The AI visibility playbook

SEO taught us how to rank on Google. Now, a new challenge has arrived: ranking inside AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

This requires a different playbook—what we call AI visibility.

Here’s how the workflow really looks, step by step.

Step 1: Prompt management

The starting point for AI visibility is choosing the right prompts.

• Use your SEO keywords as the foundation
• Ask AI tools to suggest the most relevant prompts
• Start simple, then refine later

Since OpenAI, Google, and others do not disclose real user queries, nobody knows exactly how people search inside chatbots. Smart guessing is the best strategy.

Agree on an initial set of prompts, start tracking visibility, and adjust as you learn.

Step 2: Prompt tracking

Once you have prompts, the next step is measurement.

Track:

• Brand visibility: are you present for each prompt, and in which chatbot?
• Competitors: which other brands appear, and how often?
• Ranking: where do you show up in the answer?

For context:

• Gemini usually lists about 8.4 brands
• ChatGPT about 5.4
• Perplexity about 5.3

Learn more in our article.

The baseline questions are:

• Are you in the conversation?
• If not, who owns the space?
• Where should you compete?

Without this data, everything else is guesswork.

Step 3: Citations

Chatbots do not answer from thin air—they pull from:

1. Training data
2. Sources found in real time

Citations, the links and sources inside chatbot answers, reveal:

• Why your brand is or is not showing up
• Which sources AI trusts most in your niche
• Where you need to strengthen your presence

Track citations by:

• Prompt and chatbot
• Your own website (which pages are used)
• Supporting media (blogs, forums, reviews)
• Competitor support (sources backing top brands)
• Content types (news, product pages, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc.)

This creates your map of influence, showing where to optimize and where to push harder.

Step 4: Semantics

Even if you publish content and appear in citations, you may still miss visibility. That is when semantics matter.

Ask:

• How do LLMs perceive your brand compared with competitors?
• Which words and phrases drive visibility in this niche?
• Where are the semantic gaps?

Using data science, you can map associations and reposition your brand to align with the right context.

Step 5: Turning insights into actions

The real value is not the data itself, but the actions it drives.

From analysis, you should know:

• Which content to create or update
• Which domains or platforms to get featured on
• Which partnerships or PR moves will build credibility
• Which semantic gaps to close
• Where you already dominate, and how to double down

This becomes your roadmap for AI visibility: marketing, content, and PR actions, priorities ranked by impact, and a feedback loop to measure results.

Step 6: Keep the loop running

AI visibility is not a one-time project—it is a continuous cycle.

• Monitor regularly to see changes in visibility
• Explore new prompts as conversations evolve
• Expand into new niches once you win in one area

The brands that will lead tomorrow are those that treat AI visibility as a living system: tracking, learning, and adapting.

That is how you do not just show up—you own the space.