How to Get Cited by AI: Key GEO Tactics

Believe it or not, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) era is rapidly transitioning into the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) era, and people are moving from searching for answers on search engines to asking Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude for immediate answers.

Therefore, if you are a website or blog owner, you need to start learning how to make your content recognized and referenced by these AI tools.

Here are a few tips that can enable your content to be cited by Generative AI tools:

• Build Your Brand Trust and Exposure

In terms of SEO, websites are ranked based on their domain authority and the number of quality backlinks they have. 

However, in GEO, sites are ranked based on how much they are trusted in their niche and how many sites have vouched for them as a reliable source.

So, if you want to be trusted enough by Large Language Models (LLMs) and get your content cited by them, you need to build your brand’s trust and exposure. 

You can do so by getting brand mentions, being more visible, and getting more references from other sites in your niche. 

The best ways to get this visibility include having active social media accounts and being active on social media forums like Quora and Reddit. 

Meanwhile, you can get brand mentions by writing guest posts, partnering with other websites in your niche, and being included in articles that talk about “The best…” or “Top….” brands in your niche.

Getting backlinks from trusted websites can also help. 

In addition to this, you can get AI models to trust you by writing expert content that is focused on just your niche and building consistency in it over time.

Don’t be a brand that writes content on anything and everything.

• Structure Your Content Properly

AI models can only understand content when it is well-structured, so make sure you properly arrange your content.

Use Headings from H1-to-H4 to enable both human readers and AI models to understand the importance of each heading and the scope of your content. 

Also, make sure you group your content into numbered lists or bulleted points whenever the need arises. This is one of the ways of making your content readable and easy to understand. 

• Write Great and Deep Content

Bear in mind that no matter the structure of the content, your content needs to actually be useful and detailed to be cited. 

Most articles online usually say the same thing about a particular topic, so these AI models usually favour in-depth content that addresses the topic from different perspectives and contains personal experiences.

So, if you want your content to be cited, go beyond the typical content on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and give a more detailed response with a different point of view.

• Keep Your Answers Short and Direct

If you are writing content with AI citations in mind, you need to make your answers as short and as direct as possible. 

This is because LLMs can cite just one sentence, definition, or paragraph from your content and ignore the rest of the page.

They just pick the parts of the article that are direct, well-explained, and can help them confidently answer the questions they are asked. 

So, if you are optimizing your content for citation, do not write long paragraphs or sentences that bury answers in a way that will make it hard for these AI tools to extract and use. 

If your heading is “What is a Noun?”, start by directly defining a Noun in the shortest way possible in the first sentence before you can go on to add any other detail you want to include.

Towards the end of your content, you can also add a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section where you can give short and self-contained answers to some of the key questions in the article. 

LLMs can also find answers from this section helpful and use them.

• Do Not Neglect SEO

Yes, I know I said GEO doesn’t use the typical SEO factors to rank sites, but there are still a few SEO factors you need to optimize for to get great results with AI models. 

These factors include:

• Indexing and Crawling: If your website is not indexable or crawlable, AI models will find it hard to access it and check whether your content is good enough to be cited or not.  

• On-page Optimization: AI models care about meta tags, too. They consider them when checking your content for answers. 

• Page Speed: Imagine if your website is checked for an AI model and it takes forever to load the pages. The model will most likely move on to the next site because it has just milliseconds to find and present its user with an answer. 

Final Thoughts

In an era where most people prefer to ask AI tools for answers rather than check multiple sites on SERPs, you should ensure your content is among those cited by these tools.

Although there are different criteria used by each tool for citation, the tips shared in this article can help you stand a very good chance of being referenced by most of the top AI tools.