Ai Citations- How can my business be cited more in the big AI platforms like ChatGPT?

 

You’ve heard all the conversations by now, that digital marketing is changing, you have to adapt or get left behind!

This type of rhetoric gets a bit boring after a while.

The reasons are simple: if you’re blooming good at what you do, that is, you’re a bit of a pro at search engine optimisation, then you will be able to turn your hand to generative engine optimisation.

The goals are the same.

Get your business seen more, clicked on, generate more brand awareness, drive up sales, all that good stuff.

But we know why you’re here.

You want to know how the boffins that works for the likes of ChatGPT, and how the LLM’s select answers that they cite?

Well, go and grab a coffee and a biscuit (why not!), and we shall explain all in this comprehensive and rather wonderful post.

 

What our SEO pros will be discussing today:

• What are AI citations and why do they matter
• How AI citations work
• Why your SEO strategy shouldn’t differ too much from your GEO strategy
  FAQ’s
• Why are we considered the best thing since sliced bread was invented! No, we really are fast becoming one of the best SEO companies in this area. We shall explain why

What are AI citations?

AI is great, it’s like having a friend that knows everything that’s always with you, it’s in your pocket and using the “query fan out technique”.

This means you can keep asking follow-up questions until you get the answer you want.

Traditional SEO, well, I (Ryan Walsh) spent my career chasing those important links, writing content marketing and implementing local

SEO- and not to blow my own trumpet, but I am good at it!

But things are moving on, times are changing, and so must we.

But are things changing as much as we think? Or as much as some marketing agencies would have you believe?

The answer, we think at this agency, is no, they are not.
Back in the day, over 10 years ago, I was writing about the semantic web, Google’s Knowledge Graph, and AI being used by Google’s Rank Brain.

 

So, have things changed that much?

The answer is big fat no!

In essence, let’s distil this whole article into one neat paragraph: If you’re considered the best at what you do, you’re publishing the best advice that you can, and you’re therefore a “thought leader”, well, guess what?

You’re going to be a standout success in terms of SEO visibility and visibility on the AI platforms such as Perplexity, ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.

Granted, being considered the best expert in the room, considered the best in the business, and a thought leader, that doesn’t come overnight; it needs to be worked on over a long-time frame, but SEO was never a quick solution anyhow.

 

Where do the AI platforms pull their information from?

Artificial intelligence is not as artificial as you might believe.

It most certainly doesn’t mean a giant robot is sat somewhere, or server is plugged in is thinking autonomously.

Instead, it needs to be fed, fed and fed some more, like when you need chips after a long night out having a drink or two!

So, where does this AI gain its intelligence from?

Web content

Main pages, evergreen content, blog posts, and someone’s uber-famous blog, basically, it reads a lot of text.
And this is why we say optimising for these new LLM’s is not too dissimilar to the world of SEO, you have to write a lot.

But not garbage, as garbage in, results in garbage out, it has to be real high-quality work, where the written works make it abundantly clear the following:

 

You’re an expert on the subject

You’ve been banging on about the same topics or interconnected topics for so long that you’re worth listening to.

You’ve gained a mass of quality links, so you’re a voice worth listening to

You’re in the semantic web, as a company owner or series of authors that are known for, well, what it is you do, such as selling rather expensive diamond rings, for example.
So first and foremost, ChatGPT and the LLM’s read a lot of text. The same as how Googlebot crawls and indexes a lot of text.

 

Structured sources

Wikipedia and other key data sources. If you search for anything, such as facts on Tom Cruise, or tell me how old Elon Musk is, well, what normally appears? Either a Google Knowledge Panel or a Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia is trusted because so much time has gone into creating it, editing it, and refining it; it’s used by everyone from Googlebot to the LLMs as a place to pull accurate data from.

 

Discussions

We would say this source is probably used less by the LLMs because, well it’s harder to pull facts from. But discussion platforms like Quora are sometimes cited.

 

Official sources

If you’re asking a question such as, ” How much is it to tax a certain model of car in the U.K. well if that information exists on the DVLA website, then it’s most definitely worth citing, as that’s a reliable source, as it is the government body for regulating the tax of cars in the U.K.

So, official sources are often used as the primary place to pull information from, also.

 

What is an “Informational Citation”?

Often, experts on a subject, such as a type of handmade beeswax candles, will write a lot of “evergreen content marketing”.
Sometimes this work has a rather high Google EEAT score. Plus, when it works really well, it offers a blooming excellent answer; it normally attracts a lot of backlinks.

It’s this work, top-ranking pages, that can be cited as a citation.

 

Product citations

This is why all the pages on your website need to be high-quality.

This means no AI-written content, not duplicated, not spammy, i.e., don’t mention the keywords you want to rank for too much within the content.

Instead, if you’ve created a really useful and helpful (Google Helpful Content Update) that’s an original answer, then your main pages or blog posts could pop up more often.

For example, if you specialise in the retailing of classic car insurance, for say Morgan or a Lister, well, you have a brilliant opportunity to create a super useful website, has a high Google EEAT score and stands out in Google’s organic SERP’s and the LLMs.

 

Do AI systems all use the same system to work out which businesses to cite?

No, that’s the short answer.

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s Gemini all work differently, have been developed and designed differently, and therefore work differently.

You can boggle your mind trying to optimise for each, or you can keep things nice and simple and do this:
– Produce the best content marketing you can
– Improve the authority of the website by getting links, mentions, and citations
– Aim to be the best, not a sheep
– Make sure the experts, with real experience on what you’re writing about, are drafted in to offer their penny’s worth

 

How can we better optimise our existing and future content marketing for improved AI visibility?

Great question, because this is something a lot of SEO companies neglect to answer.

That is how you can rev-up you’re existing and future content marketing for improved AI citations.

Well structured (Just means good on-page SEO practices)

Good on-page SEO is as old as time itself.

Meaning this is nothing new, just use clear headings (H1-H6), bullet points, and write using a “conversational style of writing”.

Basically, ask questions and answer them on the page!

This way, it makes it a piece of cake for Googlebot or the LLM’s to extract an answer.

If you make it easier for the AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, to extract an answer, it just stands to reason that they will do so, if the page is authoritative, meaning it has a lot of links”.

 

Keeping the content marketing up to date

A lot of marketing agencies still talk about a Google Freshness Update that was released way back in November 2011.

Basically, if you as a business were adding new work, such as new blog posts and content marketing Google would reward the business with higher rankings.

So, for instance, lets say you run an estate agency, one business never update the site, yet another was adding helpful blog posts once a month, well the second business would normally earn higher rankings.

Now, in the world of AI, its important again to add fresh content marketing. However, Google’s crawling and indexing has now been ramped up, so Google and the LLM’s want to know that your keeping the written work up to date.

Therefore, for example, you know when you go onto some marketing agency websites, their blog posts sometimes read, “first published date” and also “last updated”. This is basically to tell Googlebot and the LLM’s that are reading the work, that the business is keeping on top of keeping the work relevant.

 

Google EEAT and being authoritative

So, for the LLM’s such as Perplexity, we would say that it is more important than ever for businesses to work on making their websites more authoritative. For example, building more high-powered links, getting mentioned on good quality websites, and also making it clear that the authors of the content marketing know what they are talking about.

 

Here’s how you can improve the authoritativeness of your website:

– Write content marketing where its clear you are an absolute expert on the subject
– But author bio at the top or bottom of each blog post and link to LinkedIn
– Write long-form so the LLM’s and Googlebot can gain a good understanding of what you’re writing about
– Blog regularly but not too much
– Don’t use duplicated work or AI text

 

Original thinking will stand out in an era of AI

So, this is our own agency’s take, yet its likely to be shared by many other marketing companies as well.

That is, when you have a whole mass of say e-commerce websites, which are awash with AI written text, where’s the original thinking?

Where’s the different perspective or take?

Often there’s not.

Therefore, its better to have a real expert on the subject, offering a unique perspective. Now if that’s supported by the page being authoritative, with it having good backlinks, mentions, and citations etc, then that is powerful combination, being you are more likely to be cited by say Google AI Overviews, the various LLM’s and of course in Google’s organic rankings as well.

 

Original research

Conducting market research and original research can prove costly. Going out to gain the perspectives of say 10,000 people is never going to cheap.

However, if you conduct market research, that’s respected, for example, its clear the company has gone through great Lenths to gain it, then this work will be widely cited.

 

Then often the page attracts a lot of powerful backlinks.

Such as, a fizzy drinks company, conducting marketing research on how often average Brit, drinks fizzy drinks per week.

Now, that work, could be cited on various health blogs, food websites, and nutrition related websites. Therefore, because its so widely cited, gained so many backlinks, gained so much conversation, it will be picked up by the LLM’s such as ChatGPT and also cited in relevant answers that are asked.

 

Topic clusters and pillar pages

Top SEO companies globally, including us use a technique called using “pillar pages” and supporting content.

The purpose is to answer broad questions, then internally link to a central page.

It’s a way of proving the customer, and to Google, as well as the LLM’s that you are an expert on that subject. That way you can gain “topical authority”.

This basically means, if you writing endless blog posts about the lastst running trainer design and innovations, that its more that likely you’re an expert on running trainers.

Plus, then when you start to answer commonly asked questions regarding running trainers, funnelling users to a central page, you can become the expert on that particular product.

Therefore, in particular E-commerce SEO uses this method extensively.

 

Backlinks are still super important

So, in a world of LLM’s, such as Perplexity, ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, well, you might think that AI has leap-frogged the need for backlinks. However, at this agency, we would say backlinks are still an incredibly important search engine optimisation metric.

In matter of fact, we as an SEO company were talking about backlinks or “links” for short being an important metric over 10 years ago when we launched our agency.

Fast-forward to today, and although Google doesn’t use PageRank as its main formula for sorting pages any more, backlinks are still massively important.

Backlinks, do-follow and no-follow, still send a clear signal of how important a brand is in the semantic web. For example, if you are a footwear retailer, you get links from Nike, well you must be a approved distributor, or a well-known retailer.

Therefore backlinks matter, link juice is still something that SEO agencies are actively looking to gain. Therefore British businesses, when hiring marketing agencies, such as ours, are looking for do-follow and no-follow backlinks, naturally written anchor text, and to gain a stronger backlink profile.

 

Make the answer easier to extract

This is a key and vital point.

That is, if your writing mammouth blog posts, a bit like this, you have to think about have you made it easy or have you made it hard for the LLM’s, such as ChatGPT to extract the answer?

 

Have you used for example:

• Clear titles
• Concise answers
• Have you written the work using FAQ style of writing
• Have you answered follow up questions
• Have you written the work in a way where its offering clear advice, the same you would if you were speaking to a human?
• Is the work comprehensive, so for example, have you added enough information?

 

What’s more important backlinks or gaining AI citations?

The two are completely different.

Backlinks are different from AI citations.

Backlinks mainly prove authority.

If you run a big business, a large brand, then you have a strong backlink profile.

A strong backlink profile means the business, in terms of SEO is more authoritative.

AI citations, are when your business is cited in the LLM’s, because your company, products, or the answer you have written is deemed the best answer to that query.

And what’s one of the main ways to get more citations in the LLM’s such as ChatGPT- yep, to gain more backlinks.

 

Why hire Walsh & Partners

We are one of the most established digital marketing agencies in the rather wonderful city of Cardiff.

When you Google anything related to “SEO” and the city of “Cardiff” our brand constantly appears.

The reason is when are GEO, SEO and LLM optimisation experts.

We have SEO consultants with so much experience; we can simply wipe the floor with many of our direct competitors in terms of SEO knowledge.

This is why some of the best and most well-known companies in Cardiff work with us. Plus, we work with companies far beyond Cardiff as well.

We known for explaining complex marketing subjects, and doing so with ease.

We are therefore one of the best and most established SEO agencies in the U.K today.