Introduction

The amount of AI search queries is increasing. Perplexity is one of the AI giants; as a result, many businesses are increasingly interested in improving their generative engine optimisation (GEO). Businesses, therefore, do not want to miss out on a slice of the AI search results.

For example, Perplexity mentions business citations in its answers; it’s been reported that a lot of the citations bear some resemblance to Google’s organic results. To therefore stand out in a crowded market you have to better optimise your business’s content marketing. This article is therefore concentrating on how you can increase the number of business citations your business receives from Perplexity and the other LLM’s such as ChatGPT.

What is Perplexity’s RAG system?

When you’re reading about generative engine optimisation and LLMs, another term will pops up time and time again. That, term is RAG, which stands for “retrieval-augmented generation”. The LLM’s use this system to generate answers to prompts typed by someone.

The RAG process has five distinct steps:

Query

The LLM understands the question beyond just keywords; therefore, it is believed that LLM’s have a semantic understanding of “entities” (Semantic SEO). For those who don’t know what entities mean, they can be events, celebrities, or products such as brands. An entity is, therefore, anything that is well-known.

Live Web Retrieval

It’s thought that the Perplexity can search for a relevant answer within a piece of content marketing that contains the answer to your specific question.

Snippet Extraction

It is then thought the Perplexity, and other LLMs can then pull out the most relevant answer from the text.

Answer Generation with Citations

The large language models, such as GPT can create a bespoke response in real time based on the information they extract from a businesses content marketing.

Conversational Refinement

Then, like most large language models, Perplexity uses the “query fanout technique”, which means you can ask follow-up questions and gain a much more precise answer.

How are citations changing search engine optimisation?

It used to be the case that businesses were competing for clicks in Google’s organic results.

While this is still very much the case, businesses now also want to gain citation clicks as well from the LLM’s. This therefore means ranking higher in LLM’s, such as ChatGPT, as well as Perplexity.

Google’s Organic Results and Perplexity

What has been mentioned a lot of SEO consultants should find extremely interesting, is that there is a close correlation and crossover between Google’s organic results and the citations that Perplexity mentions. This is good news for any SEO agency, because it means that if you work hard to improve your organic results, and produce high-quality content marketing (Google EEAT), you could gain more Perplexity citations in the process as well.

For example: a very well-written blog post by another SEO consultant noted that around 60% of the citations mentioned in Perplexity have a close correlation with the top 10 results in Google’s organic results.

How does Perplexity rank content?

Perplexity ranks contents in the following ways

Domain Authority (DA)

Perplexity organises search results using various ranking factors; domain authority or DA is one of the major ones. For example, how many quality backlinks ultimately determines where many businesses end up in Google organic search results.

However, it is also thought that domain authority that determines the trustworthiness of say a blog post, has a bearing on how Perplexity also ranks the content.

Freshness

A lot of agencies will fully appreciate, but for a long time, Google’s algorithm has preferred to rank content marketing higher that is more up-to-date and fresh. Many SEO experts think the same in terms of how Perplexity works: it evaluates the recency and freshness of the content marketing– therefore often citing pages which are more up to date. This is why it’s so important to include the date of when the work was first published, as well as the date the work was last updated.

Good page structure matters

This is a point we found particularly interesting, in that it requires a good on-page SEO and structure for the work to be cited by Perplexity. It also worth knowing that, in the first paragraph, many experts believe it’s important to convey the article’s main purpose, in terms of what its discussing.
It is also thought that the work should be split into sections with headings to address the content marketing in chunks.

FAQ style content

We have found that, for a long time, especially in organic search engine optimisation, it’s a good idea to write content marketing copy using a conversational tone. This means writing questions and answers and keeping the work to the point.

However, there is also the argument that AI, LLMs, that’s large language models, like content marketing, to be split into headings and answers. This means that the answer can be extracted more simply from the content marketing.

Quality is still key.

What’s great to hear, from many marketing experts around the world, is that there are strong crossovers between high-quality content marketing with a high EEAT score and work cited in the LLMs.

Therefore, if you’re writing, say, 2000 words plus blog posts, you’re wondering whether it’s worth the effort; it most definitely is, because large language models can also cite this work.

Backed up by statistics and supporting evidence

Here’s another area where we believe there is a strong crossover between organic search engine optimisation and optimising for Perplexity.

That is in the top-ranking content on Google and what is also cited by Perplexity; it often written work where a lot of statistical data is mentioned, and reinforced with outbound links. Therefore, if you want to improve your chances of being cited as a business within Perplexity, it is often a good idea to quote reliable statistics and facts to reinforce your work.

Author bios
It’s really important to make it clear when writing content marketing who the author of the work is.
For example, an important part of Google’s EEAT, is that the author of the work shows their an absolute expert in terms of what they are writing about.

Therefore, it just stands to reason that if the LLM starts to use semantic SEO, it will understand the actual author of the work and their expertise in terms of what they are talking about.,

Therefore, again, it’s important to cite the author within the content marketing itself.

Outbound links

Its important to mention authoritative sources, you should therefore cite other people who have helped or influenced how content marketing is written. We believe when this is done right it can large impact on your business, and how often your brand is cited as a citation within Perplexity.

This is a point we mentioned earlier; however, it’s important to note that the outbound links should be highly relevant and from authoritative sources.

Schema markup

It is thought to boost your visibility in LLMS you should add schema to your website. Schema is a form of structured language; it makes sense that LLMs would use this format to understand content marketing better.

Scannable content

Just as a reader thinks about how to read a page quickly, the LLMs prefer scannable content that they can quickly extract an answer from.

As example mentioned by leading SEO consultants is the use of HTML comparison tables, with statistical data, or just simple straight forwards answers, it lets the data to be easily read by bots and people, therefore making the information easier to cited by the AI systems.

This means that if the information is better organised into bullet points and numbered lists, and the headings are clearly split on the page, the work is more scannable and therefore to be mentioned.

Last updated.

It’s clear that LLMs, such as Perplexity, prefer to mention and cite up-to-date site information.

Promote your content marketing when it gets published

Some SEO agencies widely cite the idea that when you publish a new piece of content marketing, you should shout about it from the rooftops. This means that if you promote on social media and it gets more clicks, the content will be cited more often within the LLM, such as Perplexity.

Key takeaways

Content marketing structure

To increase your business’s citations, we recommend writing content with question-based headings and answers.

Also, write the information as if you’re talking to an actual person, offering helpful advice. Also, within the first paragraphs, make it absolutely clear what the content marketing is about and who it’s aimed at helping. This is widely thought to be the case: this work is cited more often by the LLM’s.

Add structured data

Work with your web designers and web development team to add structured data.

How Ryan Christopher Walsh can help:

In essence, the main way to increase a business’s visibility, whether locally, nationally, or internationally, is to focus on publishing quality content marketing. If you focus on SEO best practices, this can improve your organic search engine optimisation and make content marketing more visible on platforms such as ChatGPT and Grok, which Elon Musk owns.

Therefore, it all boils down to offering helpful, well-researched answers. We hope this article has provided you with some food for thought on how to improve your GEO and SEO.

If you require further help improving your organic search engine optimisation, Ryan Christopher Walsh is an agency in the Cardiff area with well over 10 years’ experience. Even though generative engine optimisation and LLMs are a relatively new concept, it still boils down to producing quality work and understanding white hat practices.

Ryan Christopher Walsh is one of the leading SEO consultants in Cardiff. He advises and consults with businesses and offers fixed-price monthly packages.

If you would like a free quote, why not contact our team today?