Before paying for an “AI visibility” package, open one of your service pages on a phone. Can a prospective customer work out what you do, whether you serve their needs and what information they should send you? If those answers are buried, the page needs attention regardless of how someone finds it.
For a marketing team, an AI search visibility audit should produce a prioritised list of useful website changes. It should not begin with a promise that your brand will appear in an answer generated by Google or any other platform.
Understand what the audit can establish
Google’s guidance on AI features says existing SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Eligibility does not guarantee an appearance. Advice about Google also should not be presented as a rule for every AI product.
Separate three questions in your brief: can the page be discovered, does it help a buyer make a decision, and does the visit lead to a useful next step? They require different evidence. An index check cannot tell you whether a sales enquiry was suitable, and a screenshot of one AI response cannot prove consistent visibility.
Choose five pages before reviewing the whole website
Start with a small working set: the homepage, a priority service page, a relevant project example, a useful article and the contact page. Choose them because they support an actual customer journey, not because a tool has assigned them an impressive score.
For each page, record its purpose in one sentence. If two pages have indistinguishable purposes, investigate their content and search performance before deciding to combine them. A similar title alone is not enough reason to redirect a URL that may have existing value.
Review the questions a buyer needs answered
Use recent sales conversations, enquiry emails and support questions where you have permission to use them. Remove personal details from any working examples. Ask the service owner to review the resulting list.
Consider a hypothetical catering company. A buyer arranging a corporate event may need to know the service area, event capacity, dietary options and how to request a proposal. A page describing the business as “innovative” does not answer those questions. The useful improvement is to publish accurate details the company can support.
Use this four-column worksheet:
| Buyer question | Current answer | Evidence needed | Next action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is this service suitable for us? | Scope is vague | Approved inclusions and exclusions | Rewrite the service explanation |
| Can the company demonstrate relevant work? | Image without context | Permission and verified project details | Add a factual project description |
| What happens after an enquiry? | No explanation | Confirmed enquiry process | Explain the next step beside the form |
The examples describe an audit method, not results from an AdLift client. Replace them with evidence from your own business.
Check the route into and through each page
Have the person responsible for the website check indexability, canonical URLs, internal links and mobile rendering. Keep a record of the current URLs and metadata before making changes. Test important pages as a visitor who is not logged into WordPress; an editor’s preview can conceal a publication problem.
Google’s generative AI search guide says there is no special AI schema or llms.txt requirement for Google Search. A proposal centred on those additions should explain what practical problem they solve. They should not displace an unreadable service page or a broken enquiry form.
Keep important explanations as readable page text. Where a diagram, photograph or video clarifies the subject, use it with appropriate context. Avoid putting essential service details only inside an image.
Ask what evidence you can publish
Useful evidence might include an approved process, a detailed explanation of a deliverable, a project image with permission or a comparison that helps a buyer choose. Name the person who checks each factual claim.
If you cannot substantiate a result, leave it out. If you have no first-hand experience to describe, do not manufacture it. A clearly explained method can help a reader without a fabricated case study, invented statistic or claim that an agency has access to a platform’s internal ranking systems.
Measure enquiries alongside visibility
Record a baseline before publishing the changes: relevant Search Console observations, landing-page activity and enquiries your team can verify. Keep the definitions consistent during the review period. Where a platform provides AI-specific reporting, examine its scope before comparing it with other search reports.
Track an enquiry through to the team that receives it. A form-button click, an accepted submission and a qualified sales conversation are separate events. Record which of them your reporting actually measures. Traffic without that context can send the next round of work in the wrong direction.
Leave the audit with a short action list
Assign each finding an owner, a supporting observation and a completion check. Put problems that stop customers using the site ahead of speculative experiments. For example: confirm a priority page is public, clarify its service scope, repair the enquiry route, then review the effect using comparable data.
When discussing the work with an agency, ask it to show how each recommendation follows from the evidence. Our agency proposal checklist can help structure that conversation. You can also review AdLift Media’s SEO, design and website services or contact the team with your existing pages and business priorities.
For a quick visual summary, view our AI search visibility Web Story.
