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How to rank in ChatGPT: an AI search optimization checklist
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot answer most buying questions by running a web search and quoting the pages at the top. So you get cited in 3 ways: rank on Google and Bing, write pages that are easy to quote, and get mentioned on the sites AI already reads.
Do these in order:
  • Find the questions your buyers ask
  • Write down what AI answers today
  • Let every search engine in
  • Build bottom-of-funnel pages first
  • Add top-of-funnel pages next
  • Build free tools and directories
  • Write pages AI can quote
  • Get mentioned where AI already reads
  • Check every month

Find the questions your buyers ask

  • Get a first list from ChatGPT. Paste this with your site:
  • Get real searches from a competitor. In Google Keyword Planner, go to Discover new keywords → Start with a website and enter a competitor's domain. It's free with a Google Ads account and shows searches with monthly volume.
  • Pull the questions you already show up for. In Search Console, open Performance, add a Query filter, choose Custom (regex) and paste ^(how|what|which|best)|vs|alternative.
  • Run every search through Google autocomplete. Keep the endings Google suggests: those are searches real people type.
  • Pick by difficulty and CPC. Check the list in Semrush or Ahrefs. Start with difficulty under 20 and a high CPC: advertisers only pay a lot for clicks that turn into sales.
  • Give each question 1 page. Google 2 similar searches. If the top 10 results mostly match, they share 1 page. 2 pages on the same question compete with each other.

Write down what AI answers today

  • Ask 10-20 buying questions ("best X for Y", "X vs Y", "X alternatives") in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Use ChatGPT's temporary chat, so your history doesn't change the answer.
  • Log 3 things per question in a spreadsheet: the brands named, the URLs cited, and whether you're there. The cited URLs are your outreach list for later.

Let every search engine in

  • Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools. Import it from Search Console in a few clicks and submit your sitemap. Copilot and DuckDuckGo run on Bing's index, and ChatGPT search leans on it, but most sites only ever set up Google.
  • Turn on IndexNow. It tells Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep about a new or changed page the minute you publish, instead of waiting days for a crawl. Google doesn't use it.
  • Cloudflare: Caching → Configuration → Crawler Hints, on.
  • WordPress: turn it on in Rank Math, or install the IndexNow plugin.
  • Anything else: host a key file at yoursite.com/.txt and call https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=&key= after each deploy.
  • Allow AI search bots in robots.txt:

Loading editor...

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
  • Block training bots only if you want to. GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended collect data to train models. Blocking them doesn't remove you from answers. Blocking the search bots above does.
  • Test your site as a bot. Run curl -I -A "OAI-SearchBot" https://yoursite.com/pricing. A 403 or a challenge page means your firewall blocks AI. Cloudflare's AI bot blocking is the usual cause.
  • Check that prices and features are in the HTML. Most AI crawlers don't run JavaScript. Open view-source: on your pricing page: if the prices aren't there as text, AI tells buyers you have no public price.

Build bottom-of-funnel pages first

These get fewer searches, but the people searching are about to pay. They're also the pages ChatGPT quotes when someone asks "which one should I pick".
  • "X vs Y" for you against each competitor, and for 2 competitors against each other.
  • "X alternatives" for every competitor buyers leave.
  • "Best X for Y" for each type of buyer, team size or industry you serve ("best CRM for real estate agents").
  • Pricing with every plan, price and limit as text, plus 1 line on who each plan is for.
  • Integration pages ("Acme + Slack") for every tool you connect to, and use-case pages ("Acme for invoicing") for each job people hire you for.
  • Give every product on a comparison page the same block: best for, price, trade-off. Say where a competitor wins: a one-sided page reads like an ad.
  • End every page with 1 action: sign up, book a call or start a trial.

Add top-of-funnel pages next

These bring the reader who has the problem but hasn't started looking for a product yet.
  • "How to" guides for the job your product does, with your product as 1 of the ways to do it.
  • "What is" pages for every term in your category. AI uses them for definitions and cites the source.
  • Templates and checklists people can copy right away.
  • Your own data: a benchmark, a survey or numbers from your product. A statistic nobody else has gets cited by other sites and by AI, and every citation links back to you.
  • Link every top-of-funnel page to a bottom-of-funnel page. That link is how a reader becomes a buyer.

Build free tools and directories

  • Find tool searches. In Keyword Planner, filter your keywords for "free", "checker", "calculator", "generator", "template" and "test". Each one with real volume is a tool to build.
  • Build tools that give a result in 30 seconds without signup: a price calculator, a site checker, a generator. Ask for the email after you show the result.
  • Put a text explanation under the tool. AI can't run your tool, so it reads and quotes the paragraph about it.
  • List your free tools on Product Hunt and in "free tools" directories for your category. Free tools get links that a sales page never gets.
  • Build a directory of what your buyers compare: tools, integrations, templates or examples. Give every item its own page with the same fields (what it is, price, best for, alternatives), plus "top X" pages that group them.
  • Add new items the week they launch, before bigger sites write about them. Our own directory of dev tools works this way: 5 pages on agentic IDEs got 1,436 Google clicks in 28 days, 32% of the clicks to our top 40 pages, and rank in the top 3 for "agentic ide" and "best ade".

Write pages AI can quote

  • Answer in the first 40 words. AI splits a page by headings and quotes the part that answers on its own. Put the answer first and the context after.
  • Make the buyer's question the heading, then answer it in 1-2 sentences before any detail.
  • Back every claim with a number and a source. In the GEO study from Princeton (KDD 2024), adding statistics, quotes and citations raised a page's visibility in AI answers by up to 40%.
  • Show proof only you have: screenshots, benchmarks, client numbers, real prices. If a sentence could sit on a competitor's site unchanged, cut it.
  • Keep facts identical everywhere. Use one price and one customer count on your site, in your schema and on G2. When the numbers disagree, AI quotes someone else.
  • Add schema: Organization (with sameAs links to LinkedIn, G2 and Crunchbase), Product with Offer, and Article with dateModified. Check it with Google's Rich Results Test.
  • Link every article to the page that sells.
  • Refresh posts that fall out of the top 10 in Search Console: new numbers, new examples, a new dateModified.

Get mentioned where AI already reads

  • Pitch the lists AI cites. From your log, take the independent "best X" articles and email each author 1 fact that makes you worth adding. Skip lists written by competitors.
  • Reply in Reddit threads that rank. Search site:reddit.com [your keyword] and answer the open threads on page 1. Say who you are. 5 useful replies beat 50 new posts.
  • Fill in your review and directory profiles: G2, Capterra, Product Hunt and your category's directories, plus GitHub awesome lists for dev tools. Use the same facts as your site.
  • Republish your best posts on LinkedIn, Medium and Dev.to. They get indexed within hours. On Medium and Dev.to, set the canonical URL to your own post.
  • Put product demos on YouTube with chapters and a transcript.

Check every month

  • Ask your logged questions again and compare who gets named and cited.
  • Track visits from AI. In GA4, open Explore, add Session source and filter it with the regex chatgpt|perplexity|gemini|copilot|claude. ChatGPT tags its links with utm_source=chatgpt.com.
  • Watch impressions in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Impressions move within weeks, clicks in 3-6 months.
Skip: llms.txt as a priority (no major AI search engine says it reads it), a robots.txt that blocks everyone but Googlebot, and 200 keywords at once. Push 1 page to page 1, then the next.
Want it done for you? We fix what keeps your site out of Google and AI answers, starting with an audit and your 10 worst issues fixed in 3 days for $390. See the offer.

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