How to Rank on ChatGPT: Getting AI to Talk About You

ChatGPT isn’t technically a search engine. It’s an LLM-based generative artificial intelligence chatbot (try saying that five times fast). It’s the Internet’s version of leaning over to your co-workers and asking them if they remember that bit of PHP coding that makes the form do that thing. It’s like phoning a friend and asking them if they know anywhere to get good burritos for lunch.

But, if you are, say, a restaurant owner, you’ll want to know how to rank on ChatGPT when someone asks that last question. That’s the kind of information we’ll be looking at in this article, along with some strategies to get you going.

Is ChatGPT the new Google?

No. Currently, ChatGPT has only about 2% of the market share, which is not particularly big compared to Google’s over 90% share. While ChatGPT might be the new kid on the block for online marketing people, developers, and the technically savvy crowd, it is still filtering to the masses.

Businesses seem to be ahead of the population, with a large number already using ChatGPT or another AI tool to do automated functions, coding, and help with online marketing such as SEO. Using ChatGPT as your home page on your browser hasn’t become a thing. Yet.

Even though ChatGPT isn’t replacing Google anytime soon, it is still attracting billions of users every month—1.3 billion, to be exact. While some of these users are asking ChatGPT to play some Dungeons & Dragons with ChatGPT as the Master (it’s really fun!), rather than recommendations, it doesn’t mean one day they won’t.

But even here, this might lead the person to ask where they can get the actual game from, and a list of retailers will be recommended. In time, more and more users might turn to a personalized, single, simple answer from ChatGPT than a long list of possibilities filled with adverts, videos, and map locations from a search engine.

What are the key factors for ranking on ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is trained on the data and information from the web. It recognizes patterns within that information and uses those patterns to give results. The following are factors that influence its top choices for recommendations:

• Clarity and relevance: ChatGPT’s goal is to offer users a clear and direct answer.
• Accuracy: While even the developers of ChatGPT recommend you check everything twice from ChatGPT, they strive to make the AI as accurate as possible.
• Context awareness: Responses are designed to demonstrate an understanding of the context. This includes previous interactions and personalization of the user that ChatGPT has stored.

How to rank on ChatGPT

There isn’t a hard set of rules for optimization, similar to how we never really know how Google generates its results, either. But there do seem to be certain pointers you can follow to tip the scales in your favor and get that traffic from ChatGPT:

• Brand mentions: If your brand is mentioned more on the web, it’s more likely to be in ChatGPTs data set, and it’s more likely to pull your company’s information as a result.

• Relevancy: AI will realize that when you ask for ‘coffee shops in Harrisburg,’ the relevant keywords will be ‘coffee shop’ and ‘Harrisburg’ as the location. If those are your top keywords, your brand has a better chance of appearing in ChatGPT’s results.
• Reviews: Opinions are going to matter because they give your company credibility. But they also mention your brand, so it’s a double win for you.
• Question keywords: Users ask ChatGPT questions, which means that question-type keywords might be the way to go in the future.

In addition to the above factors, there are two other points to take into consideration.

Personalization

Another factor that needs to be mentioned is personalization. With the development of ChatGPT 4, information about the user has been collected. So, if the user mentions, for example, that they are vegetarian and then a little while later asks for a restaurant recommendation, ChatGPT might only recommend places with vegetarian options.

This is a game-changer in terms of offering personalized options for users, but it is also a game-changer for businesses because they won’t have control over this to an extent. Businesses will have to start thinking outside the box about their customers’ personas to get included in those results. For example, instead of using broad keywords like ‘gift ideas for your dog,’ they might have to include ‘bulldog birthday gifts.’

Timelines

Lastly, you need to remember that ChatGPT is always a little behind, depending on its updates. For example, ChatGPT-3.5 only had information until 2021, while ChatGPT-4 has information up to April 2023.

Timeframes between each version historically vary from two years to four months. If you start optimizing to rank in ChatGPT now, it will only pay off on ChatGPT’s next update, which could be two years away. Or, it could be in December. That’s a big difference.

Basically, getting traffic from ChatGPT will mean starting your campaign today, but potentially not seeing the results for two years.

Strategies to get you started with ranking on ChatGPT

If you want to get into the game and start ranking on ChatGPT, you need to start now before ChatGPT’s next update. Here are some strategies to start jotting down to get traffic from ChatGPT:

Get people to mention and talk about you

The more mentions, the more likely you are to be recommended. A few great places you can increase your name mentions include:

• Reviews
• Influencers
• Viral content
• Videos

Create quality content

Everyone on the web loves quality content. Search engines, users, social media, and, no surprise, ChatGPT. Great content can be shared virally, and be used on various channels. The best content you create can be refreshed over and over with updates and tweaks. It’s the gift that keeps giving.

Great content doesn’t only have to be for your site. Consider doing guest blogging to spread the word about your brand and to get a few high-quality backlinks. Also, the extra mentions around the web help with your ChatGPT ranking.

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