The big question on everyone's lips right now is how to show up in ChatGPT results and general AI search results. Business owners keep asking us why their business isn't showing up in ChatGPT, so we're answering that today.
It makes sense why this is on everyone's mind. 49% of Australians now report using generative AI in the past year, up from 38% in 2023, so more of your customers are searching this way than ever before.
First things first: if you're not showing up on Google, you really shouldn't be worrying about how to show up in ChatGPT yet. At The Digital Hub, we help businesses show up everywhere, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews and general Google search.
When we look at how to get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT, we're really talking about optimising for generative engine optimisation, or GEO. This means building out your brand footprint across the web and on AI and third party platforms. You want to be building this out across social media, AI tools, review platforms, membership platforms, and forums like Reddit. Basically, everywhere on the web.
This really comes down to keeping your brand consistent, and we've actually covered brand consistency in another blog on how you can dominate with your brand in AI search, so have a read of that one if you haven't already. It's got some brand specific tips in there too.
We should say upfront that there are hundreds of factors that go into showing up in places like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, plus hundreds of technical factors on top of that. But here are our tips.
There are some tactics around getting into discussion platforms and forums like Reddit and Quora, where you're naturally discussing topics, brands and products. People want to see real life experiences and real recommendations in these spaces, and that's exactly what AI tools are picking up on.
If you haven't updated your reviews in a while, now might be the time. Even just getting a couple of new reviews is important for maintaining a strong presence online. Look at review sites like Clutch or directory sites like Trustpilot, and make sure you're reviewed everywhere it makes sense. Don't forget Facebook reviews too if you've got a Facebook page.
Digital PR is a big one here. If you don't know what digital PR is, it's essentially earning votes of confidence back to your website by getting mentioned in the media or the digital space. Think of it like getting an expert to quote you and your brand, so you appear as an authority. If you're featured in an authoritative industry publication, a government source, or somewhere like Forbes, your brand gets a real boost from that vote of confidence. It's something we offer here at The Digital Hub.
Have you got clear content on your site, written in plain language, where people understand what your market is, where you're located, who your target audience is? Not marketing fluff, just clear, quick answers to what you do, what you offer, where you are, and how it's going to help them.
Another point here is answering questions directly in your content, in an FAQ style, answering the exact questions you think your customers will ask. AI tools tend to favour self contained answers to specific questions rather than long narrative paragraphs, so structuring your content this way can really help your visibility.
Are your pages structured in a way that can be read by AI bots? Are they structured in a way that works on mobile? Is the layout responsive, can PDFs be opened, are pages easy to read, have you got bullet points, headings and data tables? All of these things really make up a well formatted page. If you want a starting point, our guide to running a proper SEO site audit covers a lot of the same ground.
We've mentioned this already, but technical SEO has hundreds of factors that go into ranking a website. First and foremost, get your technical basics right so AI tools can actually scrape your site. ChatGPT relies heavily on Bing, where Seer Interactive found that 87% of ChatGPT citations exactly match Bing's top organic results, versus only 56% for Google organic results. That means your WordPress SEO foundations matter just as much for AI visibility as they do for Google, and your Bing rankings deserve just as much attention.
An LLMs.txt file is not needed.
Another part of technical SEO that's a known lever for ranking in AI tools is schema markup. Schema is essentially a piece of code that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what's on your page, whether that's reviews, your About Us page, or a product. It includes all the specific details about that page in a format that can be easily crawled and understood.
We've seen small brands, even with low traffic, boost their SEO and traffic, and boost their visibility in ChatGPT up to 10 times within just weeks. We've helped them do this ourselves.
So if you're looking to increase your visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude, and get your company showing up in AI search answers, our advice is this: make sure you're getting your brand mentioned in Google AI Overviews first, and ranking in general Google search results first. Get that right, and showing up everywhere else follows.
Want help with your AI SEO? Get in touch and we'll show you exactly where your brand is appearing (or not appearing) in AI search results right now.
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