How do I get mentioned by ChatGPT?

More and more clients are asking AI assistants for advice: 'which SEO specialist in Rotterdam helps SMEs?' Whoever appears in that answer gets the enquiry. If you are not in it, you simply do not exist to that searcher.

The good news: you can influence this. Not with tricks or paying for placement — they do not exist — but with the very same work that gets you ranking higher on Google, plus a few AI-specific steps. Below are the five steps that make the biggest difference in practice.

ChatGPT retrieves real-time information largely from Bing's search index; Gemini and Google's AI Overviews use Google's. If you do not perform well there, you simply will not appear in AI answers.

That means: a technically sound website, a sitemap submitted to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and pages that provide the best answer for each topic. Classic SEO remains the foundation of everything.

AI assistants quote useful facts. 'SEO programmes from € 475 per month, for established SMEs throughout the Netherlands' is something an AI can use. 'We stand for quality and results' is not.

Review your most important pages and make it explicit: what you offer, how much it costs, where you operate, who it is for, and who does the work. Put the direct answer to each main question right at the top of the page, in two or three sentences.

With structured data (schema markup), you define in code who you are: company name, services, location, prices, reviews, and the person behind the business. Search engines and AI systems read this without having to guess.

Also ensure your site does not block AI crawlers in robots.txt: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot must be allowed to read your pages. An llms.txt file with a concise summary of your services helps as well.

AI assistants trust sources that are validated by independent third parties. A complete Google Business Profile with genuine reviews, listings in business directories, an up-to-date LinkedIn profile, and articles on other websites mentioning your name in the right context — those are the signals.

Consistency is crucial here: name, service and location must be identical everywhere. 'Lubna Ouarghi, SEO specialist' in one place and 'marketing agency' in another confuses both humans and machines.

Test a set list of queries in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity every month, such as 'who is a good SEO specialist in Utrecht?' and 'which freelance SEO specialist helps SMEs with Google?'. Record whether you are mentioned, how you are described, and which competitors do appear.

We do this for clients with 25 fixed queries per month. That way, you see actual movement instead of guessing — and you can also see which page or mention made the difference.

You cannot sign up for ChatGPT, nor can you buy a spot in its answers. Repeating your company name a hundred times on your own website doesn't help either; any AI will recognise that as noise.

Agencies selling 'guaranteed mentions in ChatGPT' are selling something that doesn't exist. The only way is search visibility, clear facts, and third-party validation — exactly the steps outlined above.

When faced with a query like 'good SEO specialist in Utrecht', an AI assistant does three things in sequence: it interprets your intent, retrieves a handful of sources from a search index, and summarises those sources into an answer naming two or three options. Every step acts as a filter.

That is why content stating a complete fact in a single sentence works far better than content stretching that fact across five paragraphs. The model needs a citable snippet that remains accurate and clear even when extracted. That is also how I write: the answer at the top, standalone facts, followed by the explanation for human readers.

In practice, three types of pages are cited most often: a straightforward service page with pricing and service area, an explainer answering a specific question in the opening paragraph, and a comparison page offering an honest side-by-side look at two options.

What almost never gets cited: homepages trying to say everything at once, news updates without dates or facts, and pages where the answer is buried beneath a lengthy introduction. If you only have time to optimise three pages, focus on those first three formats.

Week one: establish a baseline by documenting what AI assistants currently say about you, using a fixed set of prompts and recording the exact answers. Week two: make facts explicit on key pages and place answer blocks at the top. Week three: implement structured data, ensure crawler access, and set up llms.txt.

Week four: build external validation — complete business profiles, align citations, and collect reviews. After that, repeat the benchmark monthly. This sequence is deliberate: without clear, discoverable facts on your site, third-party proof has very little to point to.

Four issues crop up repeatedly. A website that hides its prices, making it impossible for AI to recommend you for budget-specific queries. A business calling itself an 'agency' in one place and a 'specialist' in another. Cookie walls or scripts that hide content until clicked. And blog posts lacking a date or author.

All four can be resolved in a matter of days and are more likely to earn you citations than publishing a fresh batch of blog posts. Tidy up what you have before creating more.