The schema marks the spot: A guide to the technical side of AI brand visibility

Ask ChatGPT | Perplexity | Claude | Google AI Mode to summarise and analyse this (long-ish…) post.

TL;DR: AI search tools won’t name-drop your brand unless they can actually make sense of your content. And right now, that takes more than nice words. Structured data, schemas, metadata, FAQs, product descriptions, and author bios act like subtitles for AI, telling it who you are, what you do, and why you’re credible. Add clear on-page structure with bullet points, tables, and headings, and you’re basically handing AI the cheat sheet it needs. For UAE brands, this technical layer isn’t optional; it’s the difference between being quoted in answers or left out of the conversation.

Publishing content to help you get found in AI search without thinking about technical AEO is like hosting a dinner party in the dark. People might be able to stumble their way around and get their hands on a glass of wine and even some canapes, but they’ll struggle to dig into the roast chicken. 

If you want AI to get into the meat of what your content is saying so it can easily and accurately interpret it in its answers, you need to use schema markups and other structural elements to guide the way. It’s like metaphorically turning the light on. Or putting an X on the treasure map. AI can see clearly what it’s looking for.  

Just because it’s technical doesn’t mean that it’s overly complicated. Here’s our beginner’s guide to technical AEO. 

Where did AI visibility come from all of a sudden?

When your customers are asking a question, you want to be there with the answer, right? Whether they’re asking about general knowledge or product recommendations, you want to be the go-to, so when they make that all-important purchase decision, you’re top of mind. 

Since AI hit the consumer market a few years back, it’s become a place where more and more people go to ask questions. See if you’re popping up in answers by getting a Brand Visibility Score. 

It’s super convenient if they just want a quick answer, not to look through endless webpages. No offence, Google! I mean, they’re getting on the bandwagon by adding AI overviews to their search results. 

So, AI is the next generation of search. And that means it’s not doing things old school. 

The way AI sources information to include in its answers is different from traditional SEO efforts. The difference we’re talking about here is that the content needs to be much more easily interpretable. 

Think about it. Google needs to know the gist of an article to see whether it’s worth including in a list of web pages. AI is taking the information and turning it into its own answer. It needs to be able to summarise and rejig the information to make sense in the answer it’s creating for the specific question it was asked. That requires a stronger hold on the content. 

In comes structured data…

How to use structured data to support your AI visibility efforts

Structured data is like a map for AI to find what it’s looking for and understand what it’s reading so it can use it in its answers. Robots find this kind of labelling very useful, so if you include it on your website, AI is much more likely to mention or quote from your brand. 

Structured data can range from including a table in a blog comparing your product with a competitor's to backend metadata and schemas that provide context and tag important content.

Structured data helps AI in a few ways:

• Findability - It helps AI find certain information about your brand, like where you have listed product specifications, when answering a query about the ingredients.
  
  

• Contextual understanding - Robots don’t pick up context as well as we do. We could forgive it if it confused apple the fruit with Apple the company. Structured data provides context, preventing this kind of confusion. 
  
  

• Quotability - It can extract and use the data more easily than searching through pages of seemingly random words. That means its answers about your brand will be much richer as it's full of relevant and accurate information. 

The way you structure content on the page is a good place to start. Tables, bullet points, and subheaders all help. These templates show you how to write with AI in mind. 

Then look at the schema markups on the backend. You need to edit the HTML on your site. You can do this through WordPress plugins or Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper is pretty easy to use too. 

Where should you use schemas on your website?

Now, don’t get overexcited and add schema markup to everything and anything on your website. The point is to make it easier for AI tools to find data, not more confusing. There are a few key things that are worth giving this technical nod to. 

Author bios

We know that AI likes to validate its sources and make sure that it is quoting reliable information. Signposting author credentials when posting blogs is a big help in getting mentioned in AI answers. 

FAQ pages

A lot of the questions AI search is being asked will be (or should be!) answered on your FAQ page. It’s full of gems that AI can use to give clear, concise, and useful answers. 

Product descriptions

It’s one thing for a chatbot to recommend your product. It’s another thing for the person to actually buy it. They’ll probably have a few follow-up questions. Your product description is where AI will go to glean this information, from benefits and uses to size and ingredients. 

About page

AI users are going to ask questions about your brand, and so is AI itself when looking for brands to quote from and recommend. Let there be no doubt about who you are, what you do, and why you can be trusted by adding a markup to your about page. 

With AI search visibility, interpretability really is the name of the game. It’s the first hurdle we face when trying to get mentioned by AI, and it could be the last hurdle if AI just can’t get a handle on our content. When writing, give your articles a logical and skimmable structure with headings, bullet points, and tables where it makes sense. Then talk robot on the backend by adding metadata and schema markups. 

That is, if you don’t want to leave AI fumbling in the dark about your brand, what you do, and all the valuable information you have to share with your customers. 

At decipher. we make it easy for AI and humans to find and engage with your brand by writing copy that neither can ignore. Drop us a line at info@decipher.agency to find out more.