AI SEO - Get Cited by Top AI Tools

What you will walk away with: the specific changes that make your business citable in AI search engines, not just Google.

This is the part most local SEO courses do not cover yet. AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode) now answer a significant portion of local queries. Getting cited in them requires slightly different optimization than ranking in Google's local pack.

What AI engines look for when deciding which business to recommend:

Data accuracy across platforms. Your NAP must be identical on Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, and your website. AI engines cross-check.

Active reviews above a threshold. ChatGPT typically excludes businesses with average ratings below 4.0 and response rates below 5%. Not ranked lower. Excluded entirely.

Structured content with direct answers. AI engines extract direct answers from FAQ-style content. Pages with clear question-and-answer structures get cited more.

Schema markup. LocalBusiness schema with the most specific subtype.

Diversity of mentions. Perplexity in particular pulls from a wide range of sources. Being mentioned across multiple directories, news sites, and community pages increases citation probability.

Specific actions to take this week:

Allow AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt file. Make sure GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, and Google-Extended are NOT blocked. If you do not know where your robots.txt is, ask Claude:

• Check my website's robots.txt file at [yourdomain.com/robots.txt]. Tell me
• if it allows or blocks any of these AI crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot,
• PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended, anthropic-ai. If any are
• blocked, give me the corrected robots.txt content to allow all of them
• while keeping any other rules intact.

Add an FAQ section to your homepage and every service page. AI engines love FAQ schema and pull answers directly from it. Make the questions natural ("How much does emergency plumbing cost in London?" not "Plumbing pricing"). Have Claude write them:

• Read business-info.md. Generate 8 FAQ items for my homepage that are the
• actual questions a customer would ask before booking. Each answer should
• be 2 to 3 sentences, direct, and useful. Output as FAQPage schema in
• JSON-LD format that I can paste into my homepage head.

Create one comprehensive "About" page that clearly establishes your business as an entity. AI engines use this to understand who you are. Include your founder, your team, your certifications, your service area, your history. Write it like Wikipedia would. This is what makes you "citable."

Get mentioned on Reddit. Perplexity pulls roughly 24% of its citations from Reddit. Find subreddits relevant to your area and industry (r/London, r/Pakistan, r/[your_city]). Be genuinely helpful in answering questions. Mention your business only when it is the right answer to someone's actual question. This is not spam — this is showing up where people are already asking.

Get listed in industry "best of" articles. AI engines heavily cite listicles like "10 best plumbers in London" or "Top wedding photographers in [city]." Reach out to local bloggers and small news sites. Offer to be interviewed or featured. Even one mention in a third-party "best of" article significantly boosts AI citation probability.

Track your AI visibility. Once a month, ask these queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode:

• "Best [your service] in [your city]"
• "[Your service] near [your city]"
• "Who is a good [your profession] in [your city]?"

Document where you appear and where you do not. If you are not appearing in ChatGPT but you are appearing in Gemini, the gap is usually your third-party citation profile (ChatGPT pulls more from Bing and Reddit). If you are appearing in Gemini but not Perplexity, the gap is usually unique third-party content about you.