6 Steps to Optimize Your Digital Content for AI
You are now up to speed on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and have reviewed our GEO best practices. Next, consult the following list of actionable steps to ensure that AI tools like Rocky, the AI chat and personal assistant from UC Davis, can provide the best answers about the university based on your web content.
Identify your sites
An inventory of the websites in your unit will help you frame your content strategy and prioritize content auditing.
- Make a list of all the websites your unit or department owns. UC Davis resources like Site Factory can help you identify them.
- Remove pages that are no longer relevant or are redundant.
Create an annual content audit plan
Integrating content reviews on an annual basis will keep your content fresh and help you avoid redundant or outdated information.
- Integrate your audit plan with your existing content management strategy.
- Develop a content lifecycle by content type (e.g., determine a lifecycle for news pieces and other time-sensitive content and a review cycle for articles and other types of content)
- Delete content that is incorrect and make updates wherever possible.
- If applicable, regularly review people pages to ensure your organization profile is current.
- Consider using SiteFarm’s content auditing feature to help with this process.
Organize and optimize your content for AI
- Use Siteimprove website checker. With automated scans, Siteimprove can check for accessibility, SEO, and content quality issues, such as broken links and spelling errors. SiteImprove is available around the clock for staff with valid UC Davis credentials at no additional costs to departments.
- Note: Do not rely solely on Siteimprove to identify issues, as it can incorrectly flag issues and miss things that a content manager would catch.
- Note: Do not rely solely on Siteimprove to identify issues, as it can incorrectly flag issues and miss things that a content manager would catch.
- Use Siteimprove website checker. With automated scans, Siteimprove can check for accessibility, SEO, and content quality issues, such as broken links and spelling errors. SiteImprove is available around the clock for staff with valid UC Davis credentials at no additional costs to departments.
Don’t neglect the backend
- If a website uses SiteFarm, work with your contact in the Client Group and the SiteFarm team to:
- Ensure proper use of HTML tags and keywords.
- Fix any crawling and indexing issues.
- If a website does not use SiteFarm, be sure it includes a sitemap XML file as search engines and AI tools like Rocky use these files to crawl content. Note that WordPress offers a sitemap plugin.
- If a website uses SiteFarm, work with your contact in the Client Group and the SiteFarm team to:
Engage with Rocky and other AI tools
- Search for your content with AI tools or ask AI to summarize your web pages or articles. This will help you determine how to better position your content for AI.
- Experiment with different AI-powered content creation tools (e.g., Rocky, ChatGPT, Google Gemini) to generate ideas on how to optimize your materials.
Connect with IET on Rocky & other UC Davis AI Tools
- IET is excited to partner with you on AI content optimization. Contact ietcomms@ucdavis.edu for general content management questions and to submit a resource that we could add to our curated list of resources.
- For optimizing content for Rocky, the UC Davis AI tool, our technical teams review content daily and publish sources publicly.
- Use the online form on the Sources page to submit a new source.
- Use the “Thumbs up/Thumbs down” feature to rate answers. A feedback form will be available soon when you use the “Thumbs down” option.
Last updated: January 20, 2025.