SEO for AI chatbots: 5 tips for appearing in AI results
Use of AI chatbots and LLMs (Large Language Models) such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are growing and are here to stay.
It was reported in July 2025 that ChatGPT alone processes 2.5 billion prompts per day.
For marketers, it is more important than ever to learn about new developments and adapt.
Search engine optimisation is a core part of digital marketing, but LLMs and AI chatbots are set up differently to the traditional search engine.
LLMs are trained on vast datasets and have access to a mass of information.
How can you ensure that your content gets processed, understood, and surfaced to users and your potential customers?
We’re not here to gatekeep – keep reading to find out our top tips!
Prioritise relevance and authority
Search engines and AI alike value relevance and authority.
But where traditional search engines get information from keywords, backlinks, and structured data, AI chatbots use language models, context-based relevance and source trustworthiness.
One of the top priorities for AI chatbots and engines is to answer the question at hand.
As AI gets more intelligent, it will be able to find not only the answer to give but the correct answer.
If it believes your business has an authority on a subject, it will be more likely to surface your content.
As with ‘traditional’ SEO, one of the main ways to build relevance and authority is to build clusters of information around a topic, making sure that you provide contextual information in different formats.
You will then not only look like an authority on the subject, but this will allow the AI engine to pull its first generated answer from your content and also further questions around the topic.
To appeal to AI engines and chat bots you need to know your topic inside out, research keywords, and investigate the full range of questions that might be asked.
Become the go-to recommendation
As with traditional search engine optimisation, while the algorithms are often a ‘black box’, it’s suspected that AI engines and chatbots use trusted backlinks, reviews, and recommendation lists to inform which information it surfaces.
When AI repeatedly sees you or your product recommended as a solution, it is more likely to recommend you itself.
Make sure that you are providing information on your product or service and the pain points you solve, highlighting case studies, customer testimonials, and reviews.
Other ways that you can appear beyond your own website is:
- Partnering with other businesses
- Guest writing blogs
- Posting answers to forum questions (yes, really)
- Social media content
- Speaking at recorded events
- Entering awards
- Attending/sponsoring industry events
Create clear and digestible content
People are searching differently, which is clear in the usage rates of chatbots and AI engines.
Enquiries and prompts in AI engines are much more conversational.
Therefore, it is important for your content to be written in a conversational way.
Ensure that that your key sentences and headings are structured in a way that is likely to be typed into a chatbot or answers a question your audience are likely to ask.
You need to go beyond marketing personas: you need to know your audience, the questions they have, and how they’ll write it.
Use formatting like FAQs, lists, and bullet points, to help the AI engines process the information.
Think beyond keywords: consider questions, context, and credibility.
Link and fact check your information
AI engines and chatbots value reliable information and are increasingly checking content.
With the vast amount of data available to LLMs, they can quickly corroborate information and determine authoritative sources.
This links back to point 1, and traditional SEO, emphasising the importance of authority and relevance.
AI engines and chatbots also tend to quote official websites, such as government and educational websites where possible rather than blogs.
Quoting and referencing official websites and fact checking your content to ensure that it is all factual can signal to LLMs that your information is reliable.
Balance technical optimisation and content optimisation
It’s not just about optimising your content and producing short, concise answers, though.
Your website still needs to be optimised to search engines and accessible to LLMs otherwise your information won’t be able to be surfaced.
It’s purported that clean, fast UX is valued by AI chatbots and engines.
It’s the age-old balance of keeping the software happy while also ensuring that your content is appealing to the (human) consumer and answering the question.
The easiest way to do this is to ensure your websites are optimised to be quick; this includes minimising large scripts/code, having web-safe images, and ensuring there’s no major technical errors. Audits once a month will help stay on top of your site’s technical health. Make sure your content in indexable and can easily be crawled.
Alongside this, research keywords, plan meta titles and descriptions, and alt text for images as you are planning and writing your content – don’t leave it as an afterthought.
In summary
Optimisation for AI needs to be approached differently to traditional website SEO – but there are still key parts that stay the same.
Some ways to make your content discoverable to AI engines are to:
- Prioritise relevance and authority
- Become the go-to recommendation
- Create clear and digestible content
- Link and fact check your information
- Balance technical optimisation and content optimisation
To check whether your content is surfacing in AI chatbots and engines you can track brand mentions and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
While many people are still using ‘traditional search’, things are changing quickly with the rise of social search, Google’s new AI search and increase of zero click content so it’s important to shift your strategy now to remain visible and seize the opportunity that AI search offers – you can learn about updates as and when they happen on our blog and in our newsletter!
