A potential customer types into ChatGPT: “which photo booth can I hire for a wedding in the Leiden area?” and gets three names back. Are you one of them? More and more people start their search this way, and whoever is not mentioned simply does not exist for that customer. In this article we explain how AI visibility works, what you can do about ChatGPT SEO and what results you can realistically expect.
Where does ChatGPT get its answers?
Before you can optimise anything, you need to know what you are working with. ChatGPT uses roughly two sources:
- Knowledge from training. The underlying language model is trained on an enormous amount of text from the web, up to a certain point in time. Brands and topics that appear there often and consistently are “known” to the model.
- Live web search. For current, specific or local questions, ChatGPT runs a search, reads a number of pages and writes an answer from them, often citing its sources.
For most businesses, that second source is the one that matters. You are not going to nudge the training data of a language model. But which pages ChatGPT finds when it searches live, that you can influence. And in doing so, the tool often ends up on pages that also rank well in regular search engines.
How ChatGPT then chooses which sources to mention is not public. What we do see in our own tests: clear, factual, well-structured pages from trustworthy sites are used more often than pages full of generic marketing language. That is not a law, but it is a pattern that keeps coming back.
ChatGPT SEO versus regular SEO
The term “ChatGPT SEO” is actually a little misleading. It suggests a separate discipline with its own tricks. In practice it is mostly good SEO with a few extra accents. The industry term for this is GEO, Generative Engine Optimization. You can read exactly what that involves in what is GEO.
| Element | Regular SEO | ChatGPT and other AI tools |
|---|---|---|
| Technical health and indexing | Essential | Essential, plus: do not block AI crawlers |
| Keywords | Important | Less literal, more about the question behind them |
| Content structure | Complete, well structured | Direct answer at the top, then depth |
| Backlinks | Authority through links | Authority through links and mentions without a link |
| Result | Ranking and click | Mention in an answer, sometimes with a click |
The biggest difference is in the last row. In Google you compete for a position. In ChatGPT you compete for a place in the answer. That answer usually contains only a handful of names, so the competition is tougher, but so is the reward: you are recommended rather than merely shown.
How to increase your AI visibility in 7 steps
This is the approach we follow at Stijgt. It is not a checklist you work through in an afternoon, but it is an order that works.
1. Make sure AI tools are allowed to read your site. Check your robots.txt. Some websites unknowingly block the crawlers of OpenAI and other AI companies, for example through a plugin’s default setting. If ChatGPT is not allowed to read your site, the story ends here.
2. Get your SEO foundation in order. A fast site, indexable pages, a logical structure, no duplicate content. Use our technical SEO checklist to go through it.
3. Make a list of the questions customers ask. Not just keywords, but whole questions: “what does it cost to hire a roof box for a week”, “which photo booth is suitable for a company party”. AI tools work with questions, so your content needs to match them.
4. Answer each question at the top of the page. Start with a short, factual summary of two to four sentences. Then the explanation, the table, the examples. An AI tool summarising a page picks up the answer more easily when it sits at the top.
5. Be concrete and consistent. State prices or price ranges, locations, specifications, delivery terms. Vague copy is hard to summarise and gets skipped. Also make sure your business details are identical everywhere: on your site, in your Google Business Profile, in directories.
6. Build mentions on other websites. Reviews, industry directories, trade media, local news sites, partners. An AI tool that comes across your name together with your service in several trustworthy places will mention you sooner. This resembles link building, with the difference that a mention without a link counts too. Read more in what are backlinks.
7. Add structured data. Schema.org markup for your organisation, services, products, FAQs and ratings helps search engines and AI systems interpret your content correctly.
What not to do
Let’s be honest: a lot of nonsense is being sold around AI visibility. These are the pitfalls.
- Stuffing pages with “ChatGPT” and “AI” as keywords. That does nothing. Your customers are searching for your product, not for AI.
- Pasting hidden text or instructions for AI models into your HTML. This does not work and can harm your site in search engines.
- Buying guarantees. Nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT will mention your brand. AI answers vary by question, by user and by day. An agency that promises otherwise is selling hot air.
- Rebuilding all your content for AI and forgetting the human reader. A page that works well for an AI tool is almost always good for a person too: clear, concrete, direct. And it works the other way round as well. So just write good pages. You will find tips in SEO copywriting.
How do you measure whether you rank in ChatGPT?
Without measurement you do not know whether it is working. We use three sources side by side.
- GA4. Traffic from AI tools shows up as referral traffic, for example from chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai. Create a separate channel for it so you can see the trend. Make sure your consent settings are correct, otherwise you miss part of it. More on that in GA4 consent mode.
- Semrush. The AI visibility reports show for which questions your brand or your competitors are mentioned.
- Testing it yourself. Every month, ask a fixed set of questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google. Note which businesses are mentioned and whether you are among them. It is low-effort, and it gives the most honest picture.
For most websites, traffic from AI tools is still modest compared with Google. But it is growing, and visitors who arrive via an AI answer often already have a clear question. So what counts is not just the volume, but what those visitors do: enquire, call, order.
From our own experience: at our own company Djunes (photo booth and event hire) we implemented the approach from this article ourselves: SEO foundation, direct answers on every service page and mentions on relevant sites. Organic traffic grew by 187% in 12 months and online bookings by 212% year on year. What works there, we bring to clients, for example in marketing for rental companies.
When can you expect results?
At Stijgt we typically see the first movement in SEO and GEO after 4 to 6 weeks. That is faster than many people think, but it is not a switch. The first weeks go into setting up measurement, fixing the foundation and rewriting the most important pages. After that you keep building mentions and content. Read more about timelines in how long does SEO take.
Want to know where your website stands in AI tools right now? We always start with a baseline measurement, so that after a few months you can see what has changed. See our GEO approach or get in touch.