LLM SEO: Make Sure ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity Describe Your Brand Correctly
When someone asks an AI assistant about your organisation, your services or your industry, the reply shapes their first impression of you. LLM SEO is the work of making that reply accurate, complete and fair. Net Branding Limited helps New Zealand and international organisations understand how large language models currently describe them, and then improves the sources those models rely on.
This page is about brand representation inside AI assistants. If your goal is to appear in AI generated search summaries, see generative engine optimisation. If you want to be chosen as the single direct answer, see answer engine optimisation. For an overview of all AI search services, visit the AI search hub.
Want to know what AI assistants say about you right now? We will run a structured set of questions through the major platforms and show you the answers.
What AI assistants are saying about your brand
Ask ChatGPT “who are the best accountants in Hamilton”, or ask it to describe your company by name, and you will get a confident answer. That answer may be right. It may also be out of date, mix you up with a similarly named business, list a service you stopped offering years ago or leave you out entirely while naming a competitor.
Most organisations have never checked. That matters, because a growing number of people use AI assistants to shortlist providers before they visit a single website. An inaccurate description can cost you an enquiry without you ever knowing it happened.
Problems we commonly find when we first query the major platforms include:
- Outdated contact details, addresses or service areas.
- Services described too narrowly or too broadly.
- Confusion with another organisation that has a similar name.
- Competitors recommended for questions you are well placed to answer.
- No mention at all for core topics in your field.
None of this means the AI tool is broken. It reflects the information the model can find and trust about you. Change that information, and over time the description changes too.
What LLM SEO is, and how it differs from GEO and AEO
LLM SEO is the practice of improving how large language models understand, describe and recommend your organisation. A large language model is the technology behind tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Some people call this work ChatGPT SEO, because ChatGPT is the best known assistant, but the same principles apply across all of them.
The focus of LLM SEO is your brand as an entity: who you are, what you do, who you serve and why you are credible. It sits alongside two related disciplines that answer different questions:
| Discipline | Main question | Typical measure |
|---|---|---|
| LLM SEO | Do AI assistants describe our brand accurately and recommend us? | Accuracy and sentiment of brand descriptions, share of mentions |
| GEO | Are we included as a source in AI search summaries? | Inclusion and citations in AI Overviews and similar features |
| AEO | Are we selected as the single direct answer? | Featured snippets, voice answers, direct answer selection |
The three overlap, and work on one usually helps the others. Keeping them separate helps you see which problem you actually have, and spend accordingly.
How large language models form a view of your organisation
Language models build their picture of you from two broad sources. The first is training data: a large snapshot of public text gathered before the model was released. The second is live retrieval: many assistants now search the web while answering, then read and summarise the pages they find. Perplexity cites its sources openly, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude can all retrieve current pages in many situations.
This has practical consequences:
- Your website must be easy for AI crawlers to reach and read, with key facts in the page content rather than hidden in scripts or images.
- Information about you should be consistent everywhere it appears, from your Google Business Profile to industry directories.
- Independent sources matter. Reviews, news coverage, association listings and genuine mentions help confirm what you say about yourself.
- Pages that state facts clearly, with names, places and specifics, are easier for a model to quote accurately.
Our article on how LLM retrieval pipelines evaluate information density and source citation explains the retrieval side in more depth.
How our LLM SEO process works
Our LLM SEO work follows a clear sequence, aligned with our wider process.
Assess how each platform describes you
We build a set of questions that reflect how your customers actually ask: brand questions, service questions, comparison questions and local questions. We run them through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, record the answers and note which sources are cited. Because answers vary between sessions, we repeat the checks rather than relying on a single result. You receive a plain summary of what is accurate, what is missing and what is wrong.
Fix the sources models rely on
Next we correct and strengthen the information models draw on. On your website that means clear service, about and location pages, consistent organisation details and structured data. Our schema and entity optimisation work sits here. Off your website it means aligning your Google Business Profile, directory listings and profiles so they tell the same story. We prioritise the fixes most likely to change how you are described.
Build authority and monitor change
Finally we help you earn genuine third party mentions through useful content, industry participation and digital PR, supported by our link building service. We then repeat the assessment at agreed intervals and report what has changed. Results build gradually, so we focus on direction and consistency rather than any single answer.
If you would like to talk through what AI assistants are getting wrong about you, Cathy will give you an honest view of what can be improved and how long it is likely to take.
Can you rank in ChatGPT?
People often ask us how to rank in ChatGPT. The honest answer is that ChatGPT does not have rankings in the way Google does. There is no position one, no public ranking report and no official webmaster tool that shows which prompts mention you. Answers change with the wording of the question, the user’s location and history, and whether the assistant searches the web at that moment.
What you can do is improve the likelihood that ChatGPT and other assistants describe you accurately and include you when you are a genuinely good fit. The factors within your control are familiar:
- Clear, factual pages that state what you do, where and for whom.
- Original content that offers first hand knowledge rather than repeating what others have said.
- Consistent details across your website, listings and profiles.
- Real reviews and independent mentions from credible sources.
- A technically sound site that crawlers can access easily, supported by technical SEO.
Be cautious of any provider who promises a guaranteed ChatGPT ranking or shows a single screenshot as proof. We measure progress across many prompts over time, which gives a far more reliable picture.
Who benefits most from LLM SEO
LLM SEO is valuable for any organisation that people research before contacting. It matters most where buyers ask open questions, compare options or need reassurance before they commit.
Situations where LLM SEO often makes a clear difference include:
- Professional services firms, where people ask AI tools to explain options and recommend providers.
- B2B and technology companies with complex offerings that AI tools may oversimplify.
- Organisations that have rebranded, merged, moved or changed services, leaving old information online.
- Businesses with a name similar to another organisation.
- Health, finance and legal providers, where accuracy is especially important.
- Exporters and tourism operators whose overseas customers research through AI assistants.
We work with organisations across New Zealand from our Auckland office, usually remotely by video call, and with international clients. If your website itself makes it hard for models to read your information, our AI ready websites service can address the underlying structure.
Honest expectations and how we measure progress
No one can guarantee how a language model will describe your organisation, or that it will cite you. The platforms do not publish how they choose sources, and their models are updated regularly. We do not make guarantees about rankings, traffic or AI citations.
What we provide is a clear method and transparent reporting. Measures we use include:
- Accuracy of the brand description across a fixed set of prompts.
- How often you are mentioned or recommended compared with named competitors.
- Which sources each platform cites when it talks about you.
- AI referral traffic in your analytics, where platforms pass it through.
Net Branding Limited has worked in digital marketing since 2008, with online experience before that, and director Cathy Mellett oversees our AI search work. Proposals set out what is included and how it is priced before any work starts.
You can read feedback from organisations we have worked with on our verified Google Business Profile.
Frequently asked questions
What is LLM SEO?
LLM SEO is the practice of improving how large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity understand, describe and recommend your organisation. It focuses on accurate brand representation.
Is LLM SEO the same as ChatGPT SEO?
ChatGPT SEO is a common name for the same work applied to ChatGPT. LLM SEO covers all the major assistants, because your customers use more than one.
How do I find out what ChatGPT says about my business?
You can ask it directly, but a single answer is not reliable. We run a structured set of prompts across several platforms and repeat them, which gives a more accurate picture.
Can you guarantee my business will be recommended by ChatGPT?
No. No ethical agency can guarantee citations or recommendations in AI generated answers. We focus on the factors that consistently improve representation over time.
How does LLM SEO relate to traditional SEO?
They share the same foundations. Strong traditional SEO, including a sound website, useful content and genuine authority, supports better representation in AI assistants. The two work best together.
How long before AI assistants describe us differently?
Changes to live web pages can be picked up once they are recrawled and retrieved. Changes to what a model learned in training take longer, often until a newer model is released. We report progress at agreed intervals.
Ready to correct what AI gets wrong about you? Ask us for a quote covering an LLM visibility assessment and a prioritised fix plan, with every inclusion set out in writing.
Net Branding Limited, 165 Orakei Road, Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand. Phone 09 523 0478. Email cathy@seocompanynz.com.