Jon says: “My additional insight for SEO in 2025 is all about how to rank better in the AI models.

Just like SEO for traditional search, being aware and making sure your brand is visible in the AI models is just as important – as traditional search moves more towards things like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others.”

If it’s just as important as traditional search, does that mean that it's got the potential to bring in as much traffic?

“Not yet, but the beautiful thing about this is that it's early, and we find that the brands that are jumping on this early are getting a distinct competitive advantage over those that are not thinking about this already.

I'm not here to tell you that search in ChatGPT is nearly as high as search in Google or other traditional search methods. What I can say is that it's growing rapidly by the day, and certain things, and the types of things you search, are different.

We'll talk more about this, but people search in natural language and ask more detailed questions to the AI models versus traditional keyword searching in Google, and so we can talk more about that.”

What does ranking better in AI models actually mean in practice? Obviously, you don't have the 10 blue links in this particular scenario.

“If you went into a tool like ChatGPT and said, ‘I want the best coffee in New York City’, it's going to generally provide you with 5, maybe 10, options for the best coffee in New York City. You didn't ask it for 5 or 10 options, but it always knows to give you options and talk about things.

It's not going to say, ‘X coffee shop is the best coffee in New York City.’ It's going to try to give you options and learn more about your tastes and what you like. Do you prefer Fairtrade organic coffee? Do you prefer strong black coffee? It's going to have that conversation with you so, over time, instead of just ranking for keywords, you have to think about what types of prompts and conversations you want to be included in.

That is a different approach to thinking about how you rank. The AI models do identify: ‘These are our top 5, 10, or 20 brands or companies we're going to recommend given a certain situation.’”

Is the process for getting ranked quite different compared with the process for getting ranked in a more conventional search engine?

“I think that the nice thing for this audience is that it actually is very similar, but there are distinct differences.

I'm not about to tell you that traditional SEO is dead. That is absolutely not true. Traditional SEO is very important because getting that content out there and making sure that you're an authoritative brand is the most important thing you can be doing for the AI models. Now, there are additional things you can be doing (and we can talk more about those as well), but really, it's about presenting your brand in a way that is almost more like what a robot would understand and listen to, rather than just writing directly to humans.

It's a balance between: it has to be human-generated, authoritative content, but written in a simple, easy way for the AI models to scrape and read in real time, so that they can provide you as an answer. It's a little bit of a balancing game.

It's funny, SEOs used to focus on the algorithms and what they had to do just to appeal to Google, and then it was all about the user, and algorithms were actually clever enough to understand proper content, what to take from that content, and who the authority in that particular industry was.”

Are we back to actually writing for robots again? If so, is there going to be a timeline between that and just writing normally and naturally again?

“I wouldn't say that we're writing for robots. I'd say that we're writing certain types of content and pieces of information that's more easily accessible for ‘robots’.

You still need to provide anecdotes and make your content feel very comfortable and very human-written. You want it to feel good to your customers, or they're going to click off the page, and then it's not going to really matter.

But what you do need to do is, for example, instead of writing four sentences in a paragraph, if there's a way to provide that as a bulleted list, the AI models prefer the bullets in a list rather than the four sentences in a paragraph. Same information, same tone. You can write it in very similar ways, but organising information into more structured ways can be a little bit more effective for the AI models to see it.

Like I said, it's a balance. You don't want a whole page of bulleted lists. That doesn't look very good to the user either, but if there's a way to provide certain key information in that format, sometimes that is really effective.”

I guess what you’re saying is you need to write for users and the robots that are reading your text.

So, if a piece of content reads better to users in paragraph form, then maybe include the paragraphs first of all and then summarise the article afterwards in bullet form. Would that be a fair way to do it?

“Absolutely. You can definitely do that, and there are different ways you can balance that action there.

Another great example and a great tip I'd give, when you're talking about yourself and your company, is the one thing we see a lot of our brands get wrong. They'll say, ‘This is who we are. This is what we do. This is what we focus on.’ It'll be a paragraph about who you are and what you do. That's great, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but you should also then have a conclusion sentence to that section, which says, ‘I am X company that does X thing really well for X user community because we do X.’ and it's much more structured.

It sounds a little more robotic, and it's not exactly the way you want to convey your brand generally to your audience, but including that more fluffy version of it and then following up with the core statement – that snippet, that little one-sentence piece – it’s easily pulled out of your content and placed into an AI answer, a Google snippet overview, or things like that.

Those types of pieces of content are very, very important: to be very clear and crisp about you and your story in one sentence, if possible, along with the traditional language or way you present this in your content generally.”

How important is traditional or more conventional HTML markup, such as headings, tags, and italicised elements? Are those important for bots as well?

“They do love markup. That is one thing that the AI models really love. They look to see headers, H2s, subsections, and things like that. That is very, very helpful.

Over time, I'm guessing that will be less important but, right now, I like to say that the AI scrapers (like the OpenAI scrapers) are sort of like Google in 1998. They're just figuring out how to read content and how to understand what they're looking at. The more you can structure and make it easier for them to see that, the better.

Now, like I said, over time that'll probably be less important, but right now it is really helpful if you can structure your pages with that clear schema/markup.”

How important is authority or industry authority to these bots? Do they actually make a concerted effort to list websites that are perceived to be authorities in their industry, or is it all about the quality and relevance of the piece of content?

“This is the number one thing that I think is most misunderstood about some of these models. They are actually less likely to just accept what Google has decided as authoritative, and more so look into the actual content you're providing. It's a much more meritocratic system.

Here are some stats I'll give you, which I believe Search Engine Journal quoted: 52% of the AI overviews in Google come from page 1 links, meaning almost half, and 48% come from pages 2 through infinity. They come from not the first page. That's because Gemini (even going against Google's traditional algorithm) is actually saying, ‘We want to find the best piece of content for this answer. If it comes from page 3, because that's the best content, we'll take it.’

The way it determines that is by looking at every piece of content written about this topic, comparing them, and seeing what seems to be the best and makes the most sense as far as being the most densely packed with information, it has all the right types of things you want to cover, and it talks well about the competition if it needs to do that. It's not just going to say, ‘Everybody else stinks and I'm great.’ It's going to be much more authoritative in that way.

We found that the best piece of content you can write to help promote yourself and the AI models actually might give a boost to some of your competitors, if you have to mention that they're pretty good too, but that's okay because you are now telling the AI models that you’re producing the best authoritative content. So, next time you write a piece of content, they're going to come back to the well and come back to you again.”

How does a brand tend to be featured and represented in ChatGPT?

What are the best opportunities, and what do you have to do to ensure that you're not trying to over-optimize things and annoy both the bots and the users by selling your brand too much?

“It is that natural balance. Like I mentioned before, traditional SEO and traditional content writing are not dead in any way. It is absolutely important to make sure that you are conveying your brand in the way that you want to. At the same time, you need to be able to explain why you’re better. You want your content to be pumping you up and pumping your brand to both the humans reading it and also to the AI models to suggest it.

Like I said, there is that bit of a balance, but we find that there are certain types of content written in a certain way that we have found to be most likely to be cited/most likely to be used by the AI models when giving answers.

What we have done at ChatRank is help people understand how to write that content, what type of content to include, and then publish that over time.

Now, there are ways that you could maybe publish two pieces of content: one more geared towards your user community and one more geared towards the AI models. That's a strategy for you and your brand team. Ultimately, we really think that the content has to be written in an authoritative way for both your human eyeballs and for the AI models to understand it most effectively.”

What measurable impact does this actually have? How do you measure traffic or uplift in brand awareness because of being featured here?

“This is something that's developing over time. What we can say right away is that people are using the AI model to sort of do window shopping. It's sort of like a billboard.

If you were going to say, ‘I want to find the next software for PR outreach/media outreach’, you’re going to go to ChatGPT and explain, ‘This is my brand. Please read my website. Learn everything you can about me as a person and me as a brand. This is my budget, this is what I want to accomplish, and this is what I want to look at. I want to go find podcasts, local blogs, and 1 Forbes journalist to help me get the word out there about my brand, and I need you to give me 5 options.’ ChatGPT, the AI model, is going to go and find you the best options based on your parameters (based on your prompt), and then provide you with those five answers

Now, you might not click right away and actually go buy from that page, but it's OK because, implanted in your head, you now know who those five companies are. Very often, you’re now going to download that list of 5 names and reach out to each of them for a demo. So, you are seeing increased traffic/increased volume.

I can tell you this because, at JustReachOut (once we started implementing what we've now built into ChatRank as a product), we have started seeing that. Every week, we're now getting inbounds from ChatGPT, from Claude, from Gemini, and from Perplexity. We see it essentially as a free channel for us, now that we've already established our brand in these models because, again, you don't have to pay for Google Ads.

Once you're in the model and you're ranking well (obviously, you have to maintain that over time, and that's important to track and monitor), you can start reaping the benefits of that right away.”

Are you finding that certain users are actually gravitating towards an AI search engine and just using that as the initial search place to go to, to actually do the initial queries and then drill down and decide to make a purchase decision from there?

Or is it more part of an omnichannel approach where they perhaps use that, then go back to Google, and then look at some of their social media activity before making that kind of decision?

“It's an excellent question. It's something we actually just wrote a blog post about a couple of weeks ago, because this was my experience.

I was buying a new backpack for myself as a work bag, so I did exactly what you just described. I went to ChatGPT. I described exactly what I wanted my backpack to be. I got 5 great options. I then went to Google and did some more research, went and watched some YouTube videos on my top 2 choices, and then ended up purchasing from Google.

For me, it was more of an omnichannel approach, where I just did my research in the AI model. It really helped me hone down on the 2 or 3 that I thought would be most effective. I could have clicked through to those pages, but I ended up going to Google, searching for those brands, and then watching their social content on the product. I took it that way.

I’m hearing from more and more friends that they are just exclusively using the AI models. I personally use all of the above, but I think that journey is evolving over time.

As these models get smarter, that will help you convert more through the model itself. Today, I see it more as digital advertising or like a billboard, which is extremely important. It's just like doing an Instagram ad or a Meta ad. It is just about finding the way to get your brand out there in front of consumers, and then how they purchase, you’ll see that over time.

One tip I'll say is, if you are asking your customers how they found you, please include AI models like ChatGPT as a referral source, because you will start seeing more and more people writing that in. That is obviously a quick way to learn and help yourself.”

I was just about to ask you how you go about measuring leads from AI models.

Is that something you have to do manually through some kind of form, or is there software that can help you with this as well?

“You can do UTM tracking on the AI model referrals. That is something you should absolutely implement if you want to look at that. You can then also see, more anecdotally or qualitatively, from referrals that people are entering when they sign up

There are quantitative and qualitative ways to look at it, but again, this is evolving over time. I think the AI models will eventually get better at showing you that they are directly leading to additional leads and additional sales for your business.

OpenAI is not going to hit their valuation targets on $20 a month from me or you. They're going to need to figure out new revenue channels eventually. Right now, I think they're being a little coy about it and learning from their users but, over time, I think they are going to be more direct with showing you how they are adding value to your website and your growth as a revenue business.”

You started talking about ChatGPT, but you also mentioned Claude, Perplexity, etc.

Is ChatGPT still the best source of leads?

“It's the most traffic. I'd say that ChatGPT and Google Gemini (which produces the Google AI overviews and the Google AI stuff) are by far number 1 and 2 – by a long shot.

I think they represent over 80% of the traffic of the AI models. I think Claude and Perplexity are 3 and 4. In our experience, there are differences between these different models and how you can potentially rank in them.

For now, anything that we're telling you to do and how we're showing people how to do it is very important, and over time, we will get more specific about the individual models.

One thing I will say is, we are producing different ways to specifically target Google AI overviews and Google snippets, because those are so important when you do search a term and, above the fold, you see an AI overview. Being in that is highly, highly advantageous for your brand, so we are targeting that specifically.

Otherwise, it's mostly ChatGPT and Google Gemini because they have the most users today.”

Is there anything up-and-coming in the space that perhaps isn't delivering traffic at the moment, but you've got an eye on to potentially check out in the next few months, as something that might be the next thing to come?

“I think a lot of these agentic AI companies. Basically, having an AI agent go through your emails and your calendar and your schedule and your work product and say, ‘Based on what I'm doing here, can you recommend for me some other tools I should be using or something else I can be doing to help me with my day-to-day, help me with generating more leads, help me with converting my leads, or help me with any part of my business?’

Those AI models are all built on top of the core AIs that we're talking about, but those types of agentic AI systems are getting better and better by the day, and helping you figure out everything from how to squash bugs in your code to how to generate more leads, or convert leads that you already have in your pipeline through HubSpot or things like that.

There are hundreds of those new tools popping up every day. Some are good. Some are not so good. But I think, overall, we are going to see some go to the top there, as far as being the most effective. Those are going to be (for me, personally, at least) really helpful to optimize myself as I'm going through my day-to-day.”

What's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“The key takeaway is that traditional SEO is not dead, but there are plenty of things you can be doing to actually improve how your brand ranks in the AI models, in addition to producing the content you're already doing.

There are lots of things we talked about today, but those ultimately are the best ways to get in front of this new way that users are searching.”

Jon Mest is Co-Founder at ChatRank and CEO of JustReachOut, and you can find him over at ChatRank.ai.