Showing up in answers from Claude and other LLMs isn't about flipping a switch or adding some special markup to your site. To improve your odds of being mentioned in a response, a business first needs to be findable, understandable, and seen as a genuinely relevant source on its topic.
This new visibility discipline is usually called GEO — Generative Engine Optimization (also referred to as "AI search optimization"). It largely builds on SEO principles: making your pages accessible, answering people's real questions precisely, building authority, and maintaining a consistent presence across the web.
The key difference is the goal. SEO is mainly about getting a page to rank in search results. GEO is about making sure your information can be understood, used, reworded, or cited inside an answer generated by tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
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00SEO vs. GEO — the short version
SEO
Goal: visibility in search results
Platforms: Google, Bing, etc.
Content: answers a search intent
Authority: backlinks, expertise, reputation
Metrics: rankings, impressions, clicks, traffic
GEO
Goal: visibility inside generated answers
Platforms: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot
Content: clear, easily extractable information
Authority: citations, mentions, brand consistency
Metrics: mentions, citations, sources used, Share of Voice
A solid GEO strategy rests on a solid SEO foundation. A page that's hard to crawl, thin on information, and lacking authority doesn't suddenly perform just because it's been "optimized for AI."
01How Claude and Other LLMs Actually Build Their Answers
Tools like Claude aren't a classic search engine listing ten links on one results page. Depending on the query, they either answer from the model's built-in knowledge or run a live web search to pull in more current information. When a live search runs, the model can show citations and links to the sources it used — no position is ever guaranteed, and different providers use different signals to decide what's relevant and trustworthy.
During a search, the model can break your original question into several narrower sub-queries and pull from multiple search providers to find content that fits.
For a business, that means there are several distinct levels of visibility:
being a well-known enough brand to get associated with a topic directly;
having pages that are likely to get picked up in a search;
being mentioned on other sites that these systems crawl or reference.
SEOsteroid.com analyzes any page on your site and suggests, one click at a time, what content would close these visibility gaps.
02Technical Accessibility — the Foundation
Even a great page is useless if the right bot can't reach it. This is where crawling, indexability, site architecture, and server configuration come in.
Check indexing and accessibility. For OpenAI's models specifically, a site wanting to be eligible for inclusion in ChatGPT Search needs to allow crawling by OAI-SearchBot. Other providers run their own crawlers with similar requirements, so it's worth checking each provider's documentation. Either way, you need to make sure your host, CDN, or bot-protection setup isn't blocking these crawlers' official IP ranges.
One important distinction (specific to OpenAI): it associates GPTBot with potential use of content for model training, while OAI-SearchBot is the crawler responsible for search and for content appearing in ChatGPT results. Other AI providers, including Anthropic, have their own separate crawlers and policies — it's worth checking each one directly rather than assuming they work the same way.
The SEO basics still apply in parallel, regardless of which AI tools you're optimizing for: public, indexable pages, no accidental noindex tags, a working XML sitemap, a properly configured robots.txt, and internal linking that actually reaches your strategic content. Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow can help with broader crawling and indexing too.
Structured data (Schema.org). Markup (Article, Organization, Person, Product, LocalBusiness in JSON-LD) helps clarify what's on a page and how its pieces relate, regardless of which LLM might read it. An Organization schema can formalize your company name and official site; a Person schema helps identify a content's author. But structured data doesn't guarantee a citation from any model — it's a clarity tool, not a lever you can pull for visibility.
Do you need an llms.txt file? No, it shouldn't be treated as a prerequisite for any AI system. The idea behind llms.txt is to make it easier for language models to find a site's key content, which can be useful — but no major provider currently lists it as a requirement for inclusion or citation. Your effort is better spent on site quality, accessibility, and authority.
SEOsteroid.com delivers site-structure recommendations based on a technical audit of any given page — one click.
03Content Optimization
Content is one of the main levers in GEO. A page needs to make it obvious, fast, what it's claiming, what question it answers, and what that answer is based on.
Answer the questions your audience is actually asking. Conversational search — whether through Claude, ChatGPT, or similar tools — favors longer, more detailed queries than classic keyword searches: someone might ask "Which SEO agency should I pick for a B2B Webflow site?" instead of just "SEO agency Webflow" — then follow up with constraints, comparisons, or alternatives. Your GEO strategy should start from the real questions prospects ask: problems they're facing, comparisons, selection criteria, pricing, methods, alternatives, timelines, industry-specific quirks.
The principle here is Content-Answer Fit: content should map precisely to the question it's meant to answer. A good habit is to put a short, self-contained answer right under an important H2 or H3, before going into detail.
Structure information so it's easy to extract:
an H1 that precisely describes the main topic
H2s/H3s corresponding to distinct questions or subtopics
reasonably short paragraphs
explicit definitions
lists, where the content actually calls for them
tables for comparisons
clearly separated steps
a targeted FAQ
data that always comes with context and a source
The goal isn't to turn every article into a string of bullet points — it's to make each piece of information identifiable on its own, independent of the surrounding text.
Create content that's actually worth citing. Rewording the top ten Google results in different phrasing creates very little extra value. To become a source worth citing — by Claude, ChatGPT, or any other model — a company needs to offer something others don't: a proprietary methodology, examples from real projects, expert analysis, a case study, tests, in-depth comparisons, or well-documented internal data. Expertise has to be visible in the content itself, not just claimed.
Freshness matters a lot on fast-moving topics — a guide about AI tools or a web technology needs updating whenever features, best practices, or tools change.
SEOsteroid.com generates content optimized to show up in AI answers, for any page on your site — one click.
04Building Brand Authority
A company doesn't build its own reputation in isolation. If a site claims expertise but no other source backs that up, the claim is hard to verify. A brand that's regularly mentioned by media, partners, customers, or specialized platforms builds a much stronger digital footprint.
Work on E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust). Expert content should be traceable to a real, identifiable author and a real company. Author pages, bios, professional credentials, client case studies, publish and update dates, documented methodology, and external sources all help make that expertise verifiable. Transparency matters too — a company should clearly explain what it does, for which clients, using what methods, and with what skills.
Earn mentions and citations on other sites. A brand can be cited without ever getting a backlink. A press article, a solution comparison, a partner testimonial, or a discussion in an industry community can all associate a brand with expertise. PR, digital PR, editorial partnerships, trade media, professional directories, and industry platforms are all part of a GEO strategy. Quality matters far more than quantity here: dozens of irrelevant mentions create much less value than one detailed citation in a genuinely respected industry publication.
Build a consistent brand entity across the web. Your company name, what you do, your positioning, services, location, leadership, and contact details should stay consistent across your official site, social profiles, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, professional platforms, and any articles written about you. An agency that describes itself as a communications agency in one place, an IT contractor in another, a design studio somewhere else, and a consultancy elsewhere — without ever explaining how those roles relate — sends a much more ambiguous signal.
SEOsteroid.com suggests content that strengthens a page's E-E-A-T and structural fixes for brand consistency — one click.
05Multi-Channel Presence
Your site is your primary source of information, but it's not your only one. A multi-channel presence multiplies the points of corroboration around your company: LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos where the format fits, customer reviews, your Google Business Profile, interviews, media coverage, industry blogs, and professional communities. The goal isn't to be everywhere — it's to be where it actually matters for your market.
Build external signals around your brand. Take a Webflow-focused agency as an example. Its site can publish services pages and technical guides — but its credibility becomes much easier to verify if its team also publishes analysis on LinkedIn, if clients showcase joint projects, if the agency shows up in specialized resource lists, and if third-party sites cite it on Webflow-related topics. That's how a purely self-declared claim turns into a set of converging external signals that any LLM can pick up on.
Keep information consistent across channels. This external presence backfires when the information published in different places contradicts itself. Any change to positioning, name, address, or offering needs to gradually roll out across the key platforms where the brand appears. Consistency doesn't mean publishing the exact same description everywhere — the message can adapt to the channel, as long as the core business and factual details stay recognizable.
SEOsteroid.com flags which page content should be aligned with your other channels — one click.
06How to Measure Whether You're Showing Up in AI Answers
GEO can't be managed by looking at organic Google traffic alone. Measurement needs to focus directly on what generative engines — Claude, ChatGPT, and others — are actually answering: does your brand show up, in what context, against which competitors, and which pages are being cited.
Test the prompts your prospects actually use. Build a set of queries that reflect your customers' real decision journey, and run them across the tools your audience actually uses — Claude, ChatGPT, and others. For example:
"Which agency should I pick to redesign a Webflow site?"
"What are the best Webflow agencies in Paris?"
"Which agency can migrate a WordPress site to Webflow without losing SEO?"
"Alternatives to [competitor] for a B2B Webflow project?"
Mix informational, comparative, and transactional queries. Review the answers regularly to see whether your brand is mentioned, with what characteristics, alongside which competitors, and based on which sources.
Track mentions, citations, and sources. An AI visibility audit can gradually turn into real ongoing reporting. For each prompt you test, track:
whether the brand is mentioned (yes/no)
which competitors show up
which sources are cited (URL/domain)
which page on your site is worth optimizing based on the result
Repeating this on a stable set of prompts, across the different AI tools your audience uses, lets you track a kind of Share of Voice across AI answers and spot topics where competitors currently have the edge.
One extra signal worth watching, specific to OpenAI: traffic from ChatGPT Search links can carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so you can track those visits in your analytics. Other providers may offer similar tracking parameters — worth checking their documentation directly.
SEOsteroid.com generates content targeting the gaps your report surfaces, page by page — one click.
07Common Mistakes That Keep You Out of AI Answers
Treating GEO as a fully separate discipline from SEO. A poorly structured, hard-to-crawl site with thin content already starts at a disadvantage.
Relying on classic SEO alone. A page can rank well and still offer little that's directly usable in a conversational answer.
Generic content written just to cover a keyword, where the actual answer gets buried under paragraphs of intro fluff.
No identifiable authors.
Marketing claims that can't be verified.
Neglecting external mentions and letting contradictory brand descriptions pile up across platforms.
Technical missteps: accidentally blocking an AI crawler, a misconfigured robots.txt, orphaned pages, or a CDN/WAF blocking legitimate crawlers.
It's worth checking both your crawl rules and any protection mechanisms that might block the crawlers used by Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI systems. Neither Schema.org, nor llms.txt, nor repeating your brand name over and over will force a citation from any of them. The real strategy is a lot less flashy: produce genuinely useful resources, make them technically accessible, and steadily build your brand's authority in your market.
SEOsteroid.com fixes these common content mistakes for any page on your site — one click.