A growing number of customers no longer type a few words into a search box and scroll. They ask a full question: “Who should I call to fix the phones at my office?” or “Which plumber near me is open on Saturday?” An AI assistant reads what it can find about local businesses and gives back a short answer, often with only two or three names in it.
That changes the math for a small business. On a page of search results, being fifth still gets you seen. In an AI answer, if you are not one of the few names mentioned, you may not exist to that customer at all.
Websites and digital marketing are part of what I oversee at DirecTech Connect, and this is a question I hear more and more: how do we show up there? Nobody outside these companies knows exactly how each assistant chooses. But the assistants draw on much of the same public information your customers can see, and that part you control.
1. Say plainly what you do and where you do it. An assistant can only recommend you for a job if it can tell you do that job. A homepage that says “Quality service you can trust” tells it nothing. A homepage that says “Commercial heating and air repair for businesses in Gallatin, Hendersonville and White House, Tennessee” tells it exactly when to mention you. Name your services and your towns in plain words, in text a visitor can actually read.
2. Give each main service its own page. If you do five things, one page that lists all five in a single paragraph is weak. A page for each service, explaining who it is for, what is included and what a customer should expect, gives an assistant something specific to point to when someone asks a specific question.
3. Answer the questions your customers already ask. Think about the questions your front desk hears every week. What does it usually cost? How fast can you come out? Do you work on older equipment? Write honest answers on your site in a simple question-and-answer format. AI assistants are built to answer questions, and they lean on sources that answer them clearly.
4. Keep your business information identical everywhere. Your name, address, phone number and hours should match on your website, your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page and every directory that lists you. When one listing shows an old address and another shows a different phone number, anything trying to describe your business has to guess. Make it easy for it to be sure.
5. Treat your Google Business Profile like a second website. Fill in every field: categories, services, service area, hours, photos and a description written for a customer, not for a keyword tool. Post updates when something changes. Local answers often draw on the same information that maps and search results use.
6. Earn reviews that say something. “Great job!” is nice. “They moved our phone system over a weekend and we didn’t miss a call on Monday” is far more useful, both to a future customer and to anything summarizing what people say about you. Ask happy customers for a review, and if they ask what to write, suggest they mention what you did for them. Never write reviews yourself or pay for them.
7. Add structured information behind the scenes. Schema markup is a small block of code on your site that labels the facts: this is the business name, this is the phone number, these are the hours, this is the service area. Visitors never see it, but software reads it. Most website platforms support it, and whoever manages your site can usually add it without much trouble.
8. Show the real people behind the business. An About page with the owner’s name, how long you have served the area and who does the work makes your business easier to trust, for a customer and for any system deciding whether you are a real, established company. A short bio for each key person, with their actual role, goes a long way.
9. Make the site readable to software, not just to people. Text that only appears inside images, menus that only work with certain clicks and pages that load slowly all make your site harder to read. If your phone number lives only inside a picture of your logo, it may as well not be there.
None of this is a trick, and that is the point. The businesses I see show up well in AI answers are usually the ones with the clearest, most complete and most consistent information about themselves online. That has always been good for customers. Now it is also how you get named when someone asks a machine who to call.
If you only do one thing this month, read your homepage as if you were a stranger and ask yourself: could I tell, in ten seconds, what this business does and which towns it serves? If the answer is no, start there. My earlier piece on Google Business Profile basics is a good next step.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
Read more of Danielle’s writing, or see her profile at DirecTech Connect.
