Make your business easy to identify, your useful pages accessible and your expertise worth referring to. That is a sound starting point for search and AI answers. It does not guarantee that ChatGPT, Google or another assistant will recommend you.
SEO means improving discovery through search. GEO—generative engine optimisation—is a label often used for visibility in AI-generated answers. For an Australian business, the goal should be relevant enquiries and accurate representation, rather than collecting mentions that never lead to useful work.
Start with a clear account of the business
Can a new visitor tell what you do, who it is for and how to take the next step? Write that in ordinary language. Put the important services in visible text and link to examples that show what was actually delivered.
Distinguish a completed case study from a concept. Name the person behind the work and give enough context to understand their contribution. If a result is client-reported, say so. If a project is ongoing, keep that status visible.
This is a recommendation about useful business communication, not a claim that a particular phrase triggers an AI recommendation.
Check whether search crawlers can reach the page
A public article needs a working URL and accessible content before it can be discovered. Check the response, indexing instructions and internal links. A private draft marked noindex is deliberately a different state.
For ChatGPT search, OpenAI identifies OAI-SearchBot as the relevant crawler. Its documentation recommends allowing that crawler in robots.txt and allowing its published IP ranges through infrastructure controls. GPTBot concerns model training; ChatGPT-User supports certain user-initiated visits. They are different controls. Read OpenAI’s crawler documentation.
Do not assume that changing robots.txt alone fixes a firewall challenge. Verify access through logs and the platform’s current guidance. Keep private client material outside public crawling.
Give each useful page a clear purpose
A service page helps someone decide whether to work with you. An article helps them understand a question. A case study shows the work and its supported outcome.
For example, a custom software service page can explain the kinds of problems you take on, the process and the next step. A separate build-or-buy guide can help a reader decide whether custom software is appropriate. Link the two where that connection helps the reader.
Use one strong page for closely related questions. Publishing a near-identical page for every suburb or wording variation creates little value. Google’s spam policies address doorway pages and scaled content made primarily to manipulate rankings. Read the spam policies.
Add something a generic summary cannot supply
A useful article can contain a decision worksheet, a worked example, a clearly labelled demonstration or a first-hand project explanation. A source should support a factual claim; a hypothetical example should be labelled as one.
Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether a page adds original information and demonstrates experience. It also says Google has no preferred word count. Aim to finish the reader’s job, not hit an arbitrary length. Read the people-first content guidance.
A practical answer near the start and descriptive headings help people scan. Treat those as editorial choices, not a special ranking formula.
Use structured data and imagery honestly
Organization and Article structured data can describe the business and its editorial pages. The values should match what readers can see. It is not a substitute for evidence or a guaranteed AI-placement mechanism. Organization guidance and Article guidance explain the supported fields.
Relevant images can help communicate the subject. Use descriptive alt text and proportionate image files; keep essential facts in the article itself. Our papercraft images are editorial illustrations, not screenshots of delivered products. Google’s image guidance covers image discovery.
Keep the Australian context real
Describe where you genuinely work and whom you serve. Use consistent business and contact details. Add an Australian example when it changes the decision—currency, working arrangements or an actual client context—rather than repeating “Australia” in every paragraph.
Do not invent an office, local testimonial or city-specific project to fill a location page. Accurate information is more useful to a buyer than a page that only changes the city name.
Measure citations, visits and enquiries separately
Use Google Search Console to inspect search discovery, indexing and visits. Check the reports available in your property and keep those measures separate from enquiries and sales.
For a small set of buyer questions, record the assistant, date, exact prompt, search setting and cited URLs. Repeat the same prompts over time and save the answers. A citation is different from a brand mention; neither proves an enquiry or a sale.
What should you avoid?
Avoid guaranteed placement, invented results, hidden instructions aimed at manipulating assistants and a rush of thin articles. Google’s current AI-search guide says special files such as llms.txt are not required for its search features. That statement is about Google; it is not a universal claim about every AI product. Read Google’s AI-search guide.
Start with a technically sound site, a specific offer and genuinely useful evidence. Then improve the pages that attract the right people. There is no honest way to promise a fixed position in someone else’s generated answer.
Bring a real example.
If your website or business systems make your offer hard to understand, bring an example. We can discuss the design or technical work; we do not promise search placement.
Let’s talk