Getting cited by ChatGPT when people look for a business in Marrakech

Some searches no longer go through a list of links. People ask an assistant for “a good riad in Marrakech”, “a dental clinic in Guéliz” or “an agency for my video ads”, and it answers with three or four names. Being in that answer takes preparation, just like the first page of Google.

How an assistant chooses the businesses it cites

For a local question, the assistant searches the web, reads a few pages and writes an answer. It keeps the businesses it finds, understands, and sees confirmed by other sources. A business that cannot be found is not read, a confusing page is not understood, and a name nothing confirms comes after those several sources cite.

One name, one city, one trade, the same everywhere

This is the foundation, and it is often where everything goes wrong. A business is called one thing on its website, another on its Google profile, a third on Instagram, with an old address in a directory. To an assistant, these may be several businesses.

• The exact same name everywhere, with no added keyword.
• The same city and the same neighbourhood.
• The same phone number and the same website.
• One sentence that says what you do, repeated word for word: “Name is a Lebanese restaurant in Guéliz, Marrakech”.

Pages that answer

An assistant cites sentences. “We deliver to Guéliz and Hivernage, Tuesday to Sunday” can be quoted as it stands; “delivery subject to conditions, contact us” cannot. The pages to work on are the ones that answer the questions you get on the phone: your prices, your opening hours, your neighbourhood, what is included, lead times.

• One question per section, asked as a subheading.
• The answer in the first sentence, the detail afterwards.
• An FAQ, with the questions as people type them.
• Prices, when you can publish them.

The website must also be readable by a machine: text on the page rather than in an image, and structured data that says who you are, where you are and what you do.

What others say about you

An assistant does not rely only on what a business says about itself. It looks for confirmation: reviews on the Google profile, directory listings, local press articles, partners' websites. A business that several independent sources describe the same way becomes a safe answer.

• A verified, complete Google profile with recent reviews.
• The directories for your trade and Moroccan directories.
• Your partners' websites, when they mention you with a link.
• A Bing Places listing: not every assistant relies on Google.

Letting assistants read the website

Some websites block assistants' crawlers without knowing it, through a security setting or an overly strict robots.txt file. Conversely, an llms.txt file at the root of the website summarises the business and its main pages for the assistants that read it. It is not a shortcut: it is a clean summary that stops a machine getting things wrong.

An assistant cites what it understands, and what others confirm.

How long does it take?

Changes to the website show up as search engines reread the pages: a few weeks. Trust, on the other hand, is built through reviews and mentions, over several months. It is the same timeline as Google SEO, and it is the same work.

What we do

We have applied this method to our own website — a definition of the business, structured data, an llms.txt file, pages that answer, aligned profiles — and we put it in place for our clients. AI visibility costs €230 (≈ MAD 2,500) and technical SEO €290 (≈ MAD 3,200), excluding tax.