How to Rank in ChatGPT: A Practical Guide to ChatGPT SEO

A few months ago, a client who runs an online furniture store in Riyadh sent me a screenshot. A potential customer had asked ChatGPT for “the best places to buy modern sofas online in Saudi Arabia.” Three competitors were recommended. Her store, which ranks well on Google for similar searches, wasn’t mentioned at all.

That screenshot captures the new reality. ChatGPT has become a starting point for research, comparisons and recommendations, and it doesn’t always show the same brands Google does.

The good news is that you can influence whether your brand appears. There’s no switch you can flip and no guaranteed “number one position,” but there is a clear set of practices that increase your chances. This guide walks through them step by step.

How ChatGPT decides what to show

Before the steps, it helps to understand where ChatGPT’s answers come from. Broadly, there are two sources:

1. What the model already learned. Large language models are trained on huge amounts of public text. If your brand was widely and consistently described across the web, the model may already “know” you.
2. What it finds when it searches. For many questions, especially recent, local or commercial ones, ChatGPT searches the web, reads several pages and then writes an answer, often with links to its sources.

This means ranking in ChatGPT depends on two things: your reputation across the web (which shapes what the model knows) and your visibility in search results (which shapes what it finds). If you want the bigger picture of how this fits with traditional search, read our guide on AEO vs SEO vs GEO.

Step 1: Find the prompts that matter to your business

Start by listing the questions your customers are likely to ask ChatGPT. Think in full sentences, not keywords. For example:

• “What is the best SEO agency in Riyadh for e-commerce stores?”
• “Which dental clinics in Dubai offer invisible aligners?”
• “Compare Salla and Shopify for a new online store in Saudi Arabia.”
• “How much does a website redesign cost in the UAE?”

Then test them. Ask ChatGPT each prompt (ideally with search enabled), note which brands are mentioned, which sources are cited and how your company is described, if at all. Repeat the test monthly. Answers vary, so look for patterns rather than single results.

Step 2: Make sure you rank in traditional search

When ChatGPT searches the web, it relies on search results to decide which pages to read. If your pages don’t appear in those results, they’re unlikely to be used as sources.

That’s why classic SEO is still the foundation of ChatGPT SEO:

• Make sure your important pages are indexed and load fast.
• Target the questions from Step 1 with dedicated, helpful pages.
• Earn relevant backlinks and mentions so your pages carry authority.

If your SEO foundation is weak, fix that first. Our SEO services start exactly there.

Step 3: Write answer-first content

ChatGPT summarizes. Content that states the answer clearly is easier to summarize and cite accurately. For every important question you target:

• Answer in the first one or two sentences. Then add the detail, examples and nuance.
• Use descriptive headings that mirror real questions, like “How much does an e-commerce website cost in Saudi Arabia?”
• Include specific, verifiable facts: prices or price ranges, timelines, service areas, supported platforms, certifications.
• Use tables and lists for comparisons and steps.
• Add a short FAQ section to pages where customers commonly have questions.

A useful test: if someone copied just one paragraph from your page, would it still make sense and represent your business correctly? If yes, it’s citable.

Step 4: Build a clear, consistent brand entity

AI systems need to understand who you are before they can recommend you. Confusing or conflicting information makes that harder. Check that these details match everywhere:

• Your company name (in English and Arabic), and how you describe what you do.
• Your services, specialties and the markets you serve.
• Your locations, contact details and opening hours.
• Founders and key experts, with consistent bios.

Places to align include your website’s About page, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, social profiles, industry directories and marketplaces. Adding Organization and LocalBusiness structured data to your website also helps machines read these facts unambiguously.

Step 5: Earn mentions on sources ChatGPT trusts

When ChatGPT recommends companies, it often draws on third-party sources: comparison articles, “best of” lists, reviews, news coverage and forums. Being mentioned in those places matters as much as what you say about yourself.

Practical ways to earn those mentions:

• Get listed in reputable regional roundups and directories for your industry.
• Collect genuine reviews on platforms your customers already use, such as Google and industry-specific review sites.
• Contribute expert commentary to industry publications and local news.
• Publish original insights, for example a short survey of your customers or an analysis of trends in your market. Original data tends to get referenced.
• Participate in relevant communities where your expertise is useful, without spamming links.

This is also where link building and digital PR pay off twice: they strengthen your Google rankings and your AI visibility at the same time.

Step 6: Keep your information fresh

If your website still lists last year’s prices, an old address or a discontinued service, ChatGPT may repeat that information to potential customers. Review your key pages every quarter and update anything that has changed. Show “last updated” dates on guides and pricing pages when it makes sense.

Step 7: Let AI crawlers access your site

Check your robots.txt file and any firewall or bot-protection settings. If you block OpenAI’s crawlers (such as OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot), your pages may be excluded from ChatGPT’s search results or future training data. Decide deliberately: most businesses that want visibility should allow the search crawler at minimum. Also make sure your key content is visible in the HTML and not hidden behind scripts that crawlers may struggle to render.

Step 8: Measure and iterate

Measuring ChatGPT visibility is still imperfect, but you can track meaningful signals:

• Prompt tracking: re-run your list of target prompts monthly and record mentions, citations and descriptions.
• AI referral traffic: in Google Analytics 4, watch for sessions from chatgpt.com and other AI tools.
• Branded search: growing searches for your brand name often follow increased AI mentions.
• Sales conversations: ask new leads how they found you. “ChatGPT recommended you” is becoming a common answer.

What doesn’t work

• Trying to trick the model with hidden text or keyword stuffing aimed at AI.
• Publishing large volumes of thin, AI-generated pages. They rarely rank, rarely get cited and can damage trust.
• Paying for fake reviews or mentions. Beyond the ethical problems, AI systems and search engines increasingly detect them.
• Expecting overnight results. AI visibility compounds over months, just like SEO.

A realistic timeline

For most businesses we work with, the first improvements in ChatGPT mentions appear after the technical, content and entity fixes are in place and new mentions start to accumulate, typically over a few months. Brands that already have strong SEO and a good reputation usually see faster movement than new websites.

If you also want visibility in Google’s AI answers, read our guide to AI Overviews SEO. For the full toolkit we use, see generative engine optimization strategies.