Department of Health — Google Search & AI Search (AEO) Training

The Department of Health publishes health information for the public on its Website 4.0, but having information on the web does not guarantee that Google or AI will understand it. Article headings tend to be written in the department’s own language while people search in theirs, and where Google ranks pages, AI search tends to summarise an answer from several sources. The brief: a one-day course for website administrators, content officers, PR staff and back-office administrators that needs no prior SEO, AEO or AI background, and ends with at least one sample article made SEO + AEO + AI Ready and a checklist the team can keep using together.

We built the course around the participant’s day. The morning builds understanding and the afternoon applies it to the department’s own articles, so every principle taught before lunch is used again in the workshops after it, and it closes with participants checking the result on Google themselves.

1. 1. Morning: start from how people actually search

   The day opens with how Google and AI search differ, using real health searches in Google and in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, then moves to what the searcher is really after: information, an answer to a question, or a service. Participants practise turning official headings into the words people search.

2. 2. Morning: write articles that answer up front

   We cover page titles, main and sub headings, opening paragraphs, links to related articles and readable file names, then AEO: answer-first writing that runs from question to answer, detail, conditions, related information and source, with an updated date, data owner and sources. The morning closes with the trainer taking a sample article apart to show where Google or AI would struggle.

3. 3. Afternoon: three workshop rounds in the real back office

   Round one audits an article against the checklist; round two rewrites the title and headings, sets the main question, writes a short answer up front and adds a summary, FAQ, links and sources; round three completes it and compares before with after. All of it runs in the Website 4.0 back office or a test site, so no live content is changed by accident.

4. 4. A 13-part worksheet on a live news page

   The worksheet walks participants through a live Department of Health news page: search terms, title, headings, searcher intent, content, links, images and their descriptions, page address and the description shown on Google. Then they ask an AI at least three questions about the page, rank the three fixes that matter most, and rewrite the title, main heading, description and introduction.

5. 5. After publishing: check it on Google yourself

   Participants check pages on desktop and mobile, search on Google to see the title and snippet, and learn why results may not change right after publishing. They are shown Google’s tool for checking whether a page has been picked up by search, where access is granted, and its rich-results checker where the site supports it.

The course ran onsite from 09:30 to 16:00, and was built so the Department of Health’s teams leave with tools they can apply to their own units’ articles.

• A pre-publish checklist

  An SEO + AEO + AI Ready content checklist, so everyone reviews articles against the same standard before publishing.

• A before-and-after article

  An article reworked for title, headings, direct answer, FAQ, links and sources, kept as a model for real work.

• An AEO framework for every unit

  An AEO content framework and structuring guide each unit can apply to its own articles.

• Checking results on Google

  A way to check pages after publishing and to follow how Google discovers them.