Your competitor just got a customer from ChatGPT.
Not from Google. Not from a paid ad. From a conversation where someone asked "what's the best tool for X?" and ChatGPT said their name, not yours.
This is happening right now, and you probably don't even know it.
ChatGPT SEO is different
Forget everything you know about ranking. ChatGPT doesn't have positions 1 through 10. It doesn't show a list of results you compete to be higher in.
ChatGPT gives an answer. Maybe it mentions three options. Maybe one. If you're in that answer, amazing. If you're not, you didn't rank lower. You were invisible. The user never knew you existed.
And when ChatGPT does mention you, it's not neutral. It says why. "I'd suggest this because it's affordable and easy to set up for solo founders." That's an endorsement that would cost you thousands in advertising.
Why ChatGPT matters so much
Hundreds of millions of people use it. Many use it to research products, compare options, and make decisions.
"What invoicing software should I use as a freelancer?" "Which CRM is best for consultants?" "What project management tool works for small teams?"
These are high-intent queries. People asking them are ready to act. If ChatGPT recommends you, you just got a warm lead you didn't pay for. If it recommends your competitor, that's a customer you'll never know you lost.
How ChatGPT decides what to recommend
ChatGPT works in two modes. Sometimes it answers from what it learned during training. Other times it searches the web for current information.
The training knowledge is older and harder to influence. It's baked into the model. But the web search component? That's where fresh content and your online presence make a real difference.
When you ask ChatGPT something, it might answer from memory, search the web, or combine both. For getting recommended, the web search part is where you have the most control.
What actually works for ChatGPT SEO
Answer questions directly. If someone might ask "what is [topic]?" or "best [tool] for [use case]?", have a clear, quotable answer on your site. Not buried in paragraphs. Right there, easy to extract.
Build real authority. Comprehensive content about your domain signals expertise. ChatGPT prefers citing sources that go deep rather than pages that skim the surface.
Get mentioned elsewhere. When credible industry sites, publications, or experts reference you, ChatGPT notices. Third-party validation matters.
Structure your content well. FAQs, comparison tables, clear headings. These formats make it easy for ChatGPT to pull specific information from your site.
Stay current. For queries where ChatGPT searches the web, recently updated content has an advantage over stuff that hasn't been touched in two years.
What doesn't work
Keyword stuffing is pointless. ChatGPT understands meaning, not keyword density. Writing "best CRM best CRM best CRM" won't help.
Thin content gets ignored. Brief, surface-level pages with no real substance don't get cited. If you're not providing value, ChatGPT won't recommend you.
Gaming attempts usually backfire. ChatGPT is sophisticated. Manipulation tactics that might work on older search algorithms don't work here.
Tracking your ChatGPT visibility
The challenge: you can't manually check every relevant prompt every day. And ChatGPT's responses vary, so checking once doesn't tell you the full picture.
The solution is automated tracking. Define the prompts your customers actually ask, track whether you're mentioned, monitor changes over time.
Mentionable does this automatically. It even suggests prompts based on your URL so you don't have to figure out which questions to track.
ChatGPT SEO is real and growing
The field is still early. Best practices evolve as ChatGPT's capabilities change.
But the core truth is solid: ChatGPT is a significant source of product recommendations and decisions. Being visible in those recommendations directly impacts your business. That's ChatGPT SEO.