How to get cited by AI: can you guarantee a citation?

There is no button you can tick

Every few weeks someone asks us which setting, plugin or trick will get their content quoted in AI answers. There isn't one. If anyone sells you a guaranteed citation, ask them how they'd know.

What you can do is make yourself an obvious source. That's slower than ticking a box, but it's the same work that makes people trust you, so none of it is wasted.

How ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI decide who to cite

Gemini looks at basically every part of your digital presence before it decides you're someone it can trust. Your website is one part of that. So are the people who work for you, what they say in public, and what other people say about them.

That's why a single brilliant page rarely moves the needle on its own. The engines are looking for a pattern: the same expertise, said clearly, in several places, by people who seem to know what they're talking about.

"It starts with the personal brands inside your organisation, LinkedIn especially, before it ever gets to your company pages."James Gayle

Start with your people, not your company page

Most firms put their effort into the company page and the website. But buyers, and the engines that answer their questions, pay more attention to named people. A partner explaining what changed this year carries more weight than a logo saying the same thing.

So the practical order is:

• Get your experts saying useful things in public, under their own names, on their own profiles
• Turn the same thinking into articles on your site that answer the questions buyers actually ask
• Let your company page repeat and link to both, so the pattern is easy to see

Good search engine optimisation is good AI visibility

Some people call this generative engine optimisation, or GEO. It's a new name for work good websites were already doing.

None of this replaces the basics. Clear pages, plain answers near the top, honest headings and a site that loads properly still matter. The firms that do well in AI answers are usually the ones that were already doing the basics well, and then gave their experts a voice.

The hard part is getting experts to talk

If the answer is "get your experts posting", the problem is obvious: they're busy, and they don't want to write. That's the problem we built Quotem to fix. Your expert talks for ten minutes, the way they'd explain it to a colleague, and Quotem turns it into posts for their profile, an article for your site and a version for your company page. They approve every word before anything goes out. See how it works for marketing teams or for founders and consultants.