LLM SEO
What is LLM SEO?
LLM SEO is the work of making your brand and content more likely to be mentioned and cited by large language models (LLMs), such as those behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. It is another name for much the same practice as generative engine optimization, with the focus on the models themselves.
An LLM can draw on two kinds of knowledge. The first is what it learned in training: patterns from a huge snapshot of text, up to a cut-off date. The second is what it retrieves at answer time, when the assistant runs a web search and reads pages. LLM SEO deals with both. For training knowledge, what matters is how widely and consistently your brand is described across the web. For retrieval, what matters is ordinary search visibility and pages that answer clearly.
There is no published ranking algorithm for LLM answers, and no reliable way to guarantee inclusion. Treat claims of special LLM ranking factors with caution, and test changes against measured answers.
Why LLM SEO matters
LLMs are becoming a starting point for research and buying decisions. If a model consistently recommends three tools in your category and yours isn’t one of them, you are missing from a conversation you can’t see in your analytics.
LLM SEO also pushes you towards things that build durable authority: being the source of original facts, getting covered by independent sites and keeping your brand information consistent.
How to improve LLM visibility
- Make sure the AI crawlers you want can reach your site. Blocking search-specific bots such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot can keep you out of those assistants’ answers.
- Publish clear, quotable statements of fact about your product: what it is, who it is for, pricing model, key features. Ambiguity gets filled with guesses.
- Earn mentions on the sites models read and cite: reviews, comparison articles, industry publications, forums and Q&A sites.
- Keep your organisation’s details consistent across your site, profiles and directories, so the model sees one coherent entity.
- Track a fixed set of prompts over time with prompt tracking, so you can tell real change from noise.
LLM SEO FAQ
Can I get my content into ChatGPT’s training data?
You can allow OpenAI’s training crawler, GPTBot, in robots.txt, but OpenAI doesn’t promise any page will be used, and a model only reflects new data after its next training run. Being widely discussed across the web has more effect than any single page.
Is LLM SEO different from GEO?
Not in a meaningful way. Both describe improving how AI models mention and cite you; the names reflect who coined them, not different techniques.
Related SEO terms
A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text to predict and generate language, such as GPT, Gemini or Claude.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how often AI-generated answers mention your brand and cite your pages.
AI visibility is how often and how prominently AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity mention your brand or cite your site.
AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot)
AI crawlers are bots that AI companies use to collect web content for model training or for AI search answers, such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot.
Brand mentions are references to your brand name on other websites or in AI answers, with or without a link to your site.
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is when an AI system fetches relevant documents first and then writes its answer from them.