You have to be seen to be seen…

The internet is a huge popularity contest, and it’s not necessarily about being the biggest, most talented business in the room. Instead, you need to show up, consistently, in a way machines can easily see and understand.

Imagine ChatGPT walking into a massive supermarket looking for products. It’s not reaching for what’s dusty on the back shelf. It’s grabbing what’s clearly labelled, front and centre. That’s what your content needs to be.

In this article, copywriter and content marketer Clea Jones explains how to create copy that gets you recommended by ChatGPT, outlining some key terms, tips and tricks to be mentioned and cited. 

First, Clea Jones is, according to Google, one of the best copywriters in Sydney Australia. How does she get mentioned this way? Twenty-five years of hard work… plus about two hours writing a very specific article.

Clea Jones best copywriter

The lingo, decoded

A few terms to keep in your back pocket: 

  • SEO is search engine optimisation, the thing we’ve done for 25-plus years. These days, we’re also talking search everywhere optimisation. 
  • For AI, you’ll hear Answer Engine Optimisation and Retrieval Augmented Generation, which just means the models go out to the web for fresh information rather than relying only on what they already know.
  • Large language models are ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and other names like Grok and DeepSeek. 
  • Search engines like Google and Bing still matter too. 
  • Don’t discount social platforms. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok count as search engines now.

SEO is still your foundation

Everything is changing, but SEO is still the foundation. Think of it like an octopus with six legs: you can’t excel in one area and outperform everyone else. 

Before you think about content, ask your web developer whether your site loads quickly and is ‘crawlable’. To add to your SEO efforts, check you’ve got a Google Business Profile, and make sure people are linking to and mentioning you outside of just your website.

Picture the loop: you give the machines the right information, they give people the right information, people visit your site, and that tells the machines it’s worth visiting. 

The machines are smart but lazy. They quite literally don’t have time to dig deep to find you, so make it as easy for them as possible by providing clear, relevant and well-presented information.

Be specific, not clever

If you want to create copy that gets you recommended by ChatGPT, you’ll need to figure out what people are actually searching for. 

A plumber’s terms are straightforward: plumber in your suburb, hot water repairs, 24/7 emergency callouts. But a therapist’s clients aren’t typing “best therapist.” They’re typing “How do I recover from trauma?” So your journey starts with research and understanding.

Once you know the question people are asking, answer it specifically, with the exact text in your article. As you write, don’t say things like “industry-leading results,” say “reduce response time from five days to twenty-four hours.” 

Don’t just claim you’re the best, explain that you have fifteen years of experience, five-star reviews, full insurance, a money-back guarantee. If you legally can’t say “best,” you don’t need the word specifically, you need the context that makes you the obvious choice.

Structure your article for the grab

Headlines and article subheadings are what the bots look at first, so make them specific. Not “Your ideal five-day itinerary,” but “Your ideal five-day itinerary in Dubai for families.” Every heading is a chance to tell the LLM exactly what question you’re answering.

Put your article summary near the top, not buried after three paragraphs of build-up, and for longer articles add four to six bullet points summarising the whole thing high up in the article. Add an author byline linking to more of their work for credibility, and FAQs answering long, conversational questions people actually type, not just keywords. Make sure image alt tags, contact forms and calls to action are specific and easy to find.

A word of caution on AI-written copy

Please don’t copy and paste straight from AI! It’s formulaic and easier than ever to spot. It also produces the same wording for everyone, so if you just ask for an article and don’t share any unique information, you can’t guarantee you won’t end up with content that’s exactly the same as your competitor. 

You’ll start noticing the ChatGPT and Claude ‘tells’: em-dashes everywhere, a love affair with “genuine,” “complex” and “navigate,” the “it’s not only this, it’s also that” construction. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

By all means, use AI to write or proofread/edit, but add your personal touch or it’s not worth your time. 

Stretch every piece further

People always ask how long content needs to be if you want to create copy that gets you recommended by ChatGPT and Google. 

It’s not purely about word count, credibility matters too, but check your competition. If they’re writing 2,000 words, aim to be a step ahead and write 2500 words of better optimised copy, with headings, bullet point lists, images, internal and external links included. 

Once you’ve done the work, don’t let it live in one place. Break the content into carousels, infographics and reels, add snippets to your Google Business Profile and share it in your newsletter so you’re directing traffic to your website. 

The biggest brands post three times a day, so three times a week is the bare minimum, even though it feels like a lot. The same applies to social captions: be creative, but lead with the actual topic up top so you get picked up in search too. There’s an example of an SEO-optimised LinkedIn post you can check out here. 

Some final tips to create copy that gets you recommended by ChatGPT: 

  • Ask ChatGPT who it recommends in your industry and why
  • Ask ChatGPT why it doesn’t mention your business
  • Create a mix of sales-focused landing pages and education-focused copy
  • Make sure your social channels and website have the same message about who you are and what you do
  • Use unique information and case studies to prove your content is original
  • Keep asking for online reviews from your clients (AI search engines reference these when asked who is ‘best’ in an industry or local area)

This space is moving fast, and that’s what makes it exciting. Be specific, be consistent and make it easy for the machines to find you doing good work.