How to show up in ChatGPT

The steps

1. Answer the question in the first paragraph. Use the query in the first sentence.
2. Set the title and the H1 to that same query. Skip the clever headline.
3. Write steps a model can quote. Each step is something you can do on the page.
4. Name the author and link the name to a site that is clearly theirs.
5. Link the new page from the homepage and from any page that already gets visits.
6. Allow OAI-SearchBot if you want the page eligible for Chat GPT search, and leave Googlebot allowed if you want Google.
7. Match the visible page with a canonical URL, a description, a date, and article metadata. Then request indexing.

Answer before you introduce the company

The passage that gets quoted is the one that states the answer. An opening about the company, the year, or why the topic matters gives a model nothing to lift. The first paragraph on this page is the answer to the H1. It names the query, says what to do, and stops.

Make the title and the H1 the query

People search the words “how to show up in ChatGPT”. When the title and the H1 use those words, the page and the query agree. This page uses the query as the H1. The browser title is that query plus the site name. The description repeats the answer.

Write steps worth quoting

A list is the part an answer engine can lift cleanly. Each step has to be true and specific. “Put the answer in the first paragraph” is a step. “Create great content” is a wish. The list above is the method. The rest of this page only explains it.

Sign the page

This guide is by Kirill Zubovsky. That site is his, and he is the author on the rest of DiscoSEO as well. An unsigned page is easier to skip. A named person, with a link to their own site, gives the citation a source.

Point to the page from somewhere that already exists

A new URL with no links is easy to miss. Link it from the homepage, from the section that shares the topic, and from the blog index. This guide is linked from the homepage note on generative engine optimization, and it is listed on the blog. The definition of the term is What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?.

Make the metadata agree with the page

The words in the HTML head and the structured data have to be the words a person can see. One canonical URL. A description that repeats the answer. A published date. Article data that names the headline, the author, and the date. A short FAQ only for questions this page actually answers. Mark up a claim only when the prose makes that claim.

Let the search crawler in

OpenAI uses more than one robot. OAI-SearchBot fills Chat GPT’s search answers. OpenAI says a site that disallows it will not be shown in those answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link. GPTBot is the training crawler, and the two settings are independent. ChatGPT-User fetches a page because a person asked, and OpenAI says robots.txt may not apply to it. The tokens and the consequence of each one are on AI crawlers and robots.txt.

A firewall can undo an Allow line. OpenAI also asks you to permit its published IP ranges. A page that loads in a browser and is blocked for OAI-SearchBot is not eligible for those search answers, no matter how clean the first paragraph is.

The same URL still has to work as ordinary SEO

Google’s guide to AI Overviews and AI Mode says there is no extra file and no special schema for those features. The page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet. That is SEO. The guide, and what it tells you to ignore, is on Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. The split between the two jobs is GEO vs SEO.

What stays out of your control

ChatGPT still decides whether to cite a page. Browsing, the model, and the other pages on the web all sit in that decision. A page that answers the question is eligible to be quoted. A page that never states the answer is not. DiscoSEO does not guarantee rankings or citations.