How I optimised my Squarespace site for AI search (Part 1)
I'm pretty good at helping businesses get found and trusted, but drinking my own champagne for my own site kept going to the bottom of the to-do list. With the summer in full swing and business a bit quieter, I decided to grab an iced coffee and do it. So I kept a diary of what I did and how - perhaps it will inspire you to do yours.
GEO, generative engine optimisation, is about making sure AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers can find you, understand you, and quote you. Here is exactly what I did on my site, which I built on Squarespace - but the principles work for any site.
Tools - I used 2:
Claude agent
to work through the on-page and site-wide checks with me:
UK market research,
sense-checking SEO titles
writing the schema code and
walking me through Squarespace's menus as I was rusty.
Grammarly Pro
Well grammar (of course)
As I write my own content, I was intrigued to test out the tool’s AI & plagiarism checker. I couldn’t believe it flagged some passages as AI-sounding. I rewrote them as I bloody wasn’t going to get that pinned on me.
Pillar and cluster content
This style of writing AI bots love. I wrote two pillar pages on questions clients actually ask, then linked them so they work as a cluster: a main piece with related pages pointing in (mine are consultant or fractional CMO and fractional versus a full-time hire). Both are answer-shaped, with clear headings and FAQs, which is the format AI engines use to lift and quote.
Internal linking.
I linked the pillars to each other, to Services and from the home page, using descriptive link text rather than “click here”, and relative links so nothing breaks if a URL changes.
Schema markup.
Schema is ‘code that tells machines what a page is, and entity consistency’ (describing who you are the same way everywhere) is apparently a big trust earner with AI engines.
I added it site-wide, defining Thought Rebel and me as one consistent entity,
Then per page: a profile page for About, services with prices for Services, article and FAQ markup on the guides, a contact page for Contact.
SEO, page by page and site-wide. Every page got a unique title and meta description, written for real people but carrying the terms people search, and spread out so no single keyword is overused. I set the site-wide title and description too.
Final checks
I renamed one page for a cleaner URL and added a 301 redirect so the old link still works. Small, but broken links cost you.
Let the crawling begin.
I checked the crawler settings to make sure AI bots aren’t blocked, and switched on llms.txt, a simple file that gives AI tools a clean map of the site.
Verify and get indexed.
I validated the schema in Google's Rich Results Test, then requested indexing in Search Console. None of it counts until the engines re-crawl - fact.
What I haven’t done yet and what is next.
Yes, you do earn a decent amount of AI visibility off your own site; however, the real work comes in to get and sustain third-party mentions, reviews, coverage, and consistent details wherever the web lists you - and it is super important. This is my next project, which I will outline in Part 2.
Your site is the foundation, but it is not the finish line! Results can take weeks, so that I will be watching my share of voice in AI answers and adjusting.
All in all, this took me a day’s work (because I don’t just copy-paste LLM results; I interrogate, berate benevolently and do many checks along the way). Good luck; however, if you have more important things to do and would rather someone did it for you, you know where to find me.
