Just go on LinkedIn or X (Twitter), and you’ll see every SEO and their dog talking about how “traditional SEO is dead.” Or that top-of-funnel content is a thing of the past.

Lots of fearmongering.

And to be honest, most SEO thought leaders I see on social media don’t actually run multiple websites that leverage SEO as their primary traffic source.

But what I do know for certain is that ChatGPT and other LLMs have become my second-highest traffic source for this blog (right after Google). And it’s the exact same for all of my clients.

So in this article, I want to go over some of my observations over the past year from what I’ve seen works for ranking in LLMs. Some of this stuff you might have already heard about, but a lot of it is from my own experience — stuff that I still have yet to see anyone talk about.

If you prefer to watch, check out my video here:

For my readers out there, keep scrolling.

What is LLM SEO?

LLM SEO is the practice of optimizing your web content so that large language models can effectively understand it and present it to their users. It’s similar to traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in that the goal is to improve search engine visibility so people can discover your brand and visit your website organically.

But, I’ll be honest, LLM SEO is just another form of SEO. Similar to Bing SEO, Pinterest SEO, YouTube SEO, Google SEO, or whatever, it’s simply the act of trying to get your content to show up when someone is searching for something in a search or chat box.

It’s something I’m very bullish on. But with anything new, there’s going to be a lot of misinformation about the topic. And to make it worse, there are already LLM SEO tools that are virtually fake software because OpenAI does not yet have a Webmaster tool for marketers to know top searches and query search volume (although I’ll show you a neat trick in this article).

And when I talk about LLM SEO, I don’t just mean ranking in ChatGPT (or SearchGPT). I also mean ranking in Grok, Perplexity, and even Claude search.

Okay now that we’ve cleared up what LLM SEO is, let’s go over my eight strategies for how to rank in ChatGPT and other LLMs.

How to rank in LLMs in 8 steps

Here are eight tips to rank better in LLMs:

1. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools
2. Implement proper schema markup on your homepage and blog
3. Write for both Google and Bing
4. Use autocomplete to find questions and answer them in NLP-friendly formats
5. Keep publish dates updated and fresh
6. Don’t use AI to generate any content
7. Earn mentions on other websites and publications
8. Grow branded search volume

Let’s go over each of these in more detail.

1. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools

The first thing you need to do, and one I don’t see many people talk about, is set up your Bing Webmaster account and connect your website to it.

If you’re well-versed in traditional search engines, you’re most likely familiar with Google Search Console (and all the things that go along with it) — sitemaps, indexing, SEO analytics, etc.

Because Microsoft’s Bing is pretty much ChatGPT’s best friend (money-wise), I’ve noticed that a lot of Bing rankings translate over to ChatGPT’s search feature.

For example, I rank #1 in Bing for “best marketing books.”

And if you were to ask ChatGPT about the best marketing books, I also show up fairly high:

I don’t think this is a coincidence.

So make sure you do this step. It’s super easy. Just head over to Bing Webmaster Tools here, sign up for free, and go through the process of verifying your website and submitting your sitemap.

If you get stuck and need more information on how to do this, check out this video:

And if you prefer to read, this is a great guide to check out.

Okay, let’s tiptoe to tip two! See what I did there?

2. Implement proper schema markup on your homepage and blog

Next up is a big one I haven’t heard a single person talk about, which is surprising. Schema Markup.

Schema Markup is essentially a few lines of code, usually a JSON file, that you add to the head section of your web page's code. This generally goes on your website homepage and also on your blog article pages.

For example, this page you’re on right now has schema markup. If you right-click and go to ‘View Page Source’ and then search “schema,” you’ll see it.

This code tells search engines what your web page is about. And LLMs love it because they’re all about words and context. So, having this on your web page gives you a higher likelihood of an LLM citing your content.

In fact, when you look at all the sources in a ChatGPT search, almost all of them have schema markup on their pages. So ya, add this if you want to show up as a cited source.

Here's my favorite tool for generated schema markup that you can add to your website.

3. Write for both Google and Bing

If you know how to write SEO blog posts already, then keep doing what you’re doing. Many of the top ranking factors for both Google and Bing translate over to LLMs like ChatGPT and Grok. They also translate over to platforms like Perplexity.

In all honesty, all of my LLM rankings have come because I rank high in Google. And in order to rank high in Google, I follow as many best practices as possible.

For example, schema markup is a best practice of SEO. But there are top ranking articles in Google that don’t have it. But there aren’t top-cited articles in ChatGPT that don’t have it. So, just following all best practices leads to better SEO hygiene overall.

I have a few guides already on my blog on how to do this that you can check out. I also have a course where I teach what I do for my clients. There’s also a ton of SEO content from other creators that I have curated on this website that you can check out here.

If you’re a SaaS company, I also have some super in-depth guides on SEO strategy you can check out here:

• B2B SaaS SEO guide
• SaaS content marketing guide

These should give you a baseline for how to grow your topical authority in Google, and also how to write in a way that both humans and search engines love.

Alright, on to the next!

4. Use autocomplete to find questions and answer them in NLP-friendly formats

LLMs love NLP. Gosh so many acronyms in tech and marketing.

NLP stands for Natural Language Processing, and it’s a field of AI that is all about machine learning and language. It’s the basis for what LLMs and ChatGPT are today — a computer predicting what word comes next in a sentence (based on millions of data points).

Creating NLP-friendly content means making it easier for computers (LLMs) to understand, interpret, and generate words for its users.

If you ever do a search for something like “what is AI” in ChatGPT, the way it responds is in an NLP-friendly format.

This is how you need to respond to questions or headings in your web pages. Doing so is also how you show up in Google’s “People also ask” section.

Remember how I said following Google SEO best practices helps with SEO? This is foundational stuff.

So when talking about a specific topic, you want to go to Google and look for “people also ask” questions and add those as H2 headings in your articles. Then, you want to answer them in an NLP-friendly way.

But here’s something even better.

Go to chat.com in an incognito window and start typing about a topic you are creating a web page for. Then, use the new autocomplete feature to see what people are searching for. Whatever relevant questions come up, use those as headings in your web page.

If you’re not sure what the NLP-friendly style should read like, you can ask an LLM to write it for you. However, I would not recommend publishing what it outputs. Only do this to understand the style. In tip six, you’ll see why you never want to publish what LLMs give you.

Okay, on to the next!

5. Keep publish dates updated and fresh

Keeping your web pages up to date is one of the best ways to make your web pages show up higher in LLM citations — especially as sources in ChatGPT.

One thing I’ve noticed is that ChatGPT likes to rank its sources based on publish dates (at least at the time of writing this article).

Every 3-6 months, you want to go and update your web pages with new content, remove outdated stuff, and republish the web page with a new date (that should reflect in your schema markup from step two).

Again, this is another LLM ranking factor I don’t see many “SEO experts” talking about but it’s clearly in your face if you just observe citation sources.

So ya, keep your content updated. SEO is an ongoing process.

6. Don’t use AI to generate any content

Whatever you do, please, please, please do not publish content that is generated from an LLM. It’s completely backwards thinking.

All these AI writing tools preaching that you can grow your website by publishing thousands of AI-generated blog posts are fooling you (and taking your money).

LLMs are trained on new information and data. If an LLM outputs something, know that its output will not be a great input for the model. ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and DeepSeek — all of these advanced models are racing to create the best user experience possible.

The better the experience, the more likely someone is to come back and use the platform. User retention is the goal. So, if an LLM starts training itself on its own data, it will eventually lead to a bad user experience.

This is a hill I will die on. If you want to win at LLM SEO, you need to publish stuff the internet has not seen yet. This is the stuff LLMs CRAVE. And it’s why Google has developed an obsession for user-generated content. They want new information so it can feed the hungry language model beast.

It’s why this blog does so well in all search engines. I never use AI to generate anything. I type everything word for word on my MacBook Pro that is starting to slow down because I have a million tabs open.

Okay, no more rambling. Let’s get to the next one.

7. Earn mentions on other websites and publications

There are two ways to get organic traffic from LLMs. One is to get cited as a source (how this blog gets traffic). The other is to have your brand mentioned when someone is asking a question (how my clients get traffic).

If you want AI-powered search engines to mention your brand, you need to show up in the cited sources. This means you need to focus on getting mentioned in blog articles related to your products and services. Best of list posts, review articles, and just general mentions all help LLMs understand what products and services to mention.

In the traditional SEO sense, this means backlinks. But because LLMs mostly look at text, you don’t even need to have a link back to your website. You just need to be mentioned.

But this is hard.

You either have to message a bunch of publications asking to be mentioned (like dozens of brands do to me every day), or you have to go out and create your own content that mentions your brand name.

I’ve found the combination of both does the best.

If you can’t get mentioned, create your own mention! Eventually, others will start mentioning you as well (if your content ranks well). This is how I’ve been able to help some of my clients that are early stage companies. It took almost two years for some of my clients, but creating content that promotes your own brand, and others in your space, will naturally lead to others talking about you as well.

8. Grow branded search volume

Finally, the next best way to get mentioned in LLMs is to have a high branded search. What this means is that people are directly searching for your brand name in search engines like Google, for example.

Having branded search is just a flex because search engines LOVE it. So, if you also invest in SEO initiatives like editorial content, you will have a higher likelihood of ranking higher in search engines (compared to brands with little to no branded search).

Growing your branded search is going to come from word of mouth and people talking about your brand. To get this going fast, you’re going to need to spend some money and time.

If you have money, start sponsoring creators in your industry. This way, a creator's audience might Google you if someone their watching mentions you. You can also get this to grow if you create content on social media platforms like X or LinkedIn.

The more someone knows and searches about your brand, the more likely other publications will write about you and mention you (tip seven), which in turn will lead to LLMs mentioning you more.

It all snowballs.

And that’s it! At least for now. As new strategies and observations come up, I’ll come back and update this article so I can practice what I preach (see tip five).

Are LLMs useful for SEO?

LLMs and SEO work hand in hand. The better you can optimize your web pages for all search engines, the more likely your website will be cited in LLMs. If you’ve been following SEO best practices, many of the LLM SEO ranking factors translate over nicely.

And as you can see from this article, there are a lot of things you can do to help with your search engine rankings in LLMs.

From the technical stuff like having schema markup and using Bing Webmaster Tools to the more content stuff like not using AI-generated content, keeping publish dates fresh, and growing branded searches — there’s a lot.

But this is all good news.

It means that the SEOs who deeply understand the fundamentals will continue to win. And the ones that chase tactics and “growth hacks” are the ones that will struggle the most. I know if you’re reading this blog, are a subscriber of my newsletter, or have made it this far, you are a marketer who focuses on the fundamentals.

So here’s to you (and me). We literally have the ability to influence the future of SEO. Now go out and get some LLM rankings (and email me about it!).