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Most businesses are treating AI Search Optimisation like a checklist. Get the checklist right, and you’ll show up in ChatGPT. Get it wrong, and you won’t.
That’s the wrong way to think about it. There’s no single fix that guarantees visibility. Instead, there’s a layered framework called the AI visibility pyramid, and understanding which layer your business needs to focus on first determines whether you show up in AI Search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
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Why There’s No Single Fix for AI Search
Charlie Marchant, CEO of Exposure Ninja, explains that the mistake most businesses make is looking for one right answer.
“One of the common mistakes that I see from businesses thinking about implementing an AI Search strategy is assuming that there’s a right and a wrong, a single strategy that takes you to the top of ChatGPT that you have either done correctly or you haven’t done correctly. But that’s not how it works.”
Instead, she suggests moving to a layered mentality for what needs to be built up.
This matters because a £2 million turnover business, a £20 million business, and a £2 billion business are all starting from completely different points on the pyramid. The first step is assessing where your business currently sits, then building up from there.
Layer One: Get Your Technical SEO Right
The base of the pyramid is technical SEO. This is the foundation everything else sits on.
Charlie Marchant breaks down what “technically sound” actually means: “Is our website working, functioning correctly? Is it being properly indexed? Is it free from broken links? Are there no 404s? Everything is technically sound, and it’s working perfectly. We’ve got schema for all of our relevant pages.”
She’s clear that schema markup isn’t a box-ticking exercise either. With over 100 types of schema available, simply adding some to your pages doesn’t mean you’ve done it correctly. It needs to be the right schema, in the right places, for it to have any effect on how AI platforms understand and reference your site.
For marketing managers under pressure to show quick wins in AI Search, this is the unglamorous but essential starting point. No amount of content will compensate for a website that AI platforms can’t properly crawl and understand.
Layer Two: Fix What Your Own Website Says About You
The second layer is your on-site content, specifically the pages that tend to get pulled into AI answers.
Charlie Marchant identifies where to start looking: “It’s usually your About page, pricing comparison pages, if you have competitor comparison pages of features that you have in your product that competitors may not have, or product pages if you’re an eCommerce business.”
She adds that this varies by business, so it’s worth researching which of your own pages are actually being referenced before making changes.
Once you know which pages AI platforms are pulling from, the job is to update that content so it accurately reflects your positioning, tone, and what customers actually say about you. Get this wrong, and you leave a gap that AI happily fills with whatever confusing signals it finds instead.
Charlie Marchant puts the risk plainly: “If our own website’s messaging and positioning is really confusing, you can bet that AI is gonna be really confused too. And if it surfaces content about you, that might not be the messaging that you really wanna be portraying to your customers.”
For any marketing manager reviewing their site’s messaging, this is a direct commercial risk. Confused positioning doesn’t just cost you human visitors, it now actively shapes what millions of AI Search users are told about your brand.
Layer Three: Control What Third Parties Say About You
The top of the pyramid, and according to Charlie Marchant, the most interesting layer, is third-party content: what other websites say about your business.
This includes review platforms like Trustpilot, G2, and Google Reviews. It includes forums like Reddit and Quora. It also includes major publications such as The Telegraph, The Guardian, the BBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, alongside smaller trade publications and even LinkedIn posts.
The tactic here is reverse engineering: work out which third-party sources are already being cited about your business in AI answers, then build a deliberate digital PR strategy around strengthening that presence.
The goal across all three layers is consistency. Your website, your reviews, and your press coverage all need to tell the same story, so AI platforms have a single, accurate source of truth to draw from.
Charlie Marchant sums up why this consistency is what separates businesses that succeed in AI Search from those that don’t:
The better we are at making sure our positioning and our messaging is really clear and concrete for our customers and really relevant to what they’re searching for, the more likely we are to be able to build a successful pyramid and show up our brand in AI searches more and more.
CEO
If your website, your reviews, and your press coverage aren’t yet telling a consistent story, that’s the gap worth closing first.
Understanding the AI visibility pyramid is one thing. Knowing exactly which layer your business needs to work on first is another. If you want a clear, prioritised plan for improving your visibility in ChatGPT and other AI platforms, book a consultation call with the Exposure Ninja team today.
