BrightLocal ran 200,085 local searches through ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, then published what it found on September 16, 2026. One line from the study has stuck with me. "93% of all unique domains used as sources were business sites, and they make up 42% of all citations."
Read that as an owner and it says your own site is one of the main places AI engines go to describe you. Yet most sites aren't built with that reader in mind. They grow one page at a time, whenever someone remembers the next one: a homepage, an about page, a services page, maybe a blog. Nobody stops to ask what a buyer, Google or an AI engine needs to find before they'll trust the company.
So this guide asks it for you, page by page, and says what each page has to do for buyers, Google and AI answers.
The pages at a glance
| Page | Must have? | Its main job |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Yes | Say what you do, for whom, and where to go next |
| About | Yes | Show who's behind the business and why to trust it |
| Product or service pages | Yes, one per main offer | Explain each offer in enough detail to choose |
| Pricing | Yes, for most businesses | Answer what it costs |
| Contact | Yes | Make it easy to reach you |
| FAQ | Recommended | Answer the questions buyers ask before buying |
| Case studies or testimonials | Recommended | Prove it works |
| Blog | Recommended | Answer buyer questions and bring in search traffic |
| Legal pages | Yes | Privacy, terms and, for stores, shipping and returns |
Before writing this, we checked two of the guides that rank for "content for website" on October 19, 2026, from Liquid Web and Elementor. Between them they list seven to nineteen page types. Neither gives pricing a page of its own, and neither says anything about how AI engines read a business site.
A two-minute test first
Pretend you've never heard of your company and give yourself two minutes on its site. Can you tell what it does and who it's for? Can you see where it's based? Can you work out what it costs and how to reach someone?
We call this the two-minute test, and whatever fails it is the first content to write. Those are also the exact facts AI answers try to repeat about a business.
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Homepage
A homepage gets a few seconds to say what you sell and who it's for. Put that in one plain sentence and make it the first thing people read. Under it, show your main products or services and link each one to its own page, so a visitor who knows what they want can go straight there.
Proof comes next, such as customer logos, a review rating or one key number. After that, give a clear next step, like booking a call, starting a trial or seeing pricing. If you serve people locally, add your location or service area too.
Our guide to website copywriting covers how to write each of these.
About page
This is where Google's raters begin when they judge whether a site can be trusted. The Search Quality Rater Guidelines, dated September 11, 2025, tell them to look at "the 'About us' page on the website or profile page of the content creator as a starting point" and to ask whether it shows a trustworthy source.
So give them something real to find. Lead with the company name and a one-line description of what it does. Then say when and where it started and where it's based now, and name the people who run it, with their roles and photos. Add who you serve and roughly how many, plus anything you can prove, such as awards, certifications or published work.
Don't fake any of it. Google's helpful content guidance says so bluntly. "Fabricating creator profiles (such as by using AI-generated headshots, made-up names, or false credentials to make content appear as if it was written by human experts) is a form of deception."
Our guide to author pages and E-E-A-T goes deeper on the people side.
Product or service pages
One page that lists six services gives Google and AI engines nothing specific to match a search to. Each main offer needs a page of its own.
| Part of the page | What goes there |
|---|---|
| First paragraph | What the offer is and who it's for |
| Scope | What's included, and what isn't |
| Process | How it works, in a few steps |
| Price | The price, or a link to pricing |
| Proof | Something specific to this offer |
| Questions | The ones buyers ask about it |
Keep the first paragraph tight. The rest can follow in whatever order suits the offer.
Pricing page
When a buyer asks a chatbot what you cost, a plain number on your pricing page is what it can quote. Without that page, there's nothing to quote.
It's also the page many sites skip, and buyers often look for it early. Give it its own page even when your prices vary. Show plans or price ranges in actual numbers and say what each plan includes. If the price shifts with something, say what. A starting price or a typical range is still better than nothing. Then cover how billing works (monthly, yearly or per project) and any trial, guarantee or cancellation terms.
The page saves you time as well. Tyler Olson made this point on X, in a post aimed at owners of direct-care physician practices. Pricing on your website works as a filter, so poor-fit customers move on and good-fit ones reach out.
Direct care physician-owners: Put your pricing on your website. It's a filter. Save bad-fit patients AND yourself time. They'll self-select and either move on or contact you.
Tyler Olson, EA@olsonplannerSep 11, 2026Your competitors are building backlinks while you read this.
Organic outreach, social mentions, and citations from Editorial Circle member sites, with managed backlinks available as an add-on. Grow your domain authority without running the campaign yourself.
Contact page
Google's rater guidelines call contact and customer service information "extremely important for websites that handle money, such as stores, banks, credit card companies, etc." Raters are told to "start with the homepage" and look for a "contact us" or "customer service" link.
Offer an email, a phone number and a contact form, plus your address if you have a physical location. Add your opening hours and how quickly you usually reply. Then link to the page from everywhere, most often in the header or footer.
Use exactly the same name, address and phone number here as on your listings elsewhere. Our guide to local citations explains why consistency matters for maps and AI answers.
FAQ page
Collect the ten to twenty questions your sales team or front desk hears most, and put them all on one page. Lead each answer with the answer itself, short and direct, and link to the relevant product or pricing page when there's more to say. Our guide to FAQ pages for AI answers covers how to structure them.
Case studies and testimonials
A claim turns into something a buyer believes when a real customer stands behind it. Get the customer's permission to name them, and describe their situation. Then say what they used and how, and what changed afterwards, with numbers where you have them.
Our case study framework shows how to structure them for readers and AI answers alike.
Blog
New search traffic often starts here. The pages above describe you, but a blog answers the questions buyers search before they're ready to buy. Write one article for each specific buyer question, put a named author with a short bio on every one, and link each article to the product or service page it relates to.
Legal pages
These are short, but don't skip them. You need a privacy policy that explains what data you collect, and terms of service or terms and conditions. Stores also need shipping, returns and refund policies, and an accessibility statement belongs here too if it applies to you.
How the pages work together
Each page has its own job, but they should point at each other. The homepage links to products, pricing and about. Each product page links on to pricing, case studies and contact, and blog posts link to the product pages they relate to.
Buyers get around faster that way. Search engines and AI engines also use those links to work out which page answers which question. For the technical side of making a site readable by AI, our guide to optimizing your website for AI search covers crawling and structure.
A one-week build order
Starting from scratch, or fixing gaps? This order gets the important facts live first.
| Day | Pages |
|---|---|
| 1 | Homepage and contact page |
| 2 | About page, with real names |
| 3 | Product or service pages |
| 4 | Pricing page |
| 5 | FAQ and legal pages |
| After that | Case studies as you collect them, and a steady blog |
Once day 5 is done, run the two-minute test again.
Doing it yourself or handing it off
You should write the core pages yourself. You know the business, the prices and the people better than anyone.
The blog is the part that keeps asking for time. RankControl writes those articles for you, answering the questions your buyers search, against the pages already ranking for each one. We publish them to your site, and our AI visibility tracking checks up to 50 buyer questions every week across seven AI engines. Expect traffic from Google first, with AI citations following more slowly as links and mentions build up.
You're getting AI traffic. But do you know where it comes from?
RankControl credits every visit to the assistant that sent it: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or Grok. Full source attribution, next to your Google traffic.
