How to get your business cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity

1. Make sure a bot can read your page without running JavaScript

This is the one that quietly disqualifies the most sites. Many single-page applications serve an almost empty HTML document and build the entire page in the browser. Several AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so they see nothing but your meta tags.

Test it the way a bot would: fetch your page with a plain request and read the raw response. If your headline, service descriptions, and body copy are not in there, fix that before anything else. Server-side rendering or prerendering solves it.

2. Add structured data that describes who you are

Schema markup is the most direct way to tell a machine what your business is, what it sells, and who runs it. You do not need an exotic implementation - a well-formed set of basics beats a sprawling one.

• •Organization or a specific subtype like ProfessionalService, with name, url, description, and areaServed.
• •Service entries for each thing you sell, linked to the organisation as provider.
• •Person markup for founders and specialists, with jobTitle and sameAs links to their professional profiles.
• •FAQPage on pages that genuinely answer common questions.
• •BreadcrumbList so the hierarchy of your site is explicit.

3. Answer the question in the first paragraph

Assistants extract passages. A page that opens with a direct, self-contained answer gives them something clean to lift and attribute. A page that opens with three paragraphs of scene-setting does not.

A useful habit: write the answer as if it will be read aloud on its own, with no surrounding page. If it still makes sense, it is extractable.

4. Be described consistently everywhere

Models build a picture of your business from every mention they have seen. If your site, your LinkedIn company page, your directory listings, and your team's profiles all describe you slightly differently, that picture is blurry and the model hedges.

Pick one description of what you do and who you serve. Use it verbatim across your site, your structured data, and every external profile you control.

5. Earn mentions in places assistants already read

Citation follows corroboration. Industry publications, podcast appearances, partner sites, community answers, and credible directories all give a model independent confirmation that you exist and do what you claim. This is slower than the technical work but it is what separates a site that is readable from one that is trusted.

6. Cover the specific questions, not just the broad term

Broad head terms are dominated by large sites. Question-shaped queries are where a smaller business can win, and they map directly onto how people prompt an assistant. Build pages around the exact phrasing your buyers use, including the awkward, specific versions.

7. Keep pages current and dated

Assistants weight recency for anything that changes. Publish and update dates, refreshed statistics, and removed stale claims all help. If a page has not been touched in three years and the topic has moved, it will be passed over for one that has.

How to check whether it is working

• •Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini the questions your buyers ask and note who gets cited.
• •Ask them directly what they know about your business and check the description for errors.
• •Watch referral traffic from AI assistant domains in your analytics.
• •Track whether your key pages appear in Google AI Overviews for your target queries.

Frequently asked questions

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