Do blogs still matter?

Now that everyone is going to AI for answers, is there any point having an active blog on your website?

The answer is yes.

When AI spits out an answer, it cites real world sources for credibility. It pulls information from relevant, local sources that have specific answers. That’s a big part of why people are using AI more – it gives them the specific information they asked for, rather than making them dig through pages that may have it.

It’s not about giving up on Google either, most search traffic still comes from Google. The good news is most of what helps you get cited by AI helps you in Google as well.

Having a blog now means having lots of information for AI to cite, if you set it up the right way. Your blog has two readers now, the people who land on it and the AI tools deciding who to quote.

So what makes a post worth quoting?

1. Local and Specific Beats Generic

Firstly it needs local, specific information. If you’re a plumber, a good blog topic would be “How Long Does a Hot Water System Last in Perth?” rather than another “Signs Your Hot Water System is Failing” article that looks the same as every other one out there.

Talk about what’s true in your area. The suburbs you work in, local conditions, local rules, what a job typically costs here. AI recognises this, so when someone local asks about their broken hot water system its more likely to cite you over a competitor publishing generic information.

2. Answer the Question Up Front

Put a short overview of the key points at the start of every article (like the box at the top of this one). Then write your headings as the questions people actually ask, and answer the question straight away before you go into detail.

This delivers the key points to AI so it doesn’t have to process the whole page and work out what’s important. You are giving it the answer the way it likes to give answers to its users. Essentially you are doing its job.

3. Put a Real Person Behind It

AI wants to know who is behind the article. Every post should have the author’s name and a short bio with their experience and any licences, plus links to their social profiles. Link it to an About page with real photos of the team too.

Google calls this E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust) and AI tools are looking for the same thing – is there a real, qualified person behind these words?

4. Use Your Own Photos

Anyone can generate an article now. Photos from your own jobs prove you actually do the work you’re writing about. They don’t need to be professional, a phone photo from site is fine. Just give each one a plain description in the alt text (e.g. “new hot water system installed in a Baldivis laundry”) so machines know what’s in it.

5. Add Schema

Schema (or structured data) is a bit of code that labels your page for search engines. It tells them this is an article, this is who wrote it, this is the business that published it and these are the questions it answers.

For a local business blog the ones worth having are Article, Person (for the author), LocalBusiness or Organization, and FAQPage if you have questions at the end. Your business schema can also list your social profiles in a field called sameAs, which ties your website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram together as the one business.

Google’s AI Overviews are built on Google’s index and ChatGPT’s search draws partly on Bing, and both use schema to understand pages. It won’t guarantee you get cited but it takes the guesswork out of who you are. Most SEO plugins add the basics for you, you can check yours with Google’s Rich Results Test.

6. Speed Matters More Than You’d Think

When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity a question, it often goes and fetches pages live while the person waits. If your page is slow it can get passed over for one that loads. Google measures speed as well (Core Web Vitals), aim to have the main content loading in under 2.5 seconds on a phone.

And a lot of the big AI crawlers only read the raw HTML – they don’t run JavaScript. So if your article only shows up after scripts load, they might see a blank page. Lean code with the words actually in the HTML is what gets read. It’s a big part of how we build our websites.

7. Check AI Crawlers Aren’t Blocked

Some hosts, security plugins and firewalls now block AI crawlers by default. If OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot or ClaudeBot are blocked in your robots.txt or firewall, those tools can’t read your posts no matter how good they are. Get whoever looks after your website to check. While they’re at it make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked either.

8. Share It Where AI Is Already Looking

Social shares don’t directly help your Google rankings. But they get the article in front of people, and that’s how you earn mentions and links from other websites. AI uses those mentions to work out who’s worth quoting.

AI answers also pull a lot from platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn. So share every article on your LinkedIn and Facebook pages, and turn the main point into a short post or video of its own. Every one of those is another place your business name shows up next to the topic. Link the profiles from your website too so AI knows they’re all the same business.

9. Link Out, and Link In

If you mention a rule, a standard or a figure, link to where it came from. Usually that’s the regulator or the relevant Australian Standard. It shows your advice can be checked and puts your article alongside sources AI already trusts.

Then link each post to the service page it relates to, and to your other posts on the same topic. When you have a group of posts covering every question around one service (costs, timing, options, what goes wrong) it tells Google and AI you know that subject well. That’s topical authority, and it’s what our Authority websites are built around.

10. Keep It Fresh

AI prefers recent information, it doesn’t want to give its users an outdated answer. Put a “last updated” date on your posts and go back to your best ones once or twice a year with new prices or photos. An older post that’s kept up to date can do more for you than a brand new one.

A Quick Checklist

Before you hit publish:

• Is it local and specific?
• Is there a summary at the top?
• Are the headings questions, with the answer straight under them?
• Author name and bio?
• Your own photos, with alt text?
• Schema set up?
• Does the page load fast on a phone?
• Is the text in the HTML (not loaded by scripts)?
• Are AI crawlers allowed in?
• Shared on LinkedIn and Facebook?
• Linked to the source, and to your service page?
• Last updated date showing?

Where to Start

You don’t need to do all of this at once. Pick the questions your customers ask you the most and write one local, specific post for each with your name on it. Then get whoever manages your website to go through the technical stuff.

Blogging is not a waste of time. It’s just changed. You’re probably sitting on a wealth of local knowledge and experience that AI would love to use if you get it onto your website.

We build this into the blog posts we write for our clients, and the websites they sit on. Happy to have a chat if you need a hand with yours.

FAQs

Is blogging still worth it for a small business?

Yes. AI tools and Google both need specific answers they can trust, and a blog is where a small business can publish them. What’s changed is how you write and set each post up.

How often should a small business blog?

Consistency matters more than volume. One specific, local post a month that answers a real customer question is worth more than four generic ones.

Can AI tools read my blog?

Usually, but not always. Check your robots.txt and firewall aren’t blocking AI crawlers and that your text is in the page’s HTML, not loaded in by JavaScript.

Do social media shares help SEO?

Not directly. Shares get your article seen which leads to mentions and links from other sites, and those are what help.