Help ChatGPT Find Your Website: How to Make It More Visible

Wonderful World of Websites | Website Wonder Woman

For years, businesses, mine included, have been optimising their websites for search engines, particularly Google. However, search habits are changing. People are increasingly asking AI bots, like ChatGPT, questions they might have once typed into a traditional search engine. These questions can be on any topic, from finding a local service to researching a product or getting recommendations. So, how can you help ChatGPT find your website and why is it important?

Well, firstly, don't panic. The good news is that you don't need to abandon everything you know about SEO and start again to help ChatGPT find your website. You see, many of the things that make a website useful to Google and other search engines also make it easier for AI-powered search tools to understand.

However, there are some important differences and a few things worth checking if you want your website to have the best chance of being discovered.

Why Is It Important to Help ChatGPT Find Your Website?

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Firstly, you might be wondering if any of this really matters to you and your business. After all, if your website already gets visitors from Google, social media, and other sources, why worry about ChatGPT too?

Well, AI searches, including ChatGPT, are being used more frequently. Many people may simply ask a device a question rather than even typing it. By optimising your website for these potential customers, you are creating another opportunity for your website to be found.

If ChatGPT uses one of your pages as a source, someone reading the answer can follow the link through to your website. This is known as AI referral traffic. For a business, that's potentially valuable new traffic coming from a source that simply wasn't part of most marketing strategies a few years ago.

This is not just about getting more clicks either. If someone is asking ChatGPT a detailed question, then they are looking for something specific. For example, imagine someone asking ChatGPT "How long does it take web designers to build a website?" If ChatGPT uses an article from Wonderful World of Websites to help answer that question and provides a link to it, then Lisa and her team have now been introduced to a potential new customer who was actively researching their service.

The value isn't necessarily the quantity of traffic; it's the opportunity to get your business and expertise in front of people at the very moment they're looking for information. That's why it is important to help ChatGPT find your website.

Of course, this does not replace Google searches; it's an additional route for potential customers to find you.

Can ChatGPT Actually Find Websites?

Absolutely, yes.

ChatGPT will search the live web when answering questions and can provide links and citations to the sources it uses. OpenAI says that any public website can potentially appear in ChatGPT searches. That doesn't mean every website will appear, of course.

In the same way that reaching the first page of Google for your keywords isn't guaranteed, there isn't a magic wand you can wave (Lisa will be disappointed by this!) to make ChatGPT recommend your business. OpenAI says its search results are ranked using a number of factors designed to identify relevant and reliable information.

So, what can you do to help ChatGPT find your website? How can you make it accessible, easy to understand, and genuinely useful?

Let's take a look:

1. Help ChatGPT Find Your Website by Making Sure It Can Be Crawled

First and foremost, before worrying about clever content strategies, start with something more basic. Can OpenAI access your website? OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot for its search features. You can control whether this crawler is allowed to access your site through the site's robots.txt file.

If OAI-SearchBot is blocked, your content may not be available for inclusion in ChatGPT's search summaries and snippets. Therefore, it is best to check. If you are not sure how to do this, ask Lisa and her team at Wonderful World of Websites to help, or your SEO specialist to check.

It is also worth me pointing out here that OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot are not the same thing. OAI-SearchBot relates to appearing in ChatGPT searches, while GPTBot relates to content that may be used to improve OpenAI's generative AI models. OAI-SearchBot is the one we are interested in. It helps OpenAI discover website content that could potentially be shown and linked to ChatGPT search results. Therefore to help ChatGPT find your website don't block this crawler.

You can control the two separately. So, for example, you can allow OAI-SearchBot to access your website because you want to have the opportunity to appear in ChatGPT search results, but then you can block GPTBot if you don't want your website's content used for model training.

2. Make It Obvious What Your Business Actually Does

Help ChatGPT find your website a laptop with a megaphone coming out of the screen

I know that sounds ridiculous, but spend a few minutes browsing small-business websites, and you will see why it matters.

For example: A homepage might say: "Helping you achieve your goals." That's great, but what goals? Who are you helping?

A web visitor might work it out from the logo, photographs and navigation. Machines have less tolerance for ambiguity.

Compare that with: " We provide commercial cleaning services to offices, schools and healthcare businesses across South Wales."

Suddenly, there's much less to decipher. Who are you? A commercial cleaning company. What do you do? Clean commercial premises. Who for? Offices, schools, and healthcare businesses. Where? South Wales.

Clear website copy isn't unsophisticated copy. If you want to help ChatGPT find your website, clarity can be a big advantage.

3. Create Proper Pages for Your Main Services

One mistake I regularly see is businesses trying to squeeze everything they offer onto one service page. Imagine a building company offering extensions, loft conversions, kitchen renovations, and garage conversions. Giving each important service its own useful page creates far more context than mentioning all four in a short bullet list.

A strong page can explain:

  • what the service involves;
  • who it is suitable for;
  • common questions customers ask;
  • the process;
  • relevant experience;
  • examples of completed work;
  • geographical areas covered.

This is not only useful information for potential customers, but also useful for conventional SEO and will help ChatGPT find your website and understand exactly what your business provides.

However, a word of caution. The important word here is useful. Creating 30 near-identical pages simply to target 30 slightly different phrases isn't the answer. Websites are ultimately for people, so create pages because you have something worthwhile to tell them.

4. Answer the Questions Your Customers Really Ask

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This is where good blog content becomes particularly valuable and can help ChatGPT find your website.

People often interact with ChatGPT and other AI bots in a conversational way. Rather than searching for something like: "loft conversion Cardiff", they might ask "Do I need planning permission for a loft conversion in Cardiff?" or "Is my house suitable for a loft conversion?". You get my drift.

Think about the questions customers ask you on the phone, in emails, during quotations, or at meetings. Those questions can become extremely useful website content. And don't limit yourself to just obvious FAQs. Some of the best content comes from the questions that require actual expertise to answer: comparisons, costs, pitfalls, misconceptions, alternatives, and situations where one option is better than another. That is where your knowledge becomes valuable. Put that into blogs, and it will help ChatGPT find your website.

5. Don't Just Say You're an Expert - Demonstrate It

Almost every business website claims some variation of: "We pride ourselves on providing a professional, high-quality service." The problem is that anybody can write it. Evidence is much more persuasive.

If you want to help ChatGPT find your website and understand why your business might be a credible source, then you need to give your website substance.

That could include detailed case studies, named authors with relevant experience, customer reviews, original photographs, accreditations, qualifications, awards, research or data you've produced, and genuinely knowledgeable articles/blogs.

A case study saying: We recently completed this project for a client in Newport", isn't particularly informative. Explain the problem. What did the customer need? What did you recommend? Why? What difficulties arose? How did you solve them? What was the outcome?

That is useful information for humans, and it gives search and AI systems considerably more context about your real-world expertise.

6. Make Your Location Clear

Naturally, this is particularly important for local businesses.

If you are an electrician serving customers across South Wales, make that clear on your website. Your address, service areas, and contact details shouldn't require detective work to find.

Your About and Contact pages can reinforce where you are based, while individual service pages can naturally explain areas you cover. However, avoid creating dozens of thin location pages where the only difference is swapping one town name for another, like "Electrician Newport", "Electrician Cardiff", and "Electrician Cwmbran."

That's not useful content. If a location genuinely warrants its own page, give the reader something specific and worthwhile.

7. Build Your Reputation Beyond Your Own Website

Your website doesn't exist in isolation.

If you claim to be a leading expert in your field but nobody else on the internet appears to know you exist, that's not a particularly convincing signal. Therefore, I want you to think about your wider digital footprint.

Are you listed accurately on relevant professional or industry websites? Have local publications mentioned your business? Do reputable websites link to you? Are there genuine customer reviews? Have you contributed expert comments or guest articles elsewhere?

You see, digital PR, quality guest blogging, and traditional link building still have a place. However, the aim shouldn't be to scatter links across hundreds of low-quality websites to help ChatGPT find your website. On the contrary, it's to build a recognisable business with a credible online presence.

8. Write Content Worth Citing

Graphic woman sat at a computer with pages of content coming out of it

This may be one of the biggest opportunities created by AI search.

If everybody writes a generic article called "10 benefits of X", then there is very little reason for any search or AI system to favour yours above the others. To help ChatGPT find your website, you need to give it something better:

Share your experience.

    • Explain what customers commonly get wrong.
    • Compare two approaches and say when you'd choose each one.
    • Publish original examples.
    • Answer awkward questions.
    • Discuss pricing honestly where possible.
    • Challenge a commonly repeated piece of industry advice if you disagree with it – and explain why.

The internet doesn't desperately need another 800-word blog saying the same thing as the previous 100 ones. What it does need are people who actually know their subject sharing information that isn't available everywhere else. Tricky, yes. Impossible, no.

9. Don't Forget Traditional SEO

As I mentioned right at the beginning of this article, trying to help ChatGPT find your website doesn't mean forgetting Google and other search engines. In fact, as I'm sure you've realised by now, many of the fundamentals overlap.

You still need a technically sound, crawlable website with logical navigation, descriptive page titles, useful headings, strong internal links and well-written pages focused on genuine customer needs. Ultimately, your content should make sense to a person first; I always stress this to my clients. There is little to be gained by contorting every single paragraph into something you imagine AI or search engines want to read.

Cater for your customer. Ensure your website clearly explains who you are, what you do, where you operate, and why you know what you're talking about. That's what they need to know, and by doing that you are already building a much stronger foundation for both traditional and AI-driven searches.

Help ChatGPT Find Your Website - But Write For People

Help ChatGPT find your website a 3d graphic of a person in front of a laptop with books and text

AI is changing how people discover information online, but that doesn't mean websites suddenly need to be written for robots. Quite the opposite. After all, humans, your potential customers, are asking ChatGPT the questions. So, if you want to help ChatGPT find your website, you must make it clear, informative, and more authoritative for the people you're trying to reach.

Follow the guidance listed above. None of it is particularly technical (save point 1); it is simply about making sure you have good website content. The difference is that today, a well-written website isn't only helping a potential customer decide whether to contact you; it may also help ChatGPT find your website and decide whether or not to list it in response to a query, ultimately driving fresh traffic your way.

If you would like help reviewing your website content, or creating quality blogs that appeal to both humans and bots, please do not hesitate to get in touch. My name is Heather, and I'm The Content Creator.

Heather the Content Creator A lady with blonde hair in a bob, smiling, wearing a black top

A bit about the author

Heather founded The Content Creator nearly three years ago, combining her love of writing with a genuine passion for helping small businesses and solopreneurs get seen online. She supports her clients with everything from website copy and SEO to AI search visibility, newsletters and social media, taking the stress out of creating content that not only sounds like them, but helps their business grow.

If you need a helping hand with any of these areas, Heather is your go-to girl! We can speak from experience, too, because she works on our own website, helping us keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO and AI search and making sure our content continues to work hard for our business.

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