How to rank your website on ChatGPT [ultimate guide]

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Still trying to rank on Google? That’s not the only search engine your buyers use.

Over 122 million people search on ChatGPT every day. They’re looking for information, exploring products, and discovering new brands. If your brand isn’t showing up when your buyers are doing their research on AI platforms, you’re missing out on sales opportunities.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key factors ChatGPT uses to rank websites and how you can increase visibility in those ChatGPT responses. These strategies will also help you get mentioned on other AI platforms like Perplexity AI, Claude, Grok, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. 

How does ChatGPT rank websites?

We’ve been experimenting with how ChatGPT ranks content. It’s obvious that the platform aims to provide users with helpful, credible, and accurate information, just like Google. Based on our analysis, these six factors likely play a key role in how ChatGPT cites content:

  • Topical authority: Websites with lots of useful content around specific topics are more likely to rank for search terms related to those topics.
  • Credibility: ChatGPT prefers content that is backed by facts, expert quotes, and firsthand experiences.
  • Relevance: If your web page answers conversational user queries directly, it's more likely to be cited.
  • Quality: Well-written, accurate, unique, up-to-date, and helpful content stands a better chance of being ranked.
  • Clarity: ChatGPT prefers structured content with summaries, subheadings, short paragraphs, bullet points, and FAQs.
  • Accessibility: If your site is easy to discover, load, and crawl, it’ll be easier for ChatGPT to rank your pages.

How to rank on ChatGPT: 6 expert strategies

Here are some generative engine optimization strategies you can implement to increase visibility on ChatGPT:

1. Identify what buyers ask

Optimizing your content for short keywords like "marketing tools" or "b2b chatbot" doesn’t help. That’s not how buyers search on ChatGPT. They now ask long, conversational, and specific questions like:

  • Suggest some AI-based marketing tools to improve organic traffic.
  • What's the best b2b chatbot for automating inbound lead generation?

To show up in responses to these types of queries, you need to know exactly what your buyers are asking AI. You can use B2B intelligence tools like Expertise AI to simplify the process.

Expertise AI is an AI sales agent that lives on your website, proactively engages your visitors, and helps them find what they need. Once you integrate it with your website, it chats with your visitors and saves all the conversations.

This chat data is gold. It helps you uncover what your buyers are asking, how they phrase their questions, and what solutions they are looking for. Most importantly, it helps you understand what they might be searching for on ChatGPT. 

But what to do with this data? This brings us to the next strategy.

2. Create super-relevant content

Once you know the most common search terms your buyers use, create dedicated pages or blog posts to target those queries. Take care of these things:

  • Make sure the content is accurate, helpful, and to the point. The more value you provide, the higher the chances of you ranking on ChatGPT.
  • Understand the intent behind each search term and make sure your page satisfies it. If the user is looking for a comparison, give them an honest one. If they’re ready to buy, give them a compelling offer.
  • Update old blog posts regularly by refreshing stats, links, and information.
  • Use semantic keywords (related phrases) to help ChatGPT understand the context of your content. If your main topic is digital marketing, include words like "SEO," "social media marketing," "digital ads," and "content strategy."

Expertise AI goes a step further by automatically creating personalized web pages for each search term. These pages include unique content, graphics, and CTAs to satisfy intent. You can index them to both AI platforms and search engines to attract buying-intent visitors to your site.

3. Get more brand mentions

If reputable websites mention your brand, it signals to ChatGPT that you are credible and trustworthy. These mentions can be with or without direct links. 

Here are some ways to get more brand mentions:

  • Create superior-quality blog posts that provide unique insights or data. Valuable content naturally attracts mentions.
  • Contribute guest posts to high-authority sites in your industry. This gives you an opportunity to mention your brand.
  • Encourage users to share their experiences on review platforms. B2B SaaS brands can focus on G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, etc.
  • Partner with influencers in your industry to get more mentions on social media.

4. Participate in forum discussions

LLMs (and also search engines) love forums. That’s because user-generated content is often more genuine, relevant, and trustworthy. (Quora and Reddit are the most cited domains in Google AI Overviews.)

Hence, platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Stack Overflow offer great opportunities to increase AI visibility. Just show up in discussions related to problems your product solves, and answer user queries with helpful and insightful responses. You can also subtly mention your website as a resource for further information.

For example, if you are a B2B SaaS company offering AI-powered HR solutions, you can join threads where people ask:

  • Is anyone using AI for resume screening?
  • Hiring takes too long. How do you find good people fast? 
  • Looking for HR software that helps reduce manual tasks, any suggestions?

You can answer these questions clearly and then say, "Our website has detailed guides on this topic. Feel free to check it out."

5. Create strong trust signals

ChatGPT prefers content from credible sources. So the more trust signals your website shows, the higher the chances of ranking on ChatGPT. 

Here are some effective trust signals you can aim for:

  • Author bios to highlight subject-matter expertise
  • Relevant quotes by industry professionals 
  • External links to trustworthy sources that support your claims
  • Firsthand experience (personal insights) in blogs
  • Case studies and testimonials that build social proof
  • Awards, partnerships, and certifications on product pages
  • Updated timestamps to signal freshness

6. Increase discoverability

This might be the most important point in this list. Because no matter how good your content is, if ChatGPT can’t find it, it won’t cite it. So, take care of the following things to make your content easy to find:

  • Index your site on Bing, as ChatGPT Search uses Bing’s index for real-time searches. 
  • Ensure your robots.txt doesn’t block AI crawlers like OpenAI, Perplexity, Claude, and others.
  • Repurpose your content across LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Substack to increase your chances of being cited in AI datasets.
  • Use schema markup (FAQ, Article, Product) to help LLMs understand your content better.

Summing up

Most brands are still stuck on traditional SEO. Therefore, ranking on ChatGPT can give you a competitive edge as you will connect with buyers who are actively searching for products like yours. So, adapt quickly. Implement the above strategies, and keep tracking your citation frequency and how ChatGPT perceives your brand. This will help you understand what's working and what needs improvement. If you want to go further, read this blog to explore the best tools to improve visibility on ChatGPT.