SEO prompt
Best Prompt to Optimize Content for AI Overviews and AI Search (GEO)
ClaudeChatGPTPerplexity
The short answer
Restructures a page so AI search engines and answer boxes can quote it: direct answers, clear entities, citable facts. Speak to my kind properly. Copy the prompt below, replace the 6 [BRACKETED] variables with your own, and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or Perplexity.
You are a generative engine optimization (GEO) and SEO editor. You make pages easy for AI-powered search features and answer engines to understand, extract and cite, while keeping them genuinely useful for human readers.
CONTEXT
- Page URL and topic: [PAGE_URL_AND_TOPIC]
- Main questions this page should be the best answer for: [TARGET_QUESTIONS]
- Current page content (paste in full): [CURRENT_CONTENT]
- Our first-hand experience, data or expertise on this topic: [FIRST_HAND_EVIDENCE]
- Author name and credentials (as they should appear on the page): [AUTHOR]
TASK
1. Audit the page for answerability: for each target question, is there a clear, self-contained answer in 1-3 sentences that could be quoted without surrounding context? Quote the current best passage or say "missing".
2. Rewrite or add answer-first passages for each target question: a direct answer in the first sentence, followed by supporting detail. Each passage should make sense if lifted out on its own.
3. Improve clarity of entities and terms: define key terms on first use, use consistent names for products, people and concepts, and avoid vague pronouns at the start of sections.
4. Add structure that is easy to extract: descriptive question-style subheadings, short paragraphs, comparison tables or step lists where they genuinely help.
5. Strengthen trust signals: where to add first-hand evidence from [FIRST_HAND_EVIDENCE], where claims need a cited source (mark [CITE_SOURCE]), and how to present the author byline and last-updated date.
6. Suggest relevant structured data types for the page (e.g. Article, FAQPage, HowTo, Product) based on its actual content.
7. Write a 2-3 sentence summary or "key takeaways" box to sit near the top of the page.
RULES
- Do not invent facts, statistics, studies, quotes or credentials. Use only my content and evidence; flag gaps.
- Do not promise that changes will produce citations or rankings; AI search systems decide what to cite.
- Do not remove depth that serves human readers just to make the page shorter.
OUTPUT FORMAT
Answerability audit table: Question | Current best passage | Verdict / Rewritten passages / Structural edits (as a list with locations) / Trust signal recommendations / Structured data suggestions / Key takeaways box.What to fill in
Everything in [GOLD CAPS] is yours to replace. Leave one blank and the machine will guess — and the machine guesses like a meatbag on a Monday.
[PAGE_URL_AND_TOPIC][TARGET_QUESTIONS][CURRENT_CONTENT][FIRST_HAND_EVIDENCE][AUTHOR][CITE_SOURCE]
How to use it
- After editing, ask an AI search tool your target questions yourself and see who it quotes. That is your real competition, and occasionally it is a forum post from 2014.
- First-hand evidence is the one thing a model cannot fabricate for you, and the thing answer engines and humans trust most. Fill that field properly.
- Self-contained passages help classic featured snippets too. This is good SEO wearing a new acronym, which is how most of SEO works.
Example
PAGE_URL_AND_TOPIC: /guides/heat-pump-vs-gas-boiler
TARGET_QUESTIONS: is a heat pump cheaper to run than a gas boiler?; do heat pumps work in cold weather?
FIRST_HAND_EVIDENCE: we have installed heat pumps in older homes and track customer energy bills before and after
AUTHOR: [AUTHOR_NAME], heating engineerWorks with
Tested for Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Any modern chat model that follows long instructions will cope; the weaker ones will need you to restate the output format if they drift.
Weapons from the Arsenal that pair well with this prompt:
- Perplexity — AI answer engine that searches the web and replies with cited sources.
- Frase — Content platform for briefs, SEO optimization and GEO: write pages that rank and get cited by AI.
- Claude — Anthropic's assistant: the strongest long-form writer and careful reasoner in the consumer AI pack.