Getting your brand mentioned in AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews means adapting your SEO strategy to account for GEO best practices.
It requires optimising your content structure for answer engines, building positive trust signals and aligning your brand’s sentiment across various third-party platforms.
TL;DR
- Traditional SEO best practices still matter, but GEO helps improve your chances of being mentioned and cited in AI-generated answers.
- Building brand authority through real-world expertise and consistent brand messaging also helps improve AI visibility.
- Your website must be optimised for AI search. This includes following technical SEO best practices, writing content in a clear, structured format and showcasing your brand’s experience.
- Use third-party platforms such as Reddit and organic social media to maintain positive brand sentiment, build trust and strengthen your online reputation.
- Monitor brand mentions, citations, competitor visibility and relevant AI prompts to identify content gaps and refine your GEO strategy.
A growing number of customers rely on AI tools to research and compare products, services and experiences rather than traditional Google searches. Before, users had to click through multiple blue links to find the information they needed. Now, users simply enter a single prompt, and AI handles the research for them.
For business owners, appearing in AI-generated answers is becoming increasingly important. If your brand isn’t being mentioned, you’re missing out on valuable visibility during the customer purchase journey, which can cost you leads, customers and sales to competitors who are.
So, why does ChatGPT never mention your company? There are several possible reasons why this may be happening, from limited online visibility to a lack of helpful, authoritative content from your brand. This can all be fixed with an SEO and GEO strategy that addresses these issues.
How to improve your visibility in generative AI search
Our GEO strategy focuses on five key steps that help brands gain visibility and increase their likelihood of being mentioned in AI-generated answers:
1. Optimise content structures
Large language models (LLMs) scan and understand text differently than humans, favouring clearer, shorter and more direct answers.
Our top tips for optimising content for AI models include:
- Break content down into clear sections. Use headings, short paragraphs, bullet points, lists and summary tables to keep text easily scannable.
- Phrase headings as clear questions. H1 and H2s should be phrased as they would be spoken. H3s should be used under H2s where relevant to further break down content, especially for ‘How to’ style queries.
- Answer the question directly. Start the paragraph with a direct answer to the question in the title, then provide supporting details and context.
- Add FAQs to the end of the content. Whether it’s a service page, collection page or a blog, add a list of 3-5 FAQs at the end with additional supporting queries the user may have.
Read more tips in our complete guide to writing content for AI search.
2. Showcase authority and entity signals
AI models verify your brand across different types of content and avoid recommending brands they can’t find reliable information about. Brands can build authority and verifiable entity signals by:
- Showcasing experience. Ensure your website highlights your brand history, founders and team members through About Us pages and author profiles.
- Providing evidence. If you make a claim, back it up with evidence. Build out case studies with measurable outcomes, provide original data and research that trusted publications can reference and avoid claims like “award-winning” without evidence to support them.
- Writing with real-world expertise. Aim to write helpful content for the end user that demonstrates Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and provides original insights. This is something that AI-generated content can’t create, so don’t rely heavily on it in your content strategy. Otherwise, you may continue to wonder why your brand isn’t being mentioned in AI answers.
- Maintaining consistent brand positioning. Ensure your brand messaging, positioning and service offerings are consistent across your website, social media
profiles and business directories.
3. Build presence on third-party platforms
AI models read content beyond your website and cross-reference what other websites and platforms say about your brand. It’s important to maintain a positive presence across:
- Trustpilot and Google reviews. Customer reviews can influence whether AI models mention your brand. It’s important to collect reviews from customers who have had positive experiences.
- Google Business Profile. Your Google Business Profile has more impact on your SEO strategy than you might think. AI models and Google Maps use it as a key structured source for local data, such as business hours, services and location. Make sure your profile is kept up to date and provides as much information as possible.
- Reddit and Quora. AI models favour content published on community forums, like Reddit and Quora, because it offers genuine, helpful, first-person insights. Get your business and team involved in community forums and monitor relevant threads to share advice and insights without being promotional.
- Digital PR. Just as with traditional SEO, trustworthy, credible backlinks matter. Use digital PR to get featured in news articles and relevant industry publications that AI models frequently crawl and cite.
4. Implement technical SEO best practices
The same technical SEO practices that help search engines easily discover and crawl your content also apply to GEO. If your technical SEO is already sound, you’re in a good position to get noticed by AI models. Ensure your website is optimised with:
- An LLMs.txt file. This is designed to help LLMs understand a website’s context by providing a clear, concise overview of key site data.
- Schema markup. Schema helps search engines understand content types, and it can also help AI models interpret and extract information faster. Priority schema types for GEO include:
- FAQPage – clearly labelled questions and answers help LLMs match content to user queries.
- HowTo – ideal for step-by-step guides and tutorials.
- Article/NewsArticle – best for thought-leadership and blog content.
- Product/Offer/Review – essential for e-commerce stores, helping AI summarise features, prices and ratings.
- Person – identifies the author and provides authority signals.
- An XML sitemap. An optimised sitemap helps AI models discover your content and assess how recently it has been updated.
- AI crawler access: Check that your robots.txt file and any firewall or CDN settings aren’t blocking AI crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot (used by ChatGPT) and PerplexityBot. Many AI crawlers can’t render Javascript, so ensure your key content is visible in the page’s HTML.
5. Track visibility and content gaps
Just like with keyword rankings, AI visibility needs to be measured to understand where and how your brand is being mentioned. This helps optimise GEO strategies and adapt content where needed. You can measure and research:
- AI visibility score. Understand how visible your brand is across LLMs and compare your visibility with competitors.
- Citations and mentions. Track how often your brand is mentioned in AI-generated answers and which queries trigger those mentions.
- Brand perception. Understand how AI perceives your brand compared to competitors, revealing potential content gaps.
- Prompt research. Discover which AI prompts users enter into LLMs, similar to researching keywords for organic search. Use these insights to inform your content strategy and on-page structure.
How does this differ from traditional search?
Technically, it doesn’t. In modern search, SEO and GEO should go hand in hand. All the traditional SEO principles and best practices we’ve spent years learning and mastering still apply. We’re still optimising for traditional search; there’s just more to think about now, including new platforms, techniques and strategies.
One key difference, however, is that there’s no number one ranking in AI search. Unlike Google, where you can work towards ranking number one, you can’t control where your brand appears in an AI-generated answer. It’s become less about clicks and more about mentions and citations that increase your brand’s awareness and visibility.
But don’t take shortcuts or try to spam your way to visibility. Just as Google became aware of keyword stuffing and cracked down on brands that did it, it’s also cracking down on spam content. Don’t publish an AI-generated article every day (no one likes AI slop!), manipulate listicle articles to put your brand at the top or blatantly promote your brand on Reddit. AI models want credible sources and trust, not manipulated content.
Another thing to consider is that AI answers change all the time and aren’t as consistent as page rankings. If you ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode the same prompt, you’ll likely get three different answers. Even if ChatGPT mentions your brand, it might not do it again if you ask the same question an hour later.
This happens because AI-generated answers can vary depending on the wording of a prompt, the context of the conversation and the sources the model draws on. Rather than focusing on being mentioned for a single topic, the goal is to build consistent brand visibility across a range of queries and AI platforms. This is why it’s important to track visibility over time and continuously optimise content.
Want to get your brand seen?
If you want to see your brand mentioned more often in ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers, we can help. From SEO and GEO strategies to ongoing optimisation and expert blog writing, we help brands get discovered in generative AI search.
FAQs
It’s likely that other brands are following a GEO strategy, producing content optimised for AI models and building stronger authority signals. They may also be working with a digital marketing agency for SEO and copywriting services.
AI mentions: An AI model directly names your brand or product in the text of its response, with or without a link.
AI citations: An AI model links to a specific page from your website as a source of information in its response, sometimes without mentioning your brand.
Yes, ChatGPT has launched paid ads, allowing brands to pay for sponsored placements. However, paid ads appear beneath an answer in a separate sponsored section, rather than within ChatGPT’s organic text response.
Paid ads don’t influence or change ChatGPT’s organic answers.
Yes, organic social media can contribute to your brand authority, perception and digital presence, potentially improving your AI visibility. However, it’s not simply about having a strong organic social media presence; what matters is whether your content is original, helpful and engaging.
Google’s AI Overviews often cite organic video content in its answers, especially YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and TikToks, when the content is helpful and supported by descriptive captions and metadata.
