SERIES: Social Media Stars

By Becca Anderson

Websites—and the people who access them—have changed a great deal in recent years. Have you and your website kept up?

Who is reading?

For years, websites were built primarily for human visitors, with search engines an afterthought. Today, those search engines, AI assistants, voice searches and local recommendation engines all read and interpret websites before customers ever see them.

That means that instead of designing something customers look at, you are actually creating source material that machines use to decide whether your business even gets shown in a search. This shift in how your website is found by customers means you need to also change how you design your site.

Sites that are clearly structured, plainly written, and technically sound are far more likely to be found, summarized and recommended. Notice there was nothing in that description about how flashy or visually interesting the site is!

Bottom line: You need to think like a machine when designing your website. Machines are your first readers.

Clarity vs. Cleverness

Search engines and AI rank sites not by how many hits they get or how elegant they appear, but by the use of explicit statements, simple language and predictable structure. On the other hand, they penalize sites that feature vague marketing language, jargon without explanation, and clever headlines that hide meaning.

For example, this is notwhat the search engines and AI like:

“Premier garment solutions for discerning clients”

They are far more likely to boost a site that is open and communicative:

“Dry cleaning, laundry, alterations, and pickup & delivery in Oakville.”

Your goal in having a website is to clearly communicate what you do, where you are, and your expertise in doing it. That takes clear headlines, obvious services and straightforward wording—rather than trendy phrasing. It may be fun to have playful text in your website, but if you want it to rise to the top in rankings, remember you’re playing to the mechanical, not the human, crowd.

Where are you?

It is amazing how many companies put a great deal of money and time into building a website and never tell the readers where they are located. They may say, “5th and Grand,” but never tell you what city, or area, or even what part of the globe they are on. This is endlessly frustrating to human readers, and unacceptable to AI and search engines.

Dry cleaning is one of the most locally filtered services online. In other words, customers want a dry cleaner that is right in their immediate area, and don’t care about those outside what they consider their personal zone. AI and search engines know this, and they reward sites that never lose track of their location.

When someone asks Google for “a dry cleaner near me,” the algorithms heavily weigh physical location, service area clarity, consistent contact information, and local references in the text of websites. This is the AI way to give searchers what they want. And if you don’t have it, you’re going to be left out of the list.

A good website repeatedly and naturally answers these questions:

• Where are you?
• Who do you serve?
• How close are you to the searcher?

And it doesn’t just include it in the header or the footer on the site. It does it throughout the site, repeatedly.

This is why two cleaners with identical reputations can rank very differently online. It’s not because one is more “clicked” than the others; it’s because they know the new rules, and follow them.

Page by page

If you ask an AI or search engine to look at a website, it will tell you it can’t.AI does not experience a website the way a human does. It primarily reads cached and indexed versions of individual pages. And that means the more pages you have, the more likely you are to be seen by algorithms. They now evaluate individual service pages, not just homepages.

That means that if you have one single page called “Our Services,” you are shooting yourself in the foot. If you have separate pages for Dry Cleaning, Wedding Gown Care, Wash & Fold, Pickup & Delivery, Alterations, etc. the machines treat each page as an entry point into the site. Separate pages are eminently more searchable than one catch-all page.

Even if you think your “Our Services” page is perfectly clear, it is actually quite opaque in today’s AI- and search engine-driven internet.

Trust, not keywords

As AI matures, it increasingly evaluates trustworthiness in materials it reads, and doesn’t just look for keywords. AI will continue to evolve, so this is an important point. What it does today is not the limit of what it will be able to do tomorrow.

How does it evaluate trustworthiness? It looks for things like real photos from your place of business, not just “nice” stock photos you bought. It likes to see your staff on the website. Your years in business go far in this evaluation, as do clear policies regarding customer interactions. Being able to read customers reviews as text (not an image of a posted comment) builds your reputation, too.

This change in direction for AI and algorithms aligns perfectly with the fact that the dry cleaning and laundry industry is built on trust. People are handing you their personal garments, many of which are as soaked in emotional associations as they are in stains. People want someone credible to do the work.

Helpful Content is the new advertising

People have questions. That’s why they go to AI or other resources. And if your content actually answers those questions, your rating goes way up. This is a huge opportunity for cleaners!

Customers constantly ask, “Will this stain come out?” or “Is it safe to clean silk?” or “What happens if I don’t pick up on time?”

A solid website answers these real questions and more. It explains processes, sets expectations, and reduces uncertainty. In short, it answers the questions before someone at a counter has to tackle them. And it can be a real enticement to a potential customer to have those questions already answered before the first time they visit or call for pickup.

From an AI standpoint, a website loaded with similar information is very attractive. It builds authority, reduces friction at the store, and positions the cleaner as an expert.

How do you demonstrate all that? Add a blog to your site, or in-depth FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that someone visiting your site can browse through. The more you have, the more it demonstrates your competence and passion for what you do. Customers love that, and so do search engines/AI.

The 24-hour representative

Your store is probably open about 8 hours a day. To you, it feels like a long day, but it’s only one-third of the hours available. Many first impressions of your business take place outside of those hours, without human interaction. People pull up a search late at night to find a dry cleaner. They read through AI summaries of close-by cleaners and jump to websites. They’re on their phones and laptops constantly.

If your site doesn’t clearly explain your services, set customer expectations and establish your competence, then it gives your competitors’ sites the chance to do that, instead.

Some websites in other industries might have websites that are playful or even snarky. That won’t do for this industry. You need to convey a calm, confident voice throughout your site. Anticipate questions, and answer them. In short, make the business feel “open” even when it is not.

Looks can be deceiving

Sometimes you open a website and are blown away by how great it looks. But as you continue, you can’t figure out what to do next, how to navigate it, or (sometimes) even what the site is selling.

Website design should support understanding. It is not an end in itself. A great design isn’t flashy or beautiful, but rather one that improves readability with simple typefaces, supports navigation with clear buttons and links, and reinforces trust by being straight-forward. If the design is distracting, or so involved that it slows down loading times, or obscures meaning, then it is not serving you.

The best-performing sites in local services are often visually modest but structurally excellent. Companies have been sold expensive designs that do little to bring results—but wow, do they look good! The question is, what will serve you and your customers best?

Not just YOUR site

As if you didn’t have enough to do just keeping up with your own website, you have to commit to accuracy all across the internet. Search engines and AI cross-check information between websites, maps, reviews and even social profiles. Inconsistent information reduces confidence, and gets you a downgrade, even if you didn’t make the mistake. So, regularly review all the sources that mention your company (social media, sites like Linked In, etc.) and correct any errors. It actually matters.

Speak the language

AI systems perform best when they read conversational phrasing and full sentences. The easier you make it for these systems to read what you’ve posted, the higher you will rank. In a way, this is a wonderful improvement over sites that ranked high just because they got lots of “clicks”. Today, you’re ranked based on the quality of the information you provide and the ease with which a reader can access it.

How can you test the material you want to put on your site for AI clarity? Why not just ask AI itself? Put your text into a single document and upload it to ChatGPT or another AI. Ask it to comment on the text with the goal of making a website both readable and searchable by AI and algorithms. Encourage it to suggest improvements.

Then go forth and build a great, highly ranked website.

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EDITOR’S NOTE:

Next week we’ll talk about what makes a great social media post. And all month long we’ll be bringing you actual examples of websites and social media efforts that are highly rated by the AIs and search engines that determine how well they rank. Stay tuned!