Key Points:
- Provide unique information about your area and your business
- Focus on human readability, not how it reads to AI
- Use high-quality photos and videos (and lots of them)
- Be the best option for your customers, and the bots will figure it out
After a year of gurus, influencers, and SEO “hackers” giving advice on LinkedIn, Google has finally given its own advice on optimizing your website for AI.
Now, we can’t take Google at face value. Google has a bad habit of giving advice that it wants people to follow, rather than a 100% straightforward explanation of what works. For example, Google recommends against putting keywords in your business name – but doing so will help you show up for those keywords.
Building the Future: Self Storage Operator's Guide to AI
Google is still the most authoritative source we’re going to get for the topic, and anyone who cares about website performance should pay attention.
In this blog, we’ll go over what Google said about SEO and AI, what it means for your self storage website, and we’ll even address some common AEO/GEO myths that Google has debunked.
Pug Pro Tip: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) both refer to “getting your website to rank in AI searches.”
GEO is SEO
The internet is full of tips, tricks, and hacks that will guarantee you a spot in the AI results for your query of choice. It should be no surprise that most (if not all) of these claims usually come from bad actors who make money from fear or overconfidence.
Your business is the destination. SEO/GEO/AEO is just the road people take to get there. No amount of fancy roadwork is going to make your business thrive if people don’t like where they end up.
The goal of GEO and SEO are the same. Make that road easy to travel. Make your website a good option for people whom you can help, and make sure that AI and Google can get them there.
GEO isn’t some new special thing with new rules and new tricks. It’s just SEO for a new kind of search engine. If your SEO wasn’t cutting it before, adding GEO tactics isn’t going to help. If you were killing it with SEO before, your GEO is probably in a good spot!
Google released this guide to help combat the misinformation that was spinning around in SEO circles. Next, we’ll dive into their advice and show you how to apply it to your site.
Check out our Virtual Workshop on AI here!
How to Show Up in AI Search
Provide unique information
If your website provides only generic, boilerplate information about self storage, you’re not likely to get cited in an AI answer. The obvious information is available on the massive REIT websites, and their site strength is likely to get them in the answer before you.
Instead, provide information unique to your area and your facility. Answer questions that your actual tenants have had. Talk about why someone might want to store their boat with you, rather than anyone else.
Don’t get caught up targeting a specific query! Maybe the searcher doesn’t mention that they like to go out on a specific lake early in the morning, but they mentioned it in a different chat with that AI six months ago. The AI will remember, and could incorporate that information in the new answer. If your website talks about your 24/7 access and proximity to This Lake… you might be the only one who does!
Building the Future: Self Storage Operator's Guide to AI
Focus on Human Readability
There’s been a lot of talk about chunking – writing your content in distinct chunks that AI models can pull out individually and understand. Chunking is important, but it always has been! Humans don’t digest long, dense paragraphs well either.
Write clearly. Use small, digestible sentences. But don’t be afraid to write like you would speak! Your voice can come through the writing and provide a bit of that unique value that AI wants to find.
Tips on writing for AI (and people):
- Use bulleted lists (hi)
- Keep to an easy reading level. We want clarity, not a Pulitzer
- Restate the object of your sentence, instead of using unclear pronouns
- Start a new paragraph for each new thought
Use High-Quality Photos and Videos
This is another SEO best practice that also helps LLMs. AI can and will scrape your photos and videos to serve to searchers when they’re relevant. AI can also interpret and understand what your photos and videos are showing now (which is a relatively new development).
So, high-quality photos and videos are good for people and good for Google. Uploading them to your Google Business Profile also helps your local SEO! You don’t need to be a professional photographer or have a top-tier camera, either. A modern smartphone can take clear, convincing photos and videos.
Pug Pro Tip: Upload one new photo a week to get a freshness bump to your local SEO!
Give Users What They Want
“And avoid overdoing it.” There’s always some exploit, some runaround, some way to trick the system. Sometimes these exploits actually work! But never for long. Google updates its algorithm constantly. Whatever hack is working right now is going to get shut down in a month, and your site might go with it.
Take content spam, for example. People used AI to create massive amounts of content for every keyword imaginable. Some of them saw their website traffic skyrocket – for a little while.
Google updated its search algorithm and penalized websites using content spam tactics, and those websites practically disappeared. Self storage operators don’t need a flash of traffic. You need a steady stream of renters, and Google can be a great place to find them.
Your goal is to be the best answer for your customers. Answer their actual questions. Reassure them about their worries. Tell them clearly why they should choose your business over the other options. Don’t try to game the algorithm, because it won’t work for long.
Creating Content with AI
A little ironic, isn’t it? Google warns operators not to use too much AI on their website because AI has a hard time producing that unique value we talked about before. You can find Google’s guidelines on AI content here.
Our advice is to use AI to help conceptualize what you need, to proofread, and to bounce ideas against, but don’t let it create your content alone. Add your own unique value, even if you’re not a natural writer. Let AI help you shape it up later if you feel the need. Unique, flawed, personal content will do better than “perfect” AI copy.
Summary: How to show up in AI search
- Add value - don’t just say the same things every other website in your niche says.
- Communicate clearly - good for humans and for robots! But there’s not a special robot language you need to use.
- Use good photos and videos - Especially for a storage facility! There’s a big difference between a clean, well-maintained facility and a run-down one. Photos and videos are the best way to show this.
- Be the best answer - If you can offer advice, experience, or a product that no one else has, you will show up more.
- Use AI carefully - AI-written content is can work, but it needs to do the 4 prior bullet points first.
Google, Gemini, all the other LLMs and search engines – they all want to make their users happy. That’s how the company makes money (and that's why ChatGPT thinks I’m definitely going to start for the US in this summer’s world cup).
No amount of gaming the system will help your business if you aren’t making searchers happy. If they can’t find what they need on your site, they won’t rent. Google will see they didn’t rent, and will stop ranking you so high anyways.
SEO is about helping Google find YOUR renters. Instead of chasing Google’s changing algorithms, focus your energies on making your website the best answer. The AI will catch up.
AI Optimization Mythbusting
Google put out this guide because there’s a lot of bad info going around the internet about how to optimize your website for AI search. Usually, it’s people trying to sell you their widget, or people chasing social media points. Sometimes it’s an exploit that actually works, or a fancy way to frame an existing best practice. We’ll go through them here so you don’t have to waste time chasing ideas that don’t work!
- LLMs.txt and special schema - Google says these don’t matter. No major LLM acknowledges an LLMs.txt function. The robots will browse the page, but they count it as any other page that users don’t visit. So they read your instructions and completely ignore them! Same thing with special schema. AI was trained on web pages that didn’t have special AI schema – they don’t need you to do it now.
- Chunking - Google’s advice here is just not to worry too much about it. If you structure your page in a way that works well for humans, AI can understand it just fine. That normally looks like small paragraphs, bulleted lists, and a clear header structure.
- The one thing to be careful of is unclear antecedents! Don’t start a new paragraph with “It,” referring to something you mentioned in the last section. If AI pulls a small section of your content, it needs to be able to understand what you’re talking about.
- Chasing keywords - Once upon a time, you needed to have a searcher’s exact query on your site to rank for it. That is no longer the case. These AI algorithms know that “men’s shoes” are the same as “shoes for men” and you don’t need to say them both to rank for the search. Keyword diversity can still help, but not if it hurts your other metrics.
- Gaming your mentions - Getting mentioned in other places helps your SEO and AI search performance, but if you chase inauthentic mentions, you might get penalized. Spam sites and fake directories are more likely to hurt you than to help. AI engines have a good understanding of what a real mention of your business looks like, and they won’t listen to fake/paid mentions (usually).
Summary: Focus on the Destination
Almost every piece of advice Google gives in this guide boils down to this: Create a good website for your customers.
AI and Google’s algorithm both have particular preferences, but there’s not a second secret language you need to learn to communicate with them.
GEO is SEO and SEO is the business of improving the pathway that users follow to your door. The road needs to be in good shape – Google and AI need to be able to find and understand your website. But there’s a limit to how much good the road can do you!
You need to be a great destination.
Search is changing, and AI search will continue to grow. Google’s advice, though, is simple: provide unique value for your customers first. Make sure your SEO is clean and your website works. Turn your clicks into rentals. AI and Google will follow those signals.
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At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
