we can actually get our businesses recommended in them.

So, episode 92 was about wanting to be ChatGPT Famous and how AI really picks who to show. I've got a workshop coming up next week, if you're listening to this. The workshop is live on the 23rd of July. If not, it will be turned into a course.

This is all about how you can actually make the most of this and make sure that your business is showing up in ChatGPT, and getting recommended by ChatGPT more importantly. Showing up on these kind of tools basically means that you need to have structure, clarity, visibility across the web, and really show yourself as the trusted brand and trusted some questions that you can ask your website person or yourself, as I say.

Three Key Questions to Ask Your Developer

There are multiple questions you could ask about this, but three questions. I was trying to think this morning, okay, what would be the three things that I would ask to understand whether, or to see whether they actually have an understanding of what's going on? If they've got any kind of understanding of the world of AI search, and this isn't about trying to call them out on what they don't do and don't know.

It's more about whether they are actually, you know, they want to have a conversation about it basically. One thing to point out with this as well is this also applies to normal search as well.

These questions will also then help with normal search, because if you are doing the things to show up in AI, the foundations of that is making sure that your existing SEO is in place so that you are doing those foundations that you need to.

Detailed Explanation of Key Questions

So the first question is, "What key phrase is each page trying to rank for on my website?" This gets straight to the point. If they can't answer that clearly, if you've not ever had a conversation about this, then that's a bit of a red flag that there might be things that you need to do to make sure that your website content isn't competing against itself.

One of the things we need to sort of understand about websites and about how Google ranks websites. Google's little robots crawl through all of the internet, and it has to decide out of the search that people are doing, Google's customers are the searches.

Out of those searches, which page of the internet, which individual page is the best one to show in the search results? That's something that once you understand that, once you understand that Google doesn't rank whole websites, Google ranks web pages, that can help just to have a little bit more clarity of if you're thinking about a search term or a search phrase or a keyword.

You're thinking about something you want to show up for on Google or in ChatGPT, then which page of your website is most relevant to that? Have you optimised that page? If you haven't, then that's one of the places to start thinking about how you can actually go in and make sure that page is optimised to show up for that particular search.

You can use Google Search Console to help you with this as well. You can dive in, have a look at what search terms are already being associated with your website.

If you've got particular search terms where there's more than one page and it's got a similar number of impressions and a similar number of clicks, it gives a strong signal that Google is a bit confused between which page is the best one to show up for that. I've got another episode that you might find helpful around that.

Episode 31: "How to use Google Search Console to improve SEO and for more website traffic." Go and have a listen to that one. That one's all about just little tips that you can do.

Google Search Console is a really great place to start, and if you haven't set that up, actually that's a little extra question you could ask, that's not one of the three, but making sure that your web developer has actually set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console. This is something that quite often comes up on power hours, where people either have it has never been set up.

They've never been granted access to it, or they have, and they've never been talked through how to actually use this information and use this data to help them, to help their business, to help them get more customers through Google. It's really powerful.

I'm a big advocate of using that. They're free tools from Google, especially Google Search Console is the one that actually really helps us understand how Google sees your website.

We are still focusing on Google. The reason that we always talk about Google is because, up until recently, over 90% of searches went through Google. But they've just recently dropped down to 89% for the first time in a decade.

That shows how the world of search is changing, actually. Anyway, that's my second little digression of the morning. So that was it. Question number one is, "What are we trying to get each page to rank for? And is it optimised for that?"

Question number two is, "Is our website showing up in AI search tools like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google is probably more AI overviews?" So just asking that question, "Are we ready for AI search? Are we set up to actually start showing up in AI search?"

If they say no, then that's fine. You understand that, okay, there are things that we need to do. If they say they're not sure, then great. Absolutely, they're not just trying to blag it.

If they say yes, then I would ask, "Okay, why? What are we doing? How is that happening?" Because I think often this can happen. I had a conversation with somebody who had watched me do a training, and I saw her a couple of weeks later and was asking her, because she'd mentioned about her SEO and how helpful it was, the training that she watched me do.

Then I was asking her about it and she said, "Yeah, I asked my web development guy and he said, yeah, we're all set on SEO." When I look at her website, I can see that actually there's so much you could do. There's so much potential there.

You're not showing up for the things that you really should be on Google, and in local searches, more importantly with this business. But it's one of those things that actually if they say yes, then try and get them to help you understand why that is a yes.

If you are asking that question of yourself and you're not sure, you're not sure what to do, then that's what my workshop on "ChatGPT to recommend your business" is for. That's exactly what that's for, so I'll link to that in the show notes and you can go and have a little look at that and join us in that workshop.

And then question number three is, "Do we have structured page titles, H1 headings, and internal links in place?" This might be one that if you are hearing this and thinking, "Oh, I don't want to ask that question because I don't know," then go back and listen to every other episode of the podcast, because I talk about this almost every week.

The way that our website is structured in the backend, when we build our websites in our website builder, is really critical moving forward. Getting, like for the bots that actually read through our website, for them to be able to understand the content of our website, it's really important that that is set out in a structured way.

So think of your website like an English essay. You would have one title at the top of an English essay. If you were back at school, that would be your H1 heading.

Ideally, that would contain that key phrase that you're trying to get that page to rank for. Then maybe within that you would have a couple or three or four H2 headings, maybe even more, which would be the subtopics within that English essay.

Then maybe within that you would have a little bit more information or division where you might have H3s, which could be like sub-subtopics within those H2 headings. So you would never have an H1, like a main heading, followed by an H4.

You just wouldn't suddenly drop to there, basically. So making sure that that's in place. Page titles, again, that's one of the most important things with SEO, is actually making sure that your page titles are relevant.

They contain the keywords or key phrase that you're trying to get that page to rank for. Internal links are something that is really critical. With our website, we don't necessarily think about how we can link all of our own content together.

We can't always control other people linking to our website and getting backlinks, which is really valuable for our website. I have an episode about that as well: Episode 25, "Why Simple Link Building is Important for More Website Traffic."

When we're actually creating links, whether they're outside of our website or inside our website, actually the ones that we can control are those internal links. We can control whether we are linking from our blog posts to our sales pages, if our blog posts are talking about things that are relevant to the ways that we can solve people's problems.

Just making sure that we are actually linking there. One of the things you can do for a quick win is if you've got a blog post that naturally leads into your offer, making sure you set up something like a banner ad for yourself.

Set up a visual ad within your own blog that then leads to your sales page, because that's such a simple thing that we forget about. We create this blog content, and often we can end up churning out content, more and more blogs for the sake of it, and it's not necessarily helping our business.

So actually thinking about that, linking, thinking about how this all fits together as part of our website ecosystem, and how all of the content is supporting itself, and it's supporting the other content, and most importantly, supporting our sales pages or our freebie signup pages or whatever helps to grow our authority. Making sure that that is in place is massively helpful.

So, having that conversation with them or with yourself, just making sure that you are actually linking everything together, making sure your website content is set up in the right way.

Final Thoughts and Additional Resources

Making sure you understand whether you are already showing up in AI searches and whether you are already set up to do that. Then just having that clear focus for each keyword or key phrase, each clear focus of what you're trying to achieve with that and making sure you optimise for that, then you know, it's so fundamental.

Basically, it's those things that actually, even for websites that are very expensive. You know, where people have paid a lot of money to have amazing websites and they look beautiful, and then you dive into it and actually they're not set up for the basics of showing up in searches.

It's such a shame and it's such a missed opportunity. It's part of my mission and what I want to achieve with my business is to help to rid the world of those kind of websites that either look awful and don't do anything or look amazing and don't do anything.

Your website should be your most valuable business tool. It should be bringing money and bringing clients into your business every single day.

If it's not, then that's something that we need to fix, really. So if you don't get clear answers from your developer, then something is missing. Not necessarily, as I say, if they say they don't know, then that's fine.

At least then, you know, you need to then investigate that further. You need to become that strategist for your website and actually make sure that you are in the driving seat, that you are the one who's actually determining how your website's going to help your business.

You don't need to panic about this as well. That's one thing I would say is don't worry if these things aren't in place.

If you are realising that there are lots of things that you need to change, it's not about changing everything all at once. It's all about making sure that you're taking bite-sized steps to improve your website over time and to just gradually make those changes that can make a massive difference. Small tweaks done consistently over time are where that real value is, really.

This is something we do in the Website Growth Club. If you're looking for some support, if you're looking for bite-sized steps on what to do each month to actually make a difference to your website, then come over and join us in the Website Growth Club.

If you're thinking about ChatGPT and how you can get recommended there, then join the "Get Recommended by ChatGPT Workshop" or grab the replay and the course I'm creating from it. Really, as I was saying, the most important thing with this is just making sure that you treat your website as the valuable asset that it should be in your business.

We often end up spending so much time and so much energy on social media and focusing on that. It is throwaway content often, and it's not necessarily bringing the things into our business that we want, not necessarily bringing the money and the leads and generating sales in our business as we want it to focus on your website.

Just give it a little bit of attention, and if you need any help, if you need any more one-to-one help, then reach out. Send me a message and let me know if I can help you at all.

Personal Anecdotes and Conclusion

So have a great weekend. I will definitely be swimming this weekend. It's beautiful, sunny weather.

The trouble is that means it's really busy at the lake. Even at 9:00 AM last week it was really busy, like kids throwing stones at the swans and all sorts of things. It was not good.

You know, it's a public lake that's free to swim or a lagoon that's free to swim in. So, I'm very grateful for that.

But I also miss my winter when it's like five of us there, the diehard blue tits who are there, you know, in three-degree water. I missed the buzz from the coldness in the winter. It's about 22 degrees at the moment, and it's still lovely.

I still enjoy it, but it's definitely a bit different to winter swimming. I've also rediscovered my love of my garden. I've been using ChatGPT to help me create garden plans, and we moved some furniture around last weekend.

We did a big garden makeover. It was literally, we've got a small garden, and we moved some furniture around, but it felt big to me. It feels like my little oasis.

I've got some tomatoes growing and peppers and strawberries, and I'm trying to use it as a way to switch off from work, have some relaxation time, and get out there and just rediscover my love of gardening. I've always enjoyed that over the years, and I've kind of forgotten that a little bit since I've had my own business. That's what I will be doing this weekend.

I hope you have a lovely one, and I'll see you soon. Bye.

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