AI SEO: how to get ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google to cite you

AI SEO (also called GEO or AEO) means preparing your site so AI answer engines pick it as a source. What changes compared with classic SEO and what to do first.

Farid Jiménez · November 3, 2026 · 7 min read

AI SEO
GEO
Technical SEO
llms.txt

AI SEO (GEO, *Generative Engine Optimization*, or AEO, *Answer Engine Optimization*) means preparing a site so ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google's AI summaries cite it as a source when they answer. The win is no longer only the click: it is the answer naming your brand and linking your page.

What changes compared with classic SEO

	Classic SEO	AI SEO
Goal	Rank a URL	Be the source the AI cites
Competing unit	The page	The paragraph or the sentence
Strong signal	Inbound links	Clarity, data and brand mentions
Measurement	Position and clicks	Am I cited? With a link? Who else is cited?

The two support each other: without healthy technical SEO (server-rendered HTML, speed, sitemap, structured data), AI crawlers do not even read the content.

How answer engines choose their sources

They extract passages, not pages. A paragraph that fully answers a question is more likely to be cited than a long article that circles it.
They prefer clear entities: who the company is, what it does, where it is, stated the same way on the site, on LinkedIn and in directories.
They weigh external mentions: forums, industry press and reviews where the brand already appears.
They read server HTML. Anything that only appears after running JavaScript is usually left out.

What to do first, in order

One page per real question. A heading with the question as a customer types it and the direct answer in the first two sentences.
Structured data: Organization, Service, FAQPage and BlogPosting in JSON-LD, with the same information the person sees.
An llms.txt file at the root: a Markdown index of the important pages and what each one solves.
Do not block AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended), unless it is a business decision.
Visible update dates and a named author on every article.

How to measure whether it works

Write 10 to 15 questions a customer would ask an assistant ("who does n8n automation in Barranquilla?"), ask them in Perplexity, ChatGPT with search and Google, and record in a table whether your brand appears, whether there is a link and who else is cited. Repeat the same table every two to four weeks. It is probabilistic: nobody can guarantee a citation, but the trend shows quickly.

The baseline: the same table, measured before and after the changes.

In AI SEO the paragraph competes, not the page. Write each one so it stands on its own.

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