How to Get Into ChatGPT's Answers: A New SEO for Business

A client asked Dmitry, a web consultant with 12 years in the industry: help me, I want ChatGPT to put our company at the top when someone asks about our category. The question seemed naive, since there is no direct mechanism for this. But behind it lay real business panic: Google SEO no longer guarantees visibility in the new search interfaces.

Search is moving into chats

Search used to mean one thing: Google. Now it has branched out. People increasingly search through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. And if your site is authoritative for Google but not for LLMs, your content simply won't make it into the user's answer.

This is not a conspiracy. LLM chats were trained on a subset of the internet, and each weighs sources in its own way. But the main point is that they read differently from Google's algorithm. Google looks at links, site speed, mobile-friendliness and user behavior. LLMs look at text quality, authorship, citations, factual accuracy and the logic of arguments.

How LLMs choose sources

A model cannot query a site in real time. It works with the context that was in its training dataset. But within a single query it can compare several sources and pick the most relevant ones for the answer:

• The primary source's text is more specialized than a third party's retelling
• The author is clearly named, with a professional profile and experience
• The date is current, with no contradictions with other authoritative sources
• The structure is logical: headings, examples, conclusions, links
• There is no SEO spam, no manipulation attempts and no artificial inflation of importance

This does not mean LLMs are more honest than Google. It is simply a different system of incentives. Google is paid for clicks; LLMs are paid for user trust and satisfaction.

A new visibility strategy

The old SEO checklist (keywords, link building, speed) will not disappear. But you need to add a completely new one:

• Publish deep, specialized articles: write for people, and LLMs will notice
• Link to primary sources and studies inside the text; don't hide your sources
• Rewrite others' work less, and analyze your own data and expertise more
• Sign your content: author → organization → publication date → regular updates
• Be ready for LLMs to cite you through the lens of other authors

Search is still a combo: Google + LLM. A page can rank at the top of Google yet go unmentioned in ChatGPT. Or the reverse. You need to optimize for both systems at once, but different tools require different approaches.

What this means

The era of a single search engine is ending. For small businesses this may be an opportunity: LLMs don't require a link-building budget, they require writing craft and honesty with data. For large ones, it complicates strategy. The main thing: one excellent post for people works better than ten posts optimized for algorithms.