It is no longer about ranking, but about being mentioned
More and more people let a chatbot search instead of Google. More important than a spot on page one is that you appear in the answer.
Someone looking for a pizzeria nearby increasingly does not type a keyword into Google, but simply asks ChatGPT or a similar chatbot. It does not return ten blue links, but one answer with a few names in it. If you are not in that list, you simply do not exist for that customer at that moment.
Why ranking is no longer enough
For years the question for a website was: am I high enough in Google. That question stays important, but a new one comes with it: am I mentioned when someone asks a chatbot for the answer. That is a different game. A chatbot does not read your whole website to decide whether you are good, it combines pieces of text from different sources that clearly answer the same question.
What decides whether you are mentioned
A few things weigh heavier than before. Does your website say in plain language what you do and for whom, instead of only nice sentences. Is your business mentioned elsewhere, in a review, an article, a list from the municipality or a trade association. And is the information on your site up to date, because a chatbot prefers to cite a source that was updated recently over one that has stood still for years.
A small example
A physiotherapist who explains clearly on their site which complaints they treat, in which neighbourhood they are located and what a first appointment looks like has a much better chance of being mentioned literally than a colleague with only a nice photo and the text welcome to our website. Not because one is better than the other, but because the chatbot needs something to quote from, and finds that with the first and not with the second.
This solves it
Fixed price, clear upfront, and we test extensively.
