Generative search engines like ChatGPT have successfully used SEO as part of their growth strategy, even as the echo chambers of the web claim they’re killing this powerful marketing channel.
Let’s take a look at how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude fare in SEO, and why ChatGPT’s investment in the strategy is paying off.
A $600,000 annual SEO investment could generate outsized returns for generative AI platforms.
Using Semrush-reported monthly organic traffic — 76.5 million visits for ChatGPT, 908,000 for Claude, and 1.7 million for Perplexity — plus a conservative 0.5% conversion rate and a $20/month entry price, projected returns range from approximately $92 million in annual revenue for ChatGPT (15,200% ROI) to 82%-240% ROI for Claude and Perplexity.
OpenAI’s investment in SEO and content for ChatGPT’s growth
OpenAI understands the value of SEO to drive growth. It was offering $310,000-$393,000 to hire a content strategist with SEO experience.
It then launched a second job search for a growth role focused on SEO, CRO, and web strategy.
Looking at SEO-focused growth role salaries in the U.S. ($100,000 to $295,000), we can estimate OpenAI invested between $410,000 and $600,000 for two SEO roles, not including benefits and other expenses.
SEO has more lives than an agile alley cat because it leverages human behavior. Searching is core to our survival. When we were cave dwellers needing food or shelter, we searched for it. Search engines amplify this behavior.
ChatGPT is expanding search behavior and increasing Google searches in certain use cases. However, there’s a 20% decline in overall Google search volume from 2024 to 2025.
That shift makes visibility even more critical. As the search landscape evolves — and as Google’s AI Overviews take clicks away — increasing your website’s ability to be found through SEO becomes more important, not less.
The OpenAI team understands this. That’s why it built SEO into ChatGPT’s foundation and continues investing in it.
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Evaluating the SEO foundations of ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity
I conducted a brief analysis of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude use SEO to grow. The goal was to uncover the good, the bad, and the ugly so brands can apply what works and discard the rest.
Using Semrush for competitive keyword analysis, I examined domain authority, brand versus non-brand keyword distribution, and total keyword rankings.
Brand authority and demand
ChatGPT’s website has an authority score of 99, followed by Perplexity’s 81 and Claude’s 75. Building a strong product and brand, then leveraging public relations, news, and social media, is the best way to grow your website’s authority.
The branded term “ChatGPT” gets 45.5 million searches monthly, while Perplexity gets 1 million and Claude gets 500,000. That’s an enormous demand; they use SEO to convert into traffic, signups, and revenue.
Paid and organic search
All brands spend money on Google Ads, but SEO drives most of their search traffic. None are integrating search, which is a big opportunity.
Integrated search is the practice of targeting highly valuable, often expensive, keywords with both SEO and PPC. It increases conversions, lowers Google Ads cost per click, and helps you take up more real estate on the search engine results pages, pushing competitors lower.
Keyword rankings
- ChatGPT: ~287,800 keywords.
- Perplexity: ~184,800 keywords.
- Claude: ~36,000 keywords.
ChatGPT leveraged user-generated content to build a massive indexable surface area.
Perplexity focused on financial, stock-driven content pages. Claude uses blog articles targeting high-intent professional audiences.
Neither can match ChatGPT’s kinetic energy from branding efforts and SEO built into its technical foundation.
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The 3Cs SEO and AI optimization framework
Below, I applied our agency’s 3Cs SEO and AI optimization approach: code (technical foundation), content strategy and optimization, and conversions.
Code
For this section, I focused on indexability, or how well search engines can find important website content. This is important to rank in traditional search, including Google and Bing, and LLMs like ChatGPT.
Robots.txt
ChatGPT has a highly optimized robots.txt file that includes multiple sitemaps, location recommendations, and blocks for certain crawlers while allowing others.
Perplexity’s robots.txt file isn’t as optimized or detailed. Claude was missing a robots.txt but added it recently. Not having a robots.txt file or having it return a 404 can be detrimental to your rankings.
Note that ChatGPT and Claude block each other from crawling their websites via robots.txt.
Recommendation: Optimize your robots.txt, include all sitemaps, block pages you don’t want indexed, and allow LLM crawlers like ChatGPT to crawl your site.
URL structure
According to Google representative John Mueller, keywords in a URL are a “very, very small ranking factor.” That said, we can see a clear performance difference between ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity because they include keywords in their URLs.
Including keywords in a URL is an important way to give search engines, LLMs, and users information about what the page is about.
Imagine you went to a restaurant and wanted a burger. You say, “I want a burger,” and you’ll get a burger. If you said, “I want 2387d2e3,” you’d only get frustration from your waiter. That’s what happens with LLMs and traditional search engines.
Yes, search engines can look at other elements of the page to understand what it’s about, but you win when you check all the boxes. That’s the difference between ChatGPT and Claude’s URLs below.
ChatGPT uses the name of what a user creates and shares in the URL, which helps it rank better for those words.
Claude doesn’t. Its public artifacts don’t have words built into them.
Recommendation: Use short URLs with keywords in them. I’ve seen this have major ranking impacts, even though Google and others say it’s a minor ranking factor. Changing this is hard after the fact. Semantic URLs are also important to rank in LLMs like ChatGPT.
Content
All of the LLM websites use content for marketing, including use cases, partnerships, target industries, and more.
Claude’s blog has highly targeted articles for professionals.
Perplexity has a discovery hub with timely, useful content.
However, the content isn’t optimized for SEO. Meta titles, descriptions, URLs, and canonical tags aren’t optimized, which confuses search engines.
Some pages aren’t even indexed on Google as a result.
Their blogs don’t optimize images either. Image names should be descriptive, like “perplexity-deep-research.webp,” to improve ranking ability.
Perplexity is giving itself death by a thousand optimization cuts.
Even though Claude and Perplexity target highly relevant keywords, an analysis of the top 50,000 keywords each website ranks for shows ChatGPT winning with sustained month-over-month growth.
Recommendation: Build SEO into your technical foundation. Fully optimize blog articles. Leverage user-generated content through forums or community hubs.
Conversions
All these brands understand SEO needs to drive conversions, not just traffic and rankings. There are two types of conversions: free conversions for people not ready to buy and paid conversions for people ready to buy.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude all give users a trial of their product, then ask them to convert or sign in.
Recommendation: Convert as much website traffic as possible. Use AI coding platforms to build interactive content for conversion, as Google AI Overviews take traffic away.
If OpenAI bets on SEO, should you?
OpenAI is spending up to $600,000 on SEO talent to grow ChatGPT, not including staff benefits and other costs. This analysis breaks down how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude use SEO to fuel growth.
If disruptive technology companies like OpenAI are doubling down on SEO and content to drive growth, you should include it in your growth strategy as well. It works.
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