How to Attract Clients with LLMs and AI Search
While search engine optimization (SEO) has proven to be a reliable strategy for creative professionals to attract clients, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) search has vastly transformed how people research and book services online. If you rely on traditional search engine traffic to gain new business, this directly affects how clients discover your services.
ChatGPT is at the forefront, boasting more than 4.6 billion visits per month and handling an astonishing 2.5 billion daily searches. Potential clients are increasingly looking to AI-generated search results for information. This means fewer direct visits to your website—unless you’ve positioned it to get recommended by these LLMs (large language models) or AI search engines.
With ChatGPT hitting 800 million weekly active users alone, it's become increasingly important to leverage AI search for increased brand visibility and client acquisition. In this article, I will provide five actionable strategies to help you harness the power of AI search to attract web design clients.
Going beyond traditional SEO
While traditional SEO remains vital to your online visibility, excelling in AI search has become more prevalent than ever and requires specific strategies to be successful. ChatGPT and comparable AI platforms function similarly to Google, but they go a step further by digesting web content to provide comprehensive, palatable overviews. This means potential clients can learn about you and your offerings without ever visiting your website. To harness this, you need to ensure that any information about your business that could be sourced by AI is accurate, helpful, and compelling.
Browsing behavior is also experiencing a shift as intelligent AI-powered web browsers, like the ChatGPT Atlas, become more popular. Developed to enhance how visitors interact with AI-driven searches, ChatGPT Atlas does not just find information; it can complete searches and take actions on your behalf. It’s a tool that recommends your business to clients and assists them through the inquiry and purchase process. This is a groundbreaking change in client interaction that you need to be well-prepared to leverage.
A 5-point checklist to attract clients through LLM and AI search
The following are my recommendations for web designers looking to optimize their sites for LLMs and AI search:
1. Stick to best SEO practices
With the latest conversations around SEO trends surrounding AI search, it’s easy to get fixated on optimizing for AI algorithms. However, it's crucial not to overlook the fundamentals of traditional SEO, as they're the backbone of online visibility.
LLMs and AI-powered search engines pull information from existing databases that are heavily reliant on traditional search engines. Studies have shown that 52% of all sources cited in AI-generated search results originate from sites ranked on the first page of Google. This means you still need to engage in practices that increase your website ranking in traditional search results.
Here are some ways to improve traditional SEO:
Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks. A key way to encourage other websites to link to your site is by publishing well-researched and factual information.
Conduct keyword research. Tools like SEOSpace will give you a better idea of the most relevant phrases your clients use when searching for your services. Then, you can find natural ways to use these keywords and phrases across your website, signaling to search engines you have relevant content for these types of client inquiries.
Ensure your web pages and content have a clear hierarchy of headers and body content. Use the right HTML tags for each element on the page. Provide additional information, such as SEO titles and descriptions in page header tags, as well as alt attributes for buttons and images. These help search engines understand your page better, thus referring more searchers to your site.
Learn more about optimizing your site for traditional search.
2. Optimize for AI searches
Compared to traditional SEO, AIO places a higher emphasis on your business’s online reputation. Therefore, you have to improve your business’s online presence in general to meet this expectation. Each industry and offering is unique, so you need to understand what exactly AI looks for when recommending your specific products or services.
Start by conducting your own AI search. Ask your preferred AI interface to give you an idea of what it looks for when recommending a product or service in your niche. It will share a detailed breakdown of how it understands offerings like yours. With this information, you can update how you position your services to earn more recommendations in AI search results.
For example, when I asked ChatGPT to give me a breakdown of what it looked for in an SEO agency to consider it worthy of recommendation, it gave me the following checkpoints:
Expertise and experience through proven track records
Transparency through regular reporting with a clear and proven SEO strategy
Good company ethics and reputation through client reviews
Good communication and collaboration skills
Valuable pricing models, in comparison to similar agencies
SEO tools and tech stack
Results timeline and guarantees based on past customer experience
3. Regularly audit your visibility
You need to know how AI currently sees your brand, then compare it with how you want your brand to be perceived by potential clients. To check your digital visibility in AI searches, use AI search engines to search for your specific offerings to see if you get recommended.
If you aren’t among the recommended websites, you have more work to do to get your offering seen by AI. Start with the first two steps and prioritize traditional SEO and AIO.
If you are recommended, check the associated information. Verify that it conveys the right brand tone for your business. If it contains the wrong tone, this could affect your overall business strategy. Update the specific page to reflect what you want. And if the information is coming from a site that you don’t have direct access to edit, contact the publisher or site owner.
Take note of your competitors (i.e., those who get recommended for the queries you wish you were getting recommended for). Use this as an opportunity to see what they're doing right. You can analyze their website for clues with the competitor analysis feature on SEOSpace.
Pro tip: Stay tuned for an AIO feature that’s coming to Squarespace. Watch the Product team preview the tool at Circle Day 2025.
4. Be strategic about brand mentions
LLMs like ChatGPT interpret brand mentions (i.e., every time your name or business appears online) as signals of credibility and trust. In other words, if your brand keeps showing up in conversations, directories, or expert roundups, AI will view it as more authoritative.
To make this work in your favor:
Get featured in industry roundups. Look for articles like “Best Squarespace Designers,” “Top Web Developers,” or “SEO Experts to Follow,” and contact publishers to include you or your agency.
Guest post on niche blogs or newsletters. Share your expertise where target clients are already paying attention.
Engage in community discussions. Participate in Reddit threads, Facebook groups, the Squarespace Forum, and other places where people talk about web design.
Every time your name appears across different platforms, it strengthens your brand’s credibility and, by extension, your visibility in AI search results.
5. Work toward improving your brand sentiment
AI search engines rely on external sentiment indicators to assess the trustworthiness and authority of a brand. User-generated content (UGC), such as reviews and testimonials, play a crucial role in this evaluation. Platforms like Google Reviews, Yelp, and niche-specific sites are goldmines for positive sentiment.
Build AI search engines’ knowledge of your brand with the following steps:
Encourage satisfied clients to share their experiences working with you. Display these testimonials on your site using plain text—AI crawlers often can’t index JavaScript.
Actively engage with relevant audiences on social media and forums to get the word out about your business.
Consider partnering with affiliate marketers. Target companies with affiliates that create content around relevant brands and topics.
Attracting clients via LLMs and AI Search
There’s a lot you can do to stand out in LLMs and AI search. The good news is that if you’ve already invested time in your site’s SEO, you’re already on the right track. Start with one or two of these strategies, get comfortable, and build from there as your client workload allows. With steady refinement, your digital presence will become even more discoverable to the clients looking for you.
Learn more about ranking on AI search engines in my Circle Day 2025 session:
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers and web design agencies. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings experts together from across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
