GenAI optimization can get your brand featured on ChatGPT’s answers. Here’s how.
GEO or Generative Engine Optimization improves your brand visibility on AI engines. Here’s how to get your brand, products or services featured in ChatGPT’s answers.
Key takeaways:
As AI platforms like ChatGPT become central to user decisions, optimizing your brand for these tools is key for enhancing visibility and engagement.
Effective SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategies improve your brand's chances of being recommended by AI, similar to traditional search engine ranking.
High-quality, original content that addresses industry trends and includes structured data can boost your brand's relevance and authority.
Regularly track your website’s performance and adjust your strategies based on data insights to maintain and improve your online presence.
Content:
1. Why should marketeers rank on ChatGPT?
2. What really matters to ChatGPT?
3. Understanding the difference between SEO & GEO
4. How to get your brand on ChatGPT
5. Articulate, elevating brands visibility on AI engines
Which bank should I choose to apply for a mortgage? What is the best electric car? Which mixer is more suitable for someone just starting to bake? What is the most powerful laptop for college students? Which marketing podcast are worth listening to?
Much like Google Search dominated the early days of the internet, ChatGPT is quickly becoming an essential channel in the consumer journey. Recent polls show that 6 out of every 10 respondents already use ChatGPT or Google Gemini to find products or services, indicating a significant shift in search engine utilization. In addition to answering questions, it recommends products, services and brands, acting as a virtual agent that understands users' needs.
Ensuring that your brand is mentioned in these interactions is key to increasing your reach and winning new customers. However, unlike traditional SEO, positioning your brand within AI models requires different strategies, considering how these models are trained and process data.
In this article, we explore effective practices to increase the chances of your brand being recognized and referenced in AI interactions such as ChatGPT.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) involves strategies designed to make your content more easily understood and recommended by AI-driven tools like ChatGPT. Key examples include implementing structured data formats (like JSON-LD) to help AI engines better interpret your information, crafting optimized prompts that align with AI-generated responses, and creating authoritative content that addresses common user queries.
Additionally, using AI-focused keywords in metadata, generating dynamic content, and ensuring relevancy in user-focused content all improve your chances of being recommended by generative engines.
Why should marketeers rank on ChatGPT?
For many users, using ChatGPT to ask a question is even quicker and more convenient than searching on Google. Whether they seek financial advice or recommendations for projects, chatbots like ChatGPT offer personalized, step-by-step solutions drawn from extensive online knowledge.
For marketers, ensuring their brand appears in AI-generated responses presents significant benefits as:
Generating free impressions: AI mentions various brands and products in their responses, providing your brand with organic exposure.
Attracting qualified leads: Already 1 out of every 10 users are willing to purchase AI-recommended products without further research.
AI guides users through their purchasing journey, recommending your brand when they are ready to make a decision.
Retaining and building customer loyalty: AI educates users about the products they already own, fostering ongoing brand loyalty.
Customized answers: With personalized recommendations becoming a core feature of these tools, marketers who effectively position their brands in AI responses can achieve sustained, relevant exposure.
What really matters to ChatGPT?
Here’s how ChatGPT decides whether to recommend your brand.
Authority
Topic authority plays a crucial role in brand recommendations. The more frequently your brand is mentioned in credible, relevant content—such as blog posts, social media discussions, and industry forums—the more likely it is to be recognized as a trusted source. Consistent presence across authoritative platforms helps signal to AI tools like ChatGPT that your brand is a key player in its category, increasing the chances of being suggested in conversations related to your field.
Relevancy
Relevancy gauges how closely your brand aligns with its specific niche. Factors such as website traffic, social media engagement, and brand popularity all contribute to this metric. The more well-positioned your brand is within its industry, the more relevant it appears to both users and AI tools like ChatGPT. Brands that demonstrate strong engagement, visibility, and consistent messaging within their niche are more likely to be recommended by AI, as their relevance signals that they are trusted and credible within that space.
Reputation
Your brand’s reputation is built on the trust and confidence users have in it, and this plays a key role in AI recommendations. Factors like the number of positive reviews, high-quality testimonials, and overall customer satisfaction contribute to how reputable your brand appears. The better your reputation, the more likely AI tools like ChatGPT are to suggest your brand, as these indicators signal trustworthiness and reliability within your market, further enhancing your chances of being recognized as a top choice.
Structured data
Structured data refers to standardized formats that present essential information about your products and services in a way that AI tools like ChatGPT and search engines can easily interpret. Examples include product listings with details like price, availability, and customer reviews, service descriptions with pricing and service areas, event data like dates and venues, or recipe information such as ingredients and cooking times. By organizing your data clearly and consistently, you increase your chances of being recommended by AI and improving your visibility in search results.
SEO performance
Incorporating effective SEO strategies is key to improving your chances of being recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT. Optimizing content for search engines through targeted keywords, backlinks, and metadata enhances your brand's visibility and relevance in both traditional search and AI-driven platforms. By focusing on SEO, you ensure that your brand stays competitive in an evolving digital landscape, making it more likely to be recognized and recommended by AI for relevant queries.
Differences between SEO & GEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been the dominant strategy for improving website rankings on search engine results pages. However, with the rise of AI-driven search engines, a newer approach called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) has emerged. While both SEO and GEO aim to enhance content visibility, they provide to different systems and require distinct strategies to succeed.
SEO
SEO is a well-established technique designed to improve website visibility on traditional search engines like Google and Bing.
Key characteristics of SEO:
Keyword-driven: focuses on strategic keyword placement to match search queries.
On-page and off-page optimization: enhances both the content on the website (on-page) and external factors like backlinks (off-page).
Technical improvements: ensures that websites are easy for search engines to crawl and index.
User-focused: provides valuable, engaging content to keep users on the page longer, which improves rankings.
GEO
GEO is a newer approach tailored for AI search engines.
Key characteristics of GEO:
· Content for AI: optimizes content specifically for AI, not just traditional search engine algorithms.
· Authority and trust: prioritize adding citations, reliable sources, and statistics to boost content credibility.
· Influences AI-generated answers: GEO targets AI-driven systems to increase the likelihood of content being included in generated responses.
How to get your brand on ChatGPT
To improve your brand's visibility and chances of being mentioned by ChatGPT, consider the following steps:
1. Define the prompts relevant to your brand
The first step is to identify the types of queries (prompts) you want ChatGPT to respond to with mentions of your brand. This involves understanding how users formulate their questions. SEO tools and keyword research platforms like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush or our Articulate App can help you generate keyword ideas and measure search volume. For instance, if your brand operates in the financial sector, a relevant prompt might be: "What are the best investment banks of 2024?"
What to do:
· Use SEO tools to find relevant keywords and prompts that match your industry.
· Analyze search volumes and trends to understand which prompts users are most likely to ask.
· Align your brand’s content strategy to address the most searched questions.
· Focus on long-tail keywords and more specific prompts that have less competition.
2. Analyze the results and ask ChatGPT to cite sources
Once you have defined the prompts, it's time to understand how ChatGPT selects its responses. The simplest way to do this is by simply asking the AI to cite its sources. This will give you a clear idea of which websites the model recognizes as trustworthy and relevant.
What to do:
· Enter the identified prompts into ChatGPT to see how the model responds and what sources are mentioned.
· If it doesn’t provide the sources right away, ask ChatGPT directly to list the sources it relied on for the response.
· Create a list of the most frequently mentioned sources, especially editorial publications that may be open to a partnership.
4. Reach out to the sources mentioned by ChatGPT
Identifying the sources ChatGPT already cites can be a strategic way to get your brand mentioned in those same pages and publications. Reach out to those sources, offering collaborations or requesting mentions of your brand. This not only boosts your credibility but also expands your visibility in the datasets used by AI models.
What to do:
· Contact website owners, editors, or content creators of the sources quoted by ChatGPT.
· Offer collaborations, guest posts, or industry insights to gain mentions on their platforms.
· Build long-term relationships with these sources to ensure ongoing visibility.
4. Evaluate your brand’s top-performing pages
Next step is to identify the pages on your website that are already ranking well in search engines for the chosen prompts and keywords. These pages may already be partially optimized for ChatGPT, but it's essential to understand what works and which areas need improvement to attract more attention and recognition from AI.
What to do:
· Analyze these pages for content relevance, keyword application, and overall structure.
· Compare your pages to the sources mentioned by ChatGPT to identify gaps or opportunities for improvement.
5. Enhance and enrich the content on those pages
With the existing pages mapped out, focus on improving and enriching their content. Add more detailed information, update the data, and optimize for SEO with relevant keywords. The content should be clear, valuable, and formatted in a way that is easy for both search engines and the ChatGPT to interpret.
What to do:
· Update existing content with fresh data, relevant keywords, and in-depth information.
· Add FAQs and detailed explanations to provide comprehensive answers to likely prompts.
· Improve link building to relevant articles or product pages.
· Use concise headers, meta descriptions, and schema markups to make the page more accessible to search engines and AI.
6. Create blog articles and FAQs to address identified prompts
Creating new content is equally important. The more comprehensive and well-documented your content is, the better the chances of ChatGPT recognizing and using it in responses. Valuable, well-structured content increases your brand’s authority.
What to do:
· Write blog posts, articles, and FAQs tailored to the identified prompts and keyword research.
· Ensure each piece of content is detailed, factually accurate, and optimized for SEO.
· Incorporate multimedia such as infographics, videos, or downloadable resources to increase engagement.
· Focus on content that stays relevant over time.
7. Structure data on your products and services
It’s essential to organize information about your products and services in a clear and accessible way. This includes using schema markup and structured data, which help search engines—and consequently ChatGPT—better understand what your brand offers. Proper data structuring increases the chances of your brand appearing in responses related to specific product features.
What to do:
· Implement schema markup on your website to ensure clear and detailed product or service descriptions.
· Use structured data to highlight important information like product pricing, availability, and customer reviews.
· Audit and update your schema to ensure accuracy
8. Obtain customer testimonials and mentions
Customer testimonials are a powerful way to build credibility. This helps solidify your brand’s authority and increases the likelihood of it being mentioned in ChatGPT’s responses.
What to do:
· Collect and feature customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies on your website.
· Highlight positive customer experiences in your marketing and social media channels.
· Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on third-party sites, increasing external mentions.
9. Improve meta tags and descriptions on your pages
As with any SEO strategy, meta tags (titles, descriptions, etc.) play a crucial role in GEO. These influence both traditional search engine rankings and how your content is recognized by ChatGPT.
What to do:
· Review and update meta titles and descriptions to align with relevant keywords and prompts.
· Use compelling, keyword-rich copy that encourages higher click-through rates (CTR).
· Ensure each page’s meta tags are unique and specific to the content it covers.
10. Maintain an active social media presence
Do not neglect social media potential, as it also impacts your brand’s visibility and perception. Continuous engagement with your audience increases perceived authority, which can positively influence ChatGPT’s responses.
What to do:
· Post regularly on social media platforms where your target audience is most active.
· Engage with users by responding to comments, mentions, and direct messages.
· Share valuable content, such as industry news, blog posts, or infographics, to maintain relevance.
11. Measure results and adjust your strategy
As with any marketing strategy, it’s vital to measure the results of your efforts. Track the performance of your pages, content, and SEO campaigns, adjusting as necessary. Analyze how ChatGPT responds to your prompts over time and continue optimizing your strategies according to the results.
What to do:
· Use tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and chatbot data to track performance.
· Analyze key metrics such as organic traffic, engagement rates, and keyword rankings.
· Continuously refine your SEO and content strategies based on performance data.
Articulate, elevating brands visibility on AI engines
Navigating the complexities of AI recommendations, like those from ChatGPT, requires more than just a basic approach—it demands strategic finesse. At Articulate, we specialize in enhancing your brand’s visibility and authority through tailored digital strategies. Get in touch and find out how we can drive your brand’s success in the evolving landscape of AI recommendations.