SEO for ChatGPT

Let’s be blunt: If you’re still optimizing for traditional search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, etc), you’re already way behind the curve. 

ChatGPT has quietly (and now not-so-quietly) become a major player in how people find and interact with information across the United States. What started as a novelty chatbot is now handling billions of queries a month, with OpenAI pushing harder into search territory by the day. This isn’t a trend. It’s a shift, and it’s already changing how content is found, read, and ranked.

Don’t believe us? We dug into the numbers. Here’s what the data says: 

• In May 2025 alone, ChatGPT pulled in over 5.2 billion visits, that’s more than Wikipedia and Reddit combined.
• Users aren’t bouncing either. The average session runs over 15 minutes, meaning people are sticking around, asking follow-ups, and genuinely trusting the answers.
• Direct traffic accounts for nearly 75% of usage. Users are not finding it through Google. They’re going straight to ChatGPT to start their search. And get this: in the last 12 months, ChatGPT’s search traffic share has grown by a staggering 740%. It now handles over 365 billion searches a year.
• Meanwhile, traditional search engines are seeing cracks. Publishers are already reporting major drops in Google traffic since AI answers started crowding the top of the page.
• But traffic from ChatGPT? That’s surging, up from virtually nothing to 25+ million monthly referrals in under a year.
• Behind all this is serious money. OpenAI is valued at $90B+, backed by Microsoft, with Elon Musk launching xAI to compete head-on in the AI search race.

TL;DR–ChatGPT doesn’t search the web like Google does. To show up in ChatGPT’s answers, you need content that’s designed to be read, understood, and reused by a machine. 

First and foremost, ChatGPT isn’t wasting time crawling billions of pages. Instead, it relies on two core sources: 

• Pre-trained data, i.e. massive volumes of text, documents, and websites it’s already learned from. 
• Live web browsing (via Bing), so that when browsing is turned on, ChatGPT fetches real-time info through Microsoft’s search infrastructure. 

Second, unlike Google, which expects keywords, ChatGPT handles natural language. You don’t have to phrase things a certain way. People ask questions exactly how they talk, and ChatGPT answers accordingly.

That means content optimized for ChatGPT needs to be clear, well-structured, and conversational. If your page rambles, buries the lede, or uses jargon, AI skips it.

Third, and this is a big shift: ChatGPT doesn’t show a ranked list of 10 websites. It picks snippets of content it trusts and builds an answer around them. That means your goal isn’t just to rank, it’s to be referenced.

Pages that get reused in AI answers usually:

• Explain things clearly and succinctly.
• Use clean structure (headings, bullet points, summaries).
• Sound authoritative without sounding robotic.

Last but not least, in some cases, if you’re lucky, ChatGPT will include a link or citation. But only if: 

• The content is well-sourced. 
• The site has clear authority. 
• The formatting makes it easy for AI to extract the key info. 

Curious about what search will look like on ChatGPT. Here’s the latest on recent developments. 

• OpenAI has started testing native shopping inside ChatGPT with integrations from Shopify, Klarna, Instacart, and more. You can now ask ChatGPT to list gift ideas for under $50 and get AI-curated product picks. 
• Microsoft is actively rolling out Copilot across Windows, Edge, Office and Bing. The kicker? They’re all powered by the same engine as ChatGPT. This means AI search is no longer confined to a chatbot, it’s showing up everywhere.
• Users are increasingly gravitating toward direct, AI-generated summaries. This means users obtain answers directly from Google’s results page without clicking through external sites. This means more zero-click searches, which also means a gradual decline in organic traffic. 

Yes, you still need technical SEO. You also still need impactful content. But the game has evolved…and that’s exactly where we come in. 

We’ve designed an SEO strategy perfectly optimized for the post-search era. Here’s what we can do to help you get referenced by ChatGPT. 

We Nail the Basics

Our in-house SEO team will clean up your technical SEO. This includes fixing things like: 

• Technical SEO, aspects like site speed, crawlability, mobile responsiveness, internal linking, and indexing.
• Content Structure, we ensure headers are in the correct spots, metadata is done properly, and schema markup is applied where it counts.
• Improving Site Speed and Crawlability, to ensure AI bots like GPTBot can efficiently access and analyze your content for citation.
• Expanding on Internal Linking for AI, as good internal linking helps AI models understand the relationship between entities and topics on your site. 

Content Architecture for AI 

Our content team will build your site content in a way that makes sense to a language model. 

• Clearly defined sections
• Strong summaries (40-60 words to nail the point)
• Consistent formatting
• Internal structure that helps AI tools follow your argument from start to finish.

We make it easy for ChatGPT to grab what it needs, and hard for your competitors to outrank you in an AI response.

Schema & Semantic SEO

You can’t just say what you do. You have to label it for machines. 

We implement rich, structured schema across your site, everything from FAQs and product schema to articles, and local business markups.

More importantly, we optimize your content for the topics and entities AI cares about, so when someone types in a natural-language query, your business is top of mind. 

E-E-A-T Optimization

Experience. Expertise. Authority. Text. 

Search engines and AI models are trained to look for these signals. And they use them to decide which content is credible. 

We help you prove your legitimacy. That means real author bios, expert quotes, external citations, trust badges, case studies, awards–all the things that show a real business, run by real people. 

We also ensure your content links to reliable, first-party data or trusted third-party sources (e.g., PubMed, government sites, academic journals) to further validate your claims and enhance trustworthiness in the eyes of AI. 

If Google or ChatGPT sees your content and can’t tell who wrote it, and why they’re qualified to, you’ve already lost the ranking

AI Visibility Testing 

We test how your site performs in the places you’re not tracking yet.

• What does ChatGPT say about your brand?
• Are your product descriptions being referenced by Copilot or Perplexity?
• Is your content surfacing in voice search results or AI summaries?

Because if the answers you should be showing up in are going to someone else, we’ll find out why, and fix it.

LLM Content Clustering 

Think of this like feeding ChatGPT a clean, complete map of your niche. A connected web of data that makes you the obvious and most reliable answer source.

We identify the full topic footprint your site needs to cover, and we build internal content ecosystems that make it easy for LLMs to understand your authority across a subject.

This helps you get quoted and cited, even if users don’t directly click on your site. 

If any of these sound like you, you’re on the right page. 

• You’re a brand that’s invisible in AI search.
• You’re publishing content, but it’s not optimized for language models.
• Your site structure might be blocking AI crawlers, or worse, cannibalising your own rankings.
• You’re in a brutally competitive space.
• And you’re playing the long game.

We’re not here to scare you, but if you’re seeing signs like falling traffic or fewer clicks, let’s call it what it is: ChatGPT is revolutionising search. 

It’s not a bad thing. It just means you need to change the way you’ve always done things. 

Based in the U.S? Let us help you. We’ll do a no-pressure visibility audit and show you exactly where you stand in the AI search landscape. 

Reach out to us for more information. 

Will ranking on Bing guarantee visibility in ChatGPT?

Yes and no. While ranking on Bing helps, it doesn’t guarantee visibility on ChatGPT. The AI model prioritizes a specific content style and structure. To get referenced, it has to be optimized for how the language model understands and interacts with the content. 

If my content ranks well on ChatGPT, will it appear on other AI platforms too?

TL;DR: Optimizing for one will improve your chances with all. 

Each AI model has its own model and training data. Regardless, content that’s well-structured and authoritative will likely be referenced across multiple platforms. 

Do AI platforms send traffic?

Yes, but not in the same way traditional search engines do. 

For instance, ChatGPT sends traffic by mentioning and linking to sources within answers. It’ll also refer users to follow-up links if they want to dig deeper. 

Will AI search kill SEO? 

Absolutely not. BUT, it will kill bad SEO. 

Keyword-stuffing and backlink chasing won’t cut it anymore. To stay visible, your content needs to be genuinely useful and well-structured. 

AI still needs sources to reference. The future of SEO is about being that chosen answer.