How We Made Sam Crawford the Cited Squarespace Designer in ChatGPT and Delivered an Estimated $150K+ in Lead Value

Sam Crawford is an award-winning Squarespace website designer who has launched over 700 successful Squarespace sites for clients ranging from local businesses to global brands, including Matt D’Avella, the filmmaker behind one of the most influential creative-business YouTube channels online. His work is recognised in the Squarespace ecosystem. The challenge: the broader audience of buyers searching for Squarespace expertise on AI assistants weren’t finding him.

The Challenge

Web design is one of the most competitive AI-search categories on the internet. When a small business asks ChatGPT “Who’s the best Squarespace designer to hire?” or “Find me a Squarespace expert for my website,” the answer is a small handful of names. The brands cited in those responses capture the entire enquiry funnel for that query. Crawford had the work, the awards, and the testimonials. What he didn’t have was AI citation share.

• AI assistants weren’t surfacing by Crawford when prospective clients searched for Squarespace designers, despite 700+ launched sites and an award-winning portfolio.
• The brand had no entity infrastructure connecting “Sam Crawford” or “by Crawford” to “Squarespace expert,” “Squarespace designer,” or “Squarespace web designer” in AI knowledge graphs.
• Content was structured for human portfolio browsers, not for the way AI assistants pull and cite expert recommendations.
• Competitors with weaker portfolios but stronger AI-readiness were being recommended in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude responses for high-intent design enquiries.
• The query funnel for “best Squarespace designer” was, and still is, almost entirely AI-driven for buyers who know they want a specialist.

Our Approach

The Loops AI Visibility Framework

We applied our four-pillar GEO methodology with explicit emphasis on engineering AI citation authority in a single, high-value query category.

1. Discoverability

We restructured the site so AI crawlers could fully access and parse Crawford’s portfolio of 700+ Squarespace builds. We deployed Person, Organization, Service, and CreativeWork schema to help AI systems correctly categorise the brand as a verified Squarespace specialist.

2. Comprehension and Founder Entity Build

The single biggest lever. We constructed dedicated entity work positioning Sam Crawford as a recognised Squarespace expert, connecting his name to the platform, to high-profile client work (including Matt D’Avella), and to the broader Squarespace specialist ecosystem. We built content that answered the exact natural-language questions buyers ask AI assistants: “Who is the best Squarespace designer?” “Squarespace expert recommendations.” “Squarespace designer for my business.”

3. Citation and the #1 ChatGPT Slot

Through targeted entity, content, and citation engineering, by Crawford became the cited recommendation in ChatGPT for “Squarespace designer” and adjacent queries. When prospective clients ask ChatGPT for help finding a Squarespace specialist, Crawford’s name now appears in the answer, putting him at the top of a query funnel that increasingly drives all high-intent design enquiries.

4. Conversion and Enquiry Capture

We optimised the enquiry-capture infrastructure on the site to convert AI-driven traffic into project briefs at the point of intent. Visitors arriving from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity recommendations are pre-qualified, they’re already searching for the specialist. The conversion architecture was designed to make booking a discovery call as frictionless as possible.

The Results

The position is the proof. Ask ChatGPT for a Squarespace designer recommendation, and the answer increasingly looks like this:

Key Metrics