Tactical guide · 2026
From invisible to citable in 4–8 weeks. Each step is one concrete action — robots.txt edit, schema block, FAQ rewrite, llms.txt publish, mention outreach. Copy-paste snippets where useful. Free citation test at the end to measure the result.
One-line summary
Most businesses fail step 1 — blocked GPTBot. After that, the 9 steps below are the entire job. Total in-house effort: 20–40 hours over 4–8 weeks. Total tooling cost: $0.
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The 9 steps
Step 1 · 30 minutes
robots.txt: explicit Allow for GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot. Verify against OpenAI's published crawler IP list.
Step 2 · 2 hours
Site-wide Organization schema. LocalBusiness on every location page with name, address, phone, geo, hours, areaServed, sameAs.
Step 3 · 2 hours
Service JSON-LD: serviceType, provider, areaServed, audience, description. Reference Organization as provider.
Step 4 · 6 hours
5–10 Q&A blocks per page. Real buyer questions. 1–3 sentence answers. FAQPage JSON-LD wrapping the visible Q&A.
Step 5 · 1 hour
Plain-text summary file at /llms.txt — what the business is, key services, key URLs, key facts. ChatGPT parses for entity grounding.
Step 6 · 4 hours
Short, factual, declarative, with numbers. Marketing voice loses to declarative voice in extraction tests.
Step 7 · 2 hours
Visible dates + Person schema on every article. Anonymous undated content gets discounted.
Step 8 · ongoing
Industry publications · podcast transcripts · directories · eligible Wikipedia mentions. Quality > quantity.
Step 9 · monthly
Same 20 buyer prompts through 6 engines each month. Track brand mention rate, source citation rate, sentiment. Iterate based on what got cited.
FAQ · 6 questions
ChatGPT Search: 4–8 weeks. Default ChatGPT (pre-trained): months, tied to model releases.
Step 1: unlock GPTBot. Most common single reason for zero citations.
Strongly recommended. 30-minute job. Major upside on smaller sites where standard signals are sparse.
Yes, if you can edit robots.txt, add JSON-LD, rewrite copy, and run monthly tests. Outsource if WordPress plugin conflicts and ongoing measurement are painful.
$0 in tooling. 20–40 hours in-house or 1–2 weeks agency. Mention-building is variable.
All 9 steps work on WordPress with schema plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, Schema Pro). Trade-off: plugin updates frequently break JSON-LD. Many businesses use the GEO project as the trigger to migrate to static — same outcome at 50–70% lower cost. See: WordPress alternative.
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Free citation test
20 buyer-intent prompts. 6 AI engines. Scorecard delivered in 5 business days. No cost.