AI large language models, with their research services, have taken an important piece of the search market away from Google. ChatGPT in particular has emerged as a viable search engine. In fact, according to an Ahrefs report, ChatGPT processes 2.5 billion prompts per day and already has 12% of Google’s search volume. As a small business owner, you must pay attention to ChatGPT because it is likely that some of your target customers are using it to research businesses. Small businesses owners can get their businesses mentioned in ChatGPT by making their information easy to discover, understand, trust, and cite. Unlike Google, ChatGPT does not offer any way for you to directly submit your business information. Instead, ChatGPT draws from training data, web searches, reviews, directories, and websites to generate answers to questions. With all that in mind, here are some important steps to maximize your small business’s presence in ChatGPT.
Claim and Optimize Google Business Profile for Local ChatGPT Searches
ChaGPT often uses information from Google Business and Maps to answer local search queries. As a result, claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile is a high-impact, low-cost way to improve ChatGPT visibility. Be sure to update your listing with accurate information, upload quality photos, collect reviews, and publish Google Posts.
Build Consistent Citations for Your Small Business
Google Business is the most important small business citation, but there are others. Ensuring that your business information is consistent across all citations and directories sends a positive signal to ChatGPT. Inconsistent or inaccurate information confuses ChatGPT and makes it less likely to show your business in search results.
In addition, ChatGPT sometimes links to business citations in search results. Your prospective customers, for example, may see and click on a link to your Yelp profile. You need to make sure all information on Yelp and other directory sites is accurate.
Publish Content for ChatGPT on Your Small Business Website
Publishing quality website content is important for small businesses because it builds trust and drives organic growth. To really maximize your content’s reach, you must make sure that everything you publish is ChatGPT-friendly.
How to Optimize Website Content for ChatGPT
- Focus on question-and-answer topics: Identify common questions that your customers ask and publish content that answers them. Clearly state the question in the main header and then answer it in the first paragraph.
- Maintain clear header (H1, H2, H3, etc.) structure: Every page should have a main header and then subheaders. These subheaders typically relate to subtopics and questions related to the main topic. Header structure is especially important for blog content.
- Write concise copy with short paragraphs: Keep paragraphs short and concise. Not only is this structure easy for ChatGPT to follow; it is easy for human readers to follow as well.
- Include lists and tables: AI models like ChatGPT like lists and tables because they are easy to scan.
- Create authoritative content: Send authority signals to ChatGPT by publishing original insights, case studies, and data. Avoid content that is too salesy.
- Share content on social media: Sharing your website content on social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn sends extra authority signals to ChatGPT. Encourage your customers to share your best content.
- Update content regularly: ChatGPT prioritizes fresh content, so be sure to update your content as needed. If you have schema on these pages, include the new date within the markup.
Earn Mentions and Backlinks from Relevant Sources to Build ChatGPT Authority
A backlink is a link that goes from one website to another. Backlinks are essentially votes of confidence for a website, so they originally were Google’s primary ranking factor. Google has since incorporated countless other factors to assess and rank websites, but backlinks remain important even for ChatGPT. ChatGPT crawls the internet and identifies links and connections between websites. Earning backlinks to your website is a good indication that your small business is valuable and worthwhile to customers. Not all backlinks are equal; one backlink from a high-authority and industry-specific website is more valuable than 10 backlinks from low-authority websites.
The best way to grow your small business’s backlink profile is to publish great content. Web publishers that find and like your content will likely link to it. That said, there are ways to manually obtain backlinks through local news features and guest posts.
Implement Schema Markup for ChatGPT on Website
Schema markup, which is special code that you add to the HTML of webpages, helps AI models like ChatGPT understand content more precisely. When ChatGPT sees the appropriate schema on your services pages, it better understands what exactly your services include. Tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and website plugins can facilitate schema markup implementation.
What Types of Schema Markup Do Small Businesses Need?
Small businesses should include the following types of schema markup on their websites:
- LocalBusiness
- Organization
- FAQ
- HowTo
- Product
- Service
Submit Your Website to Bing for ChatGPT Coverage
OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, is a close partner with Microsoft. As such, ChatGPT relies heavily on Microsoft Bing for crawling and indexing. Submitting your website to Bing there improves ChatGPT coverage for your small business. You can submit your website with Bing Webmaster Tools – Bing’s version of Google Search Console.
Collect and Respond to Online Reviews for Your Small Business
Nobody needs to convince you that customer reviews are paramount to your small business’s online performance. Potential customers read reviews on Google and other platforms and rely on them to choose a business partner. Like potential customers, ChatGPT weighs reviews and reputation heavily. This means that collecting and responding to online reviews can help increase your small business’s presence in ChatGPT.
Monitor Small Business Performance in ChatGPT
Even after you implement all the initial ChatGPT strategies, you must monitor your small business’s performance in ChatGPT. Unfortunately, ChatGPT does not have as much data transparency as Google. There is no ChatGPT version of Google Analytics or Google Search Console. However, paid tools like SEMrush help you monitor (to an extent) the ChatGPT prompts in which your business and website appear. Beyond then, it is important for you to test prompts yourself and track mentions. Create a free ChatGPT account, ask a few questions related to your business, and see if your business shows up.
CORE Search and AI Search Marketing
Do you need help improving ChatGPT performance for your small business? CORE Search offers AI search marketing services that prioritize LLMs like ChatGPT. We partner with you to optimize your website content, Google Business Profile, and other business citations.