What Is LLM SEO? How to Get Your Business Into AI Search Results

A Melbourne plumber searches ChatGPT: 'Who are the best plumbers in Hoppers Crossing?'

The AI answers with three business names. Yours isn't one of them.

That's the LLM SEO problem.

And it's getting more important every month.

Already familiar with AI search basics? This post goes deeper than our earlier guide on getting cited in ChatGPT and AI search.

What Is LLM SEO and Why Does It Matter in 2026?

LLM stands for Large Language Model. These are the AI systems that power ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.

When someone asks one of these systems a question, it generates an answer by drawing on content it has crawled and processed from across the web. The sources it cites are the LLM SEO winners.

Three numbers that explain why this matters:

• ChatGPT has 700 million weekly active users, up from 100 million 18 months ago (Semrush, 2025)
• Google AI Overviews appear on 13.14% of all searches as of early 2026, more than double the January 2025 rate (Semrush, 10M keyword analysis)
• When AI Overviews appear, position 1 organic click-through rate drops from 1.41% to 0.64% (Ahrefs, 300K keyword study, 2025)

The old game was: rank #1 and get the clicks.

The new game is: get cited in the AI answer and get the trust.

Both matter now. Neither alone is enough.

How AI Models Like ChatGPT and Gemini Actually Use Web Content

Most people think LLMs are just summarising the internet at random. That's not how it works.

ChatGPT's response process for a query about local businesses has two stages:

• Search retrieval: ChatGPT searches Bing and retrieves a set of web pages relevant to the query.
• Citation and synthesis: The model reads those pages and generates an answer, citing the sources that best support its response.

The key finding from Ahrefs' April 2026 analysis of LLM citations: 88% of URLs cited by ChatGPT came directly from Bing search results. Ranking in Google helps, but Bing Webmaster Tools submission is essential specifically for ChatGPT visibility.

Another critical data point: 44.2% of all LLM citations come from the first 30% of an article, the introduction. If your answer isn't in the opening paragraphs, it's less likely to be extracted and cited.

The Difference Between LLM SEO, AEO, and GEO

The terms overlap significantly. The tactics are nearly identical. Most practitioners use them interchangeably.

What matters in practice: are you structuring content so machines can extract and cite it? If yes, you're doing all three. If no, you're not doing any of them.

Why Your Business Might Be Invisible in AI Answers Right Now

There are four common reasons a Melbourne business doesn't appear in AI responses:

• No content that directly answers questions: LLMs prefer pages that state an answer clearly in the first paragraph. Pages that talk around a topic without ever giving a direct answer don't get extracted.
• Low domain authority: Sites with more than 32,000 referring domains are 3.5 times more likely to be cited by ChatGPT than those with fewer than 200 (SE Ranking, 2025). A new site with 10 backlinks will not appear in AI answers for competitive queries.
• No third-party brand presence: LLMs learn about brands from mentions across the web, not just your own website. A business with no directory listings, no reviews, no press coverage, and no social profiles is effectively unknown to the AI's knowledge base.
• Missing structured data: Schema markup helps AI systems understand the entity structure of your content. A page without schema forces the AI to infer meaning. A page with schema states it directly.

The 5 Signals That Get Brands Cited in AI Search

Based on analysis of 485,000+ LLM citations across 38,000+ domains (Wellows, 2026), five factors consistently predict citation frequency:

Source: Wellows 485K citation analysis 2026, SE Ranking Nov 2025, Ahrefs April 2026

How LLM SEO Differs from Traditional Google SEO

The good news: strong traditional SEO is the foundation LLM SEO is built on. Fixing rankings, content quality, and technical health improves both simultaneously.

Practical Steps to Start Optimising for LLM Search Today

• Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools: Free at webmaster.bing.com. ChatGPT uses Bing's index as its primary search source. If you're not verified here, you're less crawlable by ChatGPT.
• Add an answer in the first paragraph of every piece of content: Every article should state its key answer in the opening 2 to 3 sentences. LLMs extract 44% of citations from the first third of content.
• Build brand mentions across the web: Australian directories, industry associations, press mentions, review platforms (Google, Trustpilot, Zomato). Every mention is a brand signal.
• Implement schema markup: At minimum: LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Person, and Service schema. Pages with structured data are 3x more likely to be cited in AI responses.
• Cite your sources: Content with data and attribution is 3.7 times more likely to be cited by AI than generic content. Include real statistics with links to original research.
• Distribute content beyond your own site: Publishing content across external publications increases AI citations by up to 325% compared to owning-domain-only publishing (Stacker, December 2025).

Is LLM SEO Worth Investing In for Australian Businesses?

For most Melbourne businesses in 2026: yes, but not at the expense of traditional SEO fundamentals.

The businesses winning in AI search are the same ones winning in traditional search. Good content, real authority, structured data, and brand presence across the web.

LLM SEO is not a separate strategy you bolt on. It's an evolution of what good SEO already looks like.

The one additional action worth taking immediately: submit to Bing Webmaster Tools and start building brand mentions on third-party Australian sites. Both are free, both take under a day, and both specifically improve ChatGPT visibility.

Our AEO and LLM SEO service maps your current AI visibility and builds a strategy to improve it.

Call to Action

Want us to assess how visible your business is in AI search results? Our AEO/LLM SEO service maps your current AI visibility and builds a strategy to improve it.

See Our AEO & LLM SEO Service.

About the Author: Bhavleen Singh is the founder of Khalis Marketing. 10 years of SEO experience, Moz Technical SEO Certification, Master of Marketing from Victoria University.