Ask an AI assistant for "a good pilates studio in Jersey City" or "the best linen sleepwear brand" and it will answer with names. Those names come from somewhere. If you understand where, you can do something about it.
Where assistants get their answers
Most assistants with web access do two things when you ask for a recommendation. They run searches, much like you would, and read the pages that come back. Then they look for agreement: a brand that appears on its own site, in directories, in reviews and in articles, described the same way each time, is a safe answer. A brand that exists only as a logo and a tagline is not.
This is why the fundamentals of good SEO still matter. The assistants lean on the same index and many of the same trust signals that Google does. What changes is how much weight plain, specific, machine-readable facts now carry.
Say what you are, in words
Many brand sites never state the obvious. "A second look. A better idea." is a fine tagline, but an assistant needs the sentence under it: an independent growth studio in New York City and North Jersey that does websites, paid media, search, creative, tracking fixes and dashboards for founder-led brands. Put that sentence on the home page, the about page and the first line of every service page.
Give the facts a structure
Structured data (Schema.org markup) tells search engines and assistants what a page is: an organization, a service, an article, a set of questions and answers. It is invisible to visitors and worth its weight to machines. At minimum, mark up your organization, your services and any FAQ section. Keep the facts in the markup identical to the facts on the page.
Be consistent everywhere you are listed
Your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn page, directory listings and your own site should describe the business the same way, with the same name, the same location and the same category. Inconsistency reads as uncertainty, and assistants are built to avoid uncertain answers.
Assistants recommend what they can verify. Make verification easy.
Answer the questions people actually ask
Assistants quote pages that answer a question directly. A page called "What is a tracking fix, and do I need one?" with a clear answer in the first paragraph is far more citable than a page of adjectives. Build an FAQ from the questions customers ask you in real life, and keep the answers short and specific.
Earn mentions, not just links
Reviews on your Google Business Profile, a mention in a local publication, a guest appearance on a podcast, a listing in an industry directory: each is a third party agreeing that you exist and do what you say. For a new brand these mentions do more for AI visibility than any technical trick.
Measure it
Referrals from assistants show up in analytics with their own sources. Watch them alongside organic search, and ask new customers where they heard about you. The answer "I asked ChatGPT" is already common, and it is the best evidence that this work is paying off.
This is the thinking behind our search, SEO and AI visibility service. If you want to know how you show up today, book a free consultation.
All articles