How to Optimize for ChatGPT Search (AEO & GEO) – A Guide for Financial Advisors

Artificial intelligence is changing how people search and what results they see. ChatGPT isn’t a search engine in the traditional sense — it’s a generative tool that answers questions directly. That shift means financial advisors need to adjust their strategies if they want to stay visible when prospects ask ChatGPT for guidance.

In the marketing world, you’ll often hear the term AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Technically, optimizing for ChatGPT fits under a newer concept: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

Both approaches focus on the same goal – building strong signals of authority and relevance that AI tools can recognize. Many traditional SEO strategies still apply, but if you want to appear in ChatGPT answers, you need to understand how its system works and what it looks for.

What Does It Mean to “Rank” in ChatGPT?

Most people are familiar with ranking in Google, where being #1 means your website appears at the top of a search results page. ChatGPT works differently. Instead of ranking websites, it generates direct answers to questions.

To “rank” in ChatGPT, your goal isn’t to earn a blue link – it’s to be included or paraphrased in the generated answer. That means ChatGPT must:

• Understand who you are
• What you do
• Associate you with a specific area of expertise

In other words, you “rank” by being part of ChatGPT’s internal understanding of your identity and authority.

See the example below, which shows how search results appear in ChatGPT:

How ChatGPT Determines Authority

ChatGPT doesn’t use backlinks or technical SEO metrics to determine authority. Instead, it relies on patterns from the data it was trained on.

Key factors that strengthen your authority in ChatGPT include:

• Repetition of your name + niche (e.g., “Jane Smith, fee-only financial advisor in Denver”)
• Mentions in trusted, public content (blogs, directories, Reddit, Quora, podcasts with transcripts)
• Clear, structured writing that’s easy for ChatGPT to paraphrase
• Being quoted or referenced by others
• Schema markup (covered later) to reinforce your identity and expertise

The goal is to make your expertise easy for the model to recognize and connect with relevant questions.

The Importance of Entities and Semantic Relationships

ChatGPT understands people, firms, and services as entities. It builds connections between those entities and the topics they are most often associated with.

For financial advisors, this means you want to consistently connect your:

• Name
  
• Firm
  
• Location
  
• Services
  
• Niche or specialization
  

A practical way to do this is with a simple who-what-where statement that you use consistently across platforms. For example:

“Jane Smith is a fee-only financial advisor at Evergreen Wealth in Denver. She specializes in retirement income strategies for physicians.”

When this type of phrasing shows up in your blog byline, LinkedIn bio, directory profiles, and schema markup, it strengthens the associations ChatGPT makes between you and your expertise.

Consistency is what makes you easier for the model to “remember” and more likely to be included in relevant answers.

Where ChatGPT Pulls Information From

One of the biggest misconceptions is thinking ChatGPT “searches the internet” like Google. It doesn’t—at least not by default.

Default mode (no browsing): ChatGPT generates answers from what it has already learned during training. Its training data comes from large public sources like Common Crawl, Wikipedia, blogs, forums, directories, and other openly available content. Think of it as a library frozen in time at the point of the last update.

Browsing mode (Plus users only): ChatGPT can also perform real-time lookups – but only if the user has a ChatGPT Plus subscription and enables the browsing with Bing tool. In this mode, ChatGPT goes out to Bing to fetch updated answers. If Bing can’t find your content, ChatGPT can’t pull it in.

Supplementary Google results: Recent research suggests ChatGPT also draws on Google Search data via SerpApi in some cases, particularly for time-sensitive queries like news or finance. While Bing remains the primary source for browsing, Google data may provide a secondary layer to improve accuracy on fast-changing topics.

For advisors, this means you need to optimize for both:

• Training inclusion: Publish clear, public content in places language models learn from (blogs, LinkedIn articles, Reddit, Quora, directories, podcasts with transcripts).
  
• Browsing visibility: Make sure your website is crawlable and ranks in Bing – and ideally in Google too – so ChatGPT can find it when users with browsing enabled ask live questions.
  

Together, these approaches increase your odds of being included in ChatGPT’s answers – both from its built-in knowledge and from real-time searches..

Content Strategy for ChatGPT Optimization

The good news is you don’t need to be a professional writer or tech expert to optimize for ChatGPT. What you need is clear, useful, consistent content that helps the model associate your name (or business) with the topics you want to be known for.

Imagine someone asks ChatGPT: “Do I need a financial advisor if I’m already retired?”
For ChatGPT to include your expertise in its answer, you wouldn’t rely on a single blog post. Instead, you would build a cluster of articles around the topic.

Across that cluster, your content should:

• Begin by directly answering common client questions
  
• Use short paragraphs and topic sentences
  
• Include clear headings (H2s and H3s)
  
• Break up longer explanations into bullet points
  
• Add real-world examples or scenarios
  
• Include simple FAQ sections with natural client questions and answers
  
• Reinforce your entity (for example: “As a Boise-based advisor focused on retirement income…”)
  
• Avoid jargon or generic phrasing like “integrated financial solutions”
  

This way, each article covers one angle in depth, while the cluster as a whole shows that you thoroughly cover the subject.

You don’t need one viral article. Instead, you need a system of interconnected content that consistently reinforces:

• Who you are
  
• What you do
  
• Who you serve
  
• What topics you’re an expert on
  

Repetition of these signals – across your blog, LinkedIn, directories, and guest appearances – is what builds your authority inside the model.

Voice-Friendly Formatting Helps With AI Paraphrasing

Even if you’re not targeting voice search, writing in a voice-friendly format improves your chances of being included in ChatGPT answers. Why?

• Short, conversational responses are easier for ChatGPT to paraphrase
  
• Clear Q&A-style formatting mirrors how people naturally ask questions
  
• Simple, direct language avoids confusion and increases readability
  

Think of your blog posts as written conversations. Use natural phrasing, address common client questions directly, and structure answers so they can stand alone. This makes your content more accessible to people – and more usable to ChatGPT when it generates answers.

Repurposing Content Across AI-Friendly Platforms

Creating helpful content is step one — but if you stop there, you’re only reaching a fraction of your potential audience.

To increase your visibility inside ChatGPT’s training data (and in other AI-powered tools), your content needs to live in more than one place. The good news? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can take a single blog post and repurpose it across platforms that LLMs are known to crawl and learn from.

Publishing on your website is only step one. To increase your visibility in ChatGPT, your content also needs to live in the public places language models are trained on.

The good news: you don’t need to create something new for each platform. Instead, repurpose existing articles and insights so they appear in multiple trusted sources that ChatGPT learns from.

More visibility across more platforms = more training data for the model to learn from.

How To Repurpose Your Content (without upsetting Google)

Don’t just copy and paste. Adjust tone, intro, or formatting to fit each platform. Here’s how to do it effectively:

• LinkedIn Articles: Republish a shortened version of your blog post with a fresh headline and intro. Make it more conversational, and include a personal hook (e.g., “I’ve helped dozens of business owners exit tax-smart…”).
• Reddit: Join relevant subreddits like r/FinancialPlanning. Either answer a real user question with insights from your blog or post something like, “What I tell clients before they sell their business.”
• Quora: Find 2–3 relevant questions that your blog already answers. Copy and paste a trimmed-down version of your answer and include your name/title at the end to reinforce your expertise.
• Medium/Substack: These platforms are widely scraped by AI tools and are ideal for re-posting lightly edited versions of your original blog. Always link back to your main site as the source.
• LinkedIn Posts (not articles): Pull one compelling story, tip, or statistic from your blog and post it as a short, standalone update. End with a call to action or insight to prompt engagement.
• Twitter/X Threads: Break your article into 5–7 tweets that each share a specific insight. Use plain language and consider using emojis or visual breaks to boost engagement.
• Directory Profiles: Take a key insight or line from your article and add it to your bio. For example: “Helps business owners reduce capital gains taxes before exit.”

Repetition in multiple trusted places makes ChatGPT more likely to “remember” and paraphrase your answers. Consistency across the web reinforces your expertise inside the model.

Citation Building (Guest Posts, Interviews, Mentions)

Beyond publishing on your own channels, being cited or quoted on third-party sites strengthens your authority inside ChatGPT.

Think of citations and mentions as the backlinks of ChatGPT optimization. Traditional SEO relies heavily on backlinks to signal authority to Google. ChatGPT doesn’t read links in the same way, but it does pick up on repeated mentions of your name, niche, and location across public content.

Ways to build citations:

• Guest posts on niche blogs or advisor platforms
  
• New articles published on reputable industry sites
  
• Podcast interviews with published transcripts
  
• Quotes in articles (through HARO or industry publications)
  
• Business directory listings with consistent bios
  

Example: “Jane Smith is a retirement income planner based in Raleigh, NC.”

These references strengthen your identity inside language models and increase the chances that ChatGPT includes you in relevant answers. They also serve the dual purpose of boosting your traditional SEO authority.

What is Schema and Why Does It Matter

If you’ve ever heard the term “schema markup” (structured data) and thought, “That sounds too technical,” you’re not alone. But schema is one of the simplest ways to help both search engines and language models understand your content.

Schema doesn’t change how your site looks. Instead, it works behind the scenes by labeling content. Think of it as putting clear tags on items in a store: “This is a blog post,” “This is a service page,” “This page is about John, a financial advisor in Boise.”

For ChatGPT, schema helps reinforce entities and relationships – who you are, what you do, and where you do it. When combined with consistent bios and directory listings, it strengthens the signals that tie your name to your niche.

Key Schemas for Financial Advisors:

• Person: Links your name to credentials and bios
• LocalBusiness: Identifies your firm and location
• Service: Clarifies your service offerings
• FAQPage: Highlights Q&A content that mirrors ChatGPT’s style
• BlogPosting: Connects blog content to authorship

WordPress plugins like Yoast or RankMath handle most basic schema (BlogPosting, WebPage, Author). For more advanced needs – like adding multiple advisors with Person schema or listing specific services – you may need a custom plugin or manual setup.

Below is the Schema that Yoast automatically adds:

The more structured and consistent these signals are, the easier it is for ChatGPT to connect you with relevant questions.

How Your Google Business Profile Can Reinforce ChatGPT Visibility

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) isn’t just for local SEO – it can also support your presence in ChatGPT. While ChatGPT doesn’t crawl GBP pages directly, information from your profile (linked website, FAQs, reviews) may appear in public datasets like Common Crawl that models learn from.

To maximize the impact of your GBP for ChatGPT:

• Link your GBP to optimized, public blog or FAQ pages
  
• Add structured Q&A in your GBP profile
  
• Encourage client reviews that naturally mention your niche and location
  

Important note: You won’t see Google reviews displayed directly in ChatGPT answers. However, reviews still reinforce your identity when they are referenced across public platforms. Even better – feature testimonials (compliance-approved) on your own website so they become part of your crawlable content and can be included in training data.

Ranking for Local Searches in ChatGPT

ChatGPT doesn’t use GPS like Google Maps, but it can still provide local-style recommendations if those associations exist in its data.

For example, if someone asks: “Who are some fee-only advisors in Colorado Springs?” ChatGPT may suggest names – but only if its training data consistently links those advisors with that location.

To improve your local visibility in ChatGPT:

• Mention your city and state in blogs, bios, and schema
  
• Use LocalBusiness and Service schema with “areas served” defined
  
• Publish location-specific content (for example: “estate planning in Massachusetts”)
  
• Appear in crawlable directories like NAPFA, Fee-Only Network, and Wealthtender
  
• Feature reviews or testimonials on your website that mention your niche and location
  

The more consistently your name, firm, and location are tied together across public content – including reviews – the more likely ChatGPT will include you in local-style answers.

What About “Near Me” Searches?

ChatGPT can’t access a user’s real-time location the way Google Maps does. Still, people often phrase queries with “near me,” such as: “Best retirement advisor near me in Denver.”

To be included in these answers, your online presence needs to repeatedly connect your name, firm, and location. ChatGPT builds associations from patterns in public data – not from GPS signals.

Ways to strengthen those associations:

• Include your city and state in website bios and service pages
  
• Use LocalBusiness schema with a defined address and service area
  
• Make sure your directory listings include both your niche and your location
  
• Publish content that explicitly references your geography (for example: “retirement income planning in Denver”)
  
• Add reviews or testimonials directly on your website so they are crawlable and reinforce your expertise in a specific geography
  

The more structured and consistent these signals are, the more likely ChatGPT will treat you as a relevant “near me” result for your area.

How Bing Influences ChatGPT

Bing plays a unique role in how ChatGPT finds and delivers information.

1. Training Data
   Much of ChatGPT’s knowledge comes from public datasets like Common Crawl, which often pull from pages indexed by major search engines. If your content performs well in Bing, it is more likely to be included in those datasets and “remembered” by ChatGPT when generating answers.
   
2. Browsing Mode
   For ChatGPT Plus users with browsing enabled, the model relies on Bing to fetch real-time information. If your site isn’t visible in Bing, ChatGPT won’t surface it when answering live queries.
   

For financial advisors, Bing visibility matters in two ways:

• It increases the odds your content is included in ChatGPT’s underlying knowledge.
  
• It ensures ChatGPT can find you when it goes out to search live.
  

Action Step: In addition to optimizing for Google, make sure your site is also visible in Bing. Submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools and claim your firm in Bing Places.

How to Track Your Visibility in ChatGPT

Unlike Google, there’s no analytics dashboard that shows you when ChatGPT includes your content. But you can still track visibility with a few practical methods:

• Saved prompts: Keep a list of sample questions prospects might ask, such as “advisors in Boise who help with RMDs.” Run these in ChatGPT periodically and note whether you appear in the generated answers.
  
• Platform monitoring: Search Reddit, Quora, Substack, and Medium for mentions of your name or firm. These platforms feed into language models and can signal where you’re gaining traction.
  
• Self-searching in AI tools: Use ChatGPT with browsing enabled to test whether your site appears in live lookups. You can also check tools like Perplexity or You.com as secondary indicators.
  
• Google Alerts: Set alerts for your name, firm, and signature blog phrases. This helps you spot new mentions across the web that could reinforce your authority in ChatGPT.
  
• Internal tracking: Create a simple spreadsheet or Notion board to log your test prompts, appearances, and mentions over time.
  

The goal isn’t to obsess over single queries but to measure whether your overall visibility is improving – whether ChatGPT is beginning to consistently associate your name with your area of expertise.

What You Can Control (and What You Can’t)

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by how unpredictable ChatGPT can seem. But a surprising amount is within your control – and that’s where you should focus your energy.

You can control:

• How frequently you publish content
  
• The consistency of your name, niche, and location across platforms
  
• Schema, FAQs, and structured content on your website
  
• Public-facing citations, directory listings, and guest contributions
  
• Whether reviews or testimonials appear on your own website
  

You can’t control:

• What data ChatGPT was trained on in the past
  
• How ChatGPT phrases answers
  
• When or how OpenAI updates its models
  

The key is to focus on the levers you can move: clarity, consistency, and usefulness. The more visible and structured your expertise is across the public web, the more likely ChatGPT will include you when generating answers.

Becoming Visible in ChatGPT

ChatGPT is not a search engine in the traditional sense. You won’t “rank” with blue links – instead, you become part of the answers through repetition, structure, and consistency.

For financial advisors, that means:

• Publishing clear, answer-focused content that ChatGPT can easily paraphrase
  
• Reinforcing your who-what-where across every profile, article, and directory
  
• Making reviews, testimonials, and case studies public so they become part of the crawlable web
  
• Ensuring your content is visible in Bing and Google so it can appear in both training data and browsing mode
  

If you consistently make your expertise easy to recognize and connect with your niche, you increase the odds of being included when prospects turn to ChatGPT with financial questions.

ChatGPT optimization isn’t about chasing clicks. It’s about showing up inside the conversations that matter – when potential clients are asking real questions about problems you solve.

We help financial advisors show up in those moments. Let’s talk about mapping your next ChatGPT strategy.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on May 8th, 2025. It has been updated to provide more in-depth information on ranking on ChatGPT.