SEO for ChatGPT: how to get your business into the answers
ChatGPT does not rank pages: it searches, reads and summarizes. Here is what makes a site get picked as a source, and a step-by-step plan to get your brand into the answers.
How ChatGPT decides what to answer
When a question calls for current or specific information — "best accounting firm for e-commerce stores in Austin" — ChatGPT searches the web, opens a few pages and writes the answer from them, often with links to the sources. When it does not search, it answers from what it learned in training.
That means there are two ways for your brand to show up:
- In live search, your site has to be found and read at that moment.
- In the model's knowledge, your brand has to be described consistently in sources it has already read — your site, but also directories, reviews, press and comparisons.
The first path is the fastest one to influence.
What to allow in robots.txt
OpenAI documents different crawlers for different jobs:
| Crawler | What it does |
|---|---|
OAI-SearchBot | Finds and indexes pages for ChatGPT search |
ChatGPT-User | Opens a page when a conversation needs it |
GPTBot | Collects content that may be used to train models |
Blocking GPTBot is a legitimate decision about training. Blocking OAI-SearchBot or ChatGPT-User removes your site from answers that use search. Make sure no generic rule — a Disallow: / for all agents, or a firewall that blocks unknown bots — is doing that without anyone having decided it.
Write pages ChatGPT can quote
The model summarizes. It needs sentences that stand on their own.
- Say what you do in the first sentence of the page. "We are an accounting firm specialized in online stores, serving clients nationwide" is quotable. "We turn numbers into results" is not.
- Answer real questions. An FAQ page with the questions your sales team hears every week is worth more than corporate copy.
- Be specific. Price ranges, turnaround times, cities served, industries, certifications. Concrete information is what sets you apart in an answer with four names.
- One page per important subject. One service, one page. It makes it easier for the model to find and use the right information.
- Do not hide the text. Content that only loads after JavaScript, inside collapsed tabs or in images may not be read.
Structured data and llms.txt help, but do not replace text
schema.org markup (Organization, LocalBusiness, Product, FAQPage) helps search engines understand a page. The /llms.txt file summarizes the company and its main pages in plain text. Both are cheap to implement — and Google now checks llms.txt in a Chrome audit, as we covered in this article. But neither fixes pages whose content does not answer the buyer's questions.
Off your site: where ChatGPT forms an opinion
For comparison questions, ChatGPT often relies on third-party sources: "best of" lists, reviews, forums, news. Three simple actions:
- Keep complete, consistent profiles on the directories and review platforms that matter in your industry.
- Make sure your brand's name, category and description are the same everywhere.
- Find out which sites assistants open when they answer about your market — that is where you want to be.
How to tell whether it is working
Ask ChatGPT what your customer would ask, without naming your brand. Do it with several questions and on different days: answers vary, and a single attempt misleads.
To measure consistently, the Growth plan tests your market's buying questions on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity every 15 days, shows which ones mention your brand, who shows up instead and what to do first. If you do not yet know whether your site is ready, start with the free diagnosis: it shows the readiness score and which AI crawlers can read your site.