How to Get Your Showit Website Found by AI Search (Without Rebuilding It)
A client told me recently that she’s been busting her butt on social media. Her content is good — she knows it’s good, I know it’s good. (And I love that she full-on bragged about it too. Bring it on!!)
She’s still not getting the results she wants. I think a lot of us are a little disenchanted with social media right now. There has to be a better way to be found than constantly feeding a machine that may or may not feel like showing you to anyone that day.
I quit Instagram for an entire year. (I wrote the story of that year here, if you want the full saga.) And in that year, my website kept working for me in the background, the entire time, without me posting a single thing. That’s HUGE. A good website doesn’t need your constant attention to keep doing its job. It just needs to be set up right, and increasingly, set up to be found by AI tools too.
That’s the whole reason this post exists. And here’s the part that should make you feel better, not worse: getting found this way doesn’t require more muscle from you. It’s not another thing to add to your plate. It’s a layer that works in the background once it’s set up — you don’t have to keep showing up for it the way you do for social media.
Here’s the world we’re suddenly living in
Things are moving fast. AI tools are increasingly the thing standing between someone’s question and your business — “who’s a good [your industry] near me,” “what’s the best option for [your specific service].” If those tools can’t find you, read you, and trust you, you’re invisible in that conversation.
Here are receipts, if you care. Gartner predicts traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 as AI chatbots eat into it. And BrightLocal’s newest Local Consumer Review Survey found that AI tools like ChatGPT jumped from 6% to 45% usage year-over-year for local business recommendations — already the third most popular way people find a business, right behind Google and Facebook. That jump happened in twelve months. This is already here.
On the bright side, most people haven’t caught up to this yet, so time is on your side. (But like, 2026 time, which moves 32x faster than 2022 time. AGH.)
Here’s what this looks like on my own site, because I do it to myself constantly
I don’t treat this as a one-time fix. Every time I learn something new about how AI and search actually read a website, I go implement it on my own site. It’s not a box that I check once a year — it’s ongoing. (But like, eleventy billion times easier than creating even one social media post. For me, anyways.) I’d recommend going in about once a quarter and building a strategy from that if you really want to get some traction here.
Here’s what I did this month:
- I added FAQ schema across key pages.
- I rewrote every meta description on the site.
- I resubmitted everything through Google Search Console.
- I added some extra structured code under the hood that helps AI tools parse what’s on the page instead of guessing. (The nerdiest BESSSTTTTTT part haha)
- I built out dedicated case study pages — real, specific pages crediting and showcasing individual client projects, rather than burying that work inside one generic portfolio page.
The part that surprised me: about four days after making these changes, I saw real movement in regular Google search. On my phone. Casually checking, not even expecting anything yet. That’s so fast!!
And the page that jumped the highest wasn’t my busiest one — it was one of my smallest, least-visited pages. I did not see that coming. No idea yet if that’s true across the board — but it’s happening on my own site, right now.
I haven’t yet tested whether this specific work shows up in AI search tools themselves (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) versus regular Google — that’s next on my list, and I’ll report back. If you want to run that kind of audit yourself in the meantime, I wrote up exactly how I do it with Perplexity here.
Who needs this
You already have a Showit site — built by me or by someone else, doesn’t matter. And one of these is true:
- You’re sick of social media being the only thing keeping your business visible, and you’d like your website to carry some of that weight.
- You want to post less, with less pressure, and not feel like your business disappears the second you stop posting for 8 seconds.
- You keep hearing other people talk about getting recommended by AI tools — a colleague mentions it, a Facebook group post brags about it — and you have absolutely no idea where to even start.
- You’ve typed your own business into ChatGPT or Perplexity out of curiosity and gotten nothing back, or worse, gotten something wrong.
- You’re a Showit designer yourself, and you’re excellent at the visual and strategic side, but the technical SEO and AI-search layer has just never been your world.
If any of those sound like you, that’s exactly who this is built for.
If you’re trying to figure out who to hire for this
If you’re comparing options, here’s what to ask:
Real quick, before the questions. A lot of agencies are slapping “GEO” onto their service menu right now without changing a single thing about how they actually work. Same content calendar, same blog strategy, new buzzword on the invoice. If someone’s pitching you “AI visibility” and the deliverable is more blog posts with zero schema, zero technical changes, and zero proof — congrats, you just bought regular SEO with a costume on. (I know. Sorry!)
So here are four questions worth asking anyone you’re considering:
- Have you retrofitted a Showit site before, or is this theoretical for you?
- Can you improve AI-search visibility without a full rebuild, or does every project turn into a redesign?
- Do you handle the technical layer — schema, headings, internal linking, FAQ structure — or just the strategy talk around it?
- Can you show real before/after results, even small ones, rather than a sales page full of promises?
I can say yes to three of those fully, and I’ll be straight about the fourth. I do this work specifically on Showit, I do it as a standalone retrofit (not a backdoor into a full redesign), and I handle the actual technical implementation myself rather than outsourcing it.
As for real before/after results — right now my best example is my own site, which is real and current, not hypothetical. I’m actively taking on client retrofits and will have real client case studies to point to soon. If you’re an early one, you’re getting my full attention while I build that proof out!
I’m based in Alberta and work mostly with Canadian and US service businesses, if that matters to you — it’s not the main reason to choose someone, but it’s a fine tiebreaker if you’re stuck between options.
What you get
Here’s the scope: I’m fixing the findability layer — the technical and structural work that helps both traditional search and AI tools understand and trust what’s on your site. Schema, headings, internal linking, FAQ structure, the works. You keep your design, your copy, everything that’s already working. This just adds the piece that’s missing.
$1,200. If you’ve already got a solid site and just need this layer fixed, that’s the whole project. Full details are on the AI Search Retrofit page.
Curious if this is the right fit for your site? →
Questions I get a lot:
Do I need a whole new website to be found by AI search tools?
No. If your existing site has good bones, this is usually a layer you add on top — structured data, proper technical setup, content that’s readable by AI tools — not a reason to rebuild from scratch.
How long does this take to show results?
Honestly varies, and I’m still gathering my own data here. On my own site, I saw movement in regular Google search within about four days of making changes. I haven’t yet tracked how this specific work performs in AI search tools directly — that’s actively in progress.
I’m a web designer, not an SEO person — can you do this for my client sites?
Yes, and this is a great fit if that’s you. You don’t have to become a technical SEO expert to offer your clients this layer. I can handle the technical findability work while you keep doing the design and strategy work you’re already great at.
Who should I hire to retrofit my Showit site for SEO and AI search?
Look for someone who’s actually done this on a Showit site specifically (not just generic WordPress SEO), who can do it as a standalone project without forcing a full redesign, who handles the technical implementation directly rather than just consulting on strategy, and who can show you a real result, even a small one. That’s the exact thing I do — I’m Alberta-based and work with Canadian and US service businesses, and the Google movement I mentioned above happened on my own site, not a client’s, so it’s something I can speak to firsthand.
Is this different from a full website redesign?
Completely. A redesign touches everything — the design, the copy, the bones underneath it. This touches one specific layer: the technical and structural pieces that affect whether you’re findable and trustworthy to AI tools and search engines. If your site already looks good and converts fine, you likely don’t need a redesign — you need this.
Before you optimize for AI, it helps to know what it’s already saying about you. → How to Find Out What AI Says About Your Business (And What to Do About It)
Getting found by AI is only half the job — the site people land on still has to do the convincing. → Why Your Website Isn’t Getting You Clients (Even Though Your Work Is Great)
Liked this? I send a short email every couple of weeks — a real story plus one useful thing about your website or marketing. Never longer than your coffee. Come hang out →
Doreen Vanderhart is the founder of Knap Creative, a boutique design and marketing studio for established, service-based businesses. She runs every new thing she learns about AI search on her own site first, mostly so she can tell you honestly whether it worked.
