If you want your business to show up in ChatGPT recommendations, you need to start with SEO!
Before we ever talk about AEO/AIO/GEO (whatever letters you want to use), it’s important to understand this: AI visibility and traditional SEO are super connected. You can’t have AI search without SEO.
The good news is that if you’ve already been investing in SEO (or at least thinking about it), you’re not starting from zero.
So let’s see how SEO and AI work together and what you can do to help ChatGPT recommend your business more often with some real prompts you can use!
The Overlap Between SEO and AI Search
Search engines and AI tools crawl websites in very similar ways. ChatGPT actually uses Bing’s search index for information about websites and to see how websites on ranking. So if you’re on the 10th page of Bing, you’re less likely to be recommended by ChatGPT than if you’re on the 1st page.
Both Google and ChatGPT are looking for clear, structured information about:
- what services you offer
- who you help
- where you’re located (if location matters)
- who you are and what you’re known for
One big difference? Time.
ChatGPT only crawls each page for a few seconds. 44.2% of all AI citations come from the first 30% of content on a page. That means the most important information on your website needs to be easy to find IMMEDIATELY.
So what does this mean for your website?
- Don’t hide important details in the footer (like your location, I see this all the time!)
- Clearly state your services, location, and expertise near the top of the page
- Make it obvious what each page is about
Google reads pages from top to bottom, and ChatGPT works similarly. If your most important information is buried halfway down the page (or only included with some vague language), there’s a good chance it won’t be picked up at all.
Website Copy Matters (Even for Visual Businesses)
I work with a lot of creatives like photographers and interior designers, and I completely understand wanting to let your work speak for itself.
But while photos might show people what you do, your website copy is what search engines and AI tools rely on to know what you do (and honestly, people need the information in your website copy, too).
Google and ChatGPT can’t fully understand images or the context of what’s in a photo. If it’s a photo of a couch, they might think it’s a advertising the couch instead of showing the work of an interior designer. So instead of photos, they rely on:
- website copy
- headings
- image alt text
- title tags and meta descriptions
AKA, all the text on your website.
So if you have more photos than text on your website, AI tools may struggle to understand what you actually do — and who you’re the right fit for. When that happens, ChatGPT is more likely to recommend a competitor whose website gives clearer context.
SEO Strategies That ChatGPT Relies On
Some traditional SEO strategies are now doing double duty when it comes to AI visibility:
Clear keywords
Use specific, intentional keywords in your website copy that reflect how your ideal clients actually search.Service-specific pages
If you offer multiple services, separate pages give ChatGPT more context and clarity about your business.Meta descriptions (very important!)
Meta descriptions act like a summary of each page. ChatGPT often reads these as the page summary because it doesn’t always have time to scan the entire page. So please fill them out for every. single. page.Image alt text
Alt text helps describe your images, which improves accessibility and helps AI understand what’s in your photos.Blog content
Blog posts provide deeper insight into your expertise and are more likely to be referenced when ChatGPT answers informational questions.
ChatGPT Prompts for Brand Visibility
Ok so now that you know how ChatGPT actually works, we’re going into the prompts! There are prompts that you can enter into ChatGPT (or another AI tool like Gemini) to see what ChatGPT understands about your business and what you can do to improve your recommendations and citations from AI.
Step 1: Find Out What ChatGPT Already Knows About You
Before changing anything on your website, you need to understand your starting point.
Ask ChatGPT:
- what it knows about you as a person
- whether it connects you to your business
- what it knows about your business specifically
If you have a common name, be specific. You can ask ChatGPT what it knows about you as the owner of [your business name]. You’re looking to see:
- whether your name and business are connected
- what expertise ChatGPT associates with you
- which sources it’s pulling information from
Ideally, your website should be one of those sources.
And if it’s pulling incorrect information, you can actually tell it that it’s wrong! Gemini was connecting my business Julia Renee Consulting with Julia Renee Styling (which is hilarious since I don’t know the first thing about fashion), and all I had to do was tell it that they are separate businesses run by different people.
Step 2: Check Who ChatGPT Recommends for Your Services
Next, ask the same questions your ideal clients would ask, such as:
“Who do you recommend for [your service]?”
“Who’s the best [service] for [your industry]?”
“Who offers [service + niche + budget]?”
If you’re not being recommended, look at who is. Read why ChatGPT chose them.
Step 3: Ask Why You’re Not Being Recommended for Your Service
Then ask why you weren’t included. This is where things get really insightful for your business.
See what ChatGPT says about your business compared to your competitors and what you need to do to improve your website and/or brand visibility off your website.
Step 4: Do Competitor Analysis
Do some direct comparison with your competitors (you could choose either the businesses ChatGPT recommended or direct competitors you know). Make sure you’re adding the context of comparing you in order for ChatGPT to recommend you more often. And ask for areas that you can improve on to get recommended above your competitors.
You can also do some competitor analysis on other tools. There are many SEO tools that are adding AI competitor information onto them like Semrush, but I will say that they don’t have the best data for very small businesses yet and they can get pretty expensive.
Step 5: Ask Really Specific Questions from ChatGPT’s Recommendations
If ChatGPT tells you to add FAQs to your website, guess what? You can ask ChatGPT what FAQs you should be adding!
Don’t just take their general strategies and try to figure things out yourself; you can get more specific strategy ideas when you just ask.
These are some things you can get some more clarification on:
- FAQs
- What FAQs to add
- Where to add FAQs on your site
- What FAQ formatting is best for ChatGPT to read
- Directories
- Which directories are best for your business
- If there are any directories that ChatGPT can’t access
- Brand features
- Which websites would be best for your business to be featured in
- If interviews or guest posting strengthens your brand authority
Step 6: Track Your Data
AI visibility tracking isn’t perfect yet, but you can still measure progress. The best way to track your data for free is with Google Analytics.
You can use Google Analytics to
- monitor traffic from ChatGPT
- watch how AI visitors engage with your site (do they stay on your site or leave quickly?)
- ask new leads how they found you and see if any are coming from AI
If you see that people are coming to your website from ChatGPT but leave quickly, that’s a sign your website copy may not match what ChatGPT is recommending you for.
Tools are always being added, so there will probably be some tools beyond Google Analytics that will show you some more AI data! SEO tools like Semrush have added AI tracking on, but I will say that it’s expensive and doesn’t have the most information for smaller websites right now. So there aren’t any beyond Google Analytics that I recommend right now.
Step 7: Give It Time
AI search is still super new, so things are always changing. And your ideal clients might not be using ChatGPT to find services at the moment, but this could change a lot over the next year or two. So definitely don’t neglect your AI search strategy, but know that it could take some time before traffic from ChatGPT grows.
Let’s Wrap It Up
Alright, so SEO and AI visibility aren’t separate strategies — they work together.
The clearer, more structured, and more helpful your website is, the easier it is for Google and ChatGPT to understand, rank, and recommend your business. You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight or create endless content. You just need to be intentional about how your business is presented and understood online.
That’s where real AI visibility starts.
If you need help with your AI search strategy, check out my AI services to see how I can help your business’s visibility on ChatGPT!
