Key Takeaways
- Find the sites before you pitch anything. Ask the assistants your buyers use and write down every site they cite. That list, not a generic outreach list, is the target.
- Work the doors you control first. Claimable profiles and paid directories need nobody else to say yes, and they are already being read. Start where the door is open.
- Send a fact, not a favor request. Editors publish specifics. Give them a sentence with a number in it that they can use without having to interview you.
- One good mention beats twenty weak ones. A line on a site an assistant already cites is worth more than a hundred listings on sites nobody reads or quotes.
- Never buy the mention. Paid link placements on low-quality sites are the one move here that can leave you worse off than doing nothing.
When an AI assistant answers a question about your niche, it is not making the answer up out of nothing. It is leaning on a small set of sites it keeps coming back to: a couple of directories, an association, two or three publications, a handful of well-known blogs.
Your name is either on those sites or it is not. That is most of the difference between the coaches who get named and the ones who do not.
The good news is that the list is short, findable, and mostly made of doors you can walk through yourself. Here is the order to work in.
How do you get mentioned on the sites AI already trusts?
Three steps. Find out which sites the assistants actually cite for your category, sort those sites by who controls the door, then work down the list starting with the doors that need nobody's permission but yours.
Most people do this backwards. They start by pitching a magazine, get nowhere for two months, and never claim the free association listing that would have taken eleven minutes and is cited in half the answers.
Openness and value are not the same axis. Some of the most open doors lead to the most-cited pages, which is a stroke of luck worth exploiting before anything else.
Step one: find out which sites it is already citing
Ask an assistant ten real buyer questions from your niche and write down every source it names or links. Do each question three times, because the sources move between runs, and the ones that keep reappearing are your target list.
Perplexity makes this easiest, since its help center describes answers assembled from sources retrieved at the moment you ask, and those sources are listed for you. Use it as the discovery tool even if your buyers mostly use something else, then check the pattern holds elsewhere.
Ten questions, three runs each, is about forty minutes and it produces a ranked list of maybe fifteen domains. The full method, including what to record, is in how to find out which websites AI cites in your niche, and what that list tends to look like for coaching is in the websites AI cites in the coaching niche.
Step two: sort them by who controls the door
Sort the list by one question: who has to say yes. If the answer is "nobody but me", it happens this week. If the answer is "an editor with a full inbox", it happens this quarter, and only if you have something to offer.
- Profiles you can claim yourself TodayOpened by: You
- Association and membership directories A weekOpened by: A form and a fee
- Niche listing sites and marketplaces One to two weeksOpened by: An editor approving a submission
- Podcasts and interviews with show notes Three to six weeksOpened by: A host who needs guests
- Roundups and best-of lists A month or moreOpened by: A writer choosing who to include
- Press and trade coverage UnpredictableOpened by: A journalist with a reason to call
Bar width is how open the door already is, not how valuable the mention will be. The widths here are illustrative, drawn to show the ordering rather than measured from anything, and the timings are typical rather than promised.
The top row is worth its own afternoon. Which profiles to claim, and in what order, is worked through in which profiles a coach should claim first.
| Kind of site | Who controls the door | What they want from you | What the mention gives an assistant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profiles and business listings | You, once you claim it | Accurate, complete details | Confirmation you exist, and your category |
| Association and membership directories | A form and a membership fee | Proof you qualify | A credential confirmed by somebody else |
| Niche listing sites and marketplaces | An editor approving submissions | A complete profile and real reviews | Your name beside competitors, in context |
| Podcasts and interviews | A host who needs good guests | A topic their audience wants | Show notes on their site, quoting you |
| Roundups, best-of lists and articles | A writer choosing who to include | A specific fact worth citing | The strongest signal of the five |
Step three: what to actually send
Send a usable fact, not a request. Three sentences: who you work with, one specific thing you know with a number attached, and what you are offering them. No attachments, no pitch deck, no compliments about their recent post.
The reason this works is not charm. Writers and editors need specifics they can print, and most inbound email supplies none. Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable content describes what those editors are being judged on, and first-hand specifics from a practitioner are exactly the raw material they are short of.
The Princeton study on generative engine optimization is worth knowing here too: across their tests, adding citations, statistics, and quotations to a page raised how often it was used in generated answers. That is a finding about pages, and it applies to the page your mention will sit on. Give the writer the statistic and you improve the odds for both of you.
One thing to avoid completely. Do not buy link placements on unrelated sites. It is the only move in this post with a real downside, it does nothing for how assistants read your category, and it is trivially recognizable as what it is.
How long this takes, and what a win looks like
Two or three placements on sites an assistant already cites is enough to change what shows up, and getting them takes a quarter rather than a week. The first two rows of the table can be finished in an afternoon.
A win is smaller and duller than people imagine. Your name in a list of eleven practitioners on an association page. A line in a roundup. A show notes page with your name and a link. None of it feels like a milestone, and all of it is the raw material an answer gets built from.
Expect a lag. The page has to be crawled again after your name appears, and then chosen over whatever was already being cited, so a mention published today rarely shows up in an answer this month. Measure quarterly and keep the list of where you have landed, because that record is what tells you which doors are worth pushing on again.
To see which sites are being cited in your place before you start, the free check runs 25 real buyer questions from your niche through ChatGPT at $0 and emails a plain-English readout within the hour. It runs as soon as you ask for it.
Questions we hear the most
How do you get mentioned on the sites AI already trusts?
Find out which sites the assistants cite for your niche, sort them by who controls the door, and work through them starting with the ones you can act on yourself. Claimable profiles and directories first, editorial coverage last.
How do I find which sites AI cites in my niche?
Ask an assistant ten real buyer questions from your category and record every source it links or names. Repeat each question a few times, because the sources move between runs and the ones that keep reappearing are the list you want.
Should I pay for links or listings?
Pay for legitimate directories and memberships, never for link placements. An association listing you paid a membership fee for is normal business. A bulk link package on unrelated sites is the one action here with real downside.
What should a pitch to an editor actually say?
Three sentences: who you work with, one specific fact with a number in it, and what you are offering them. Editors publish specifics, and the fastest way to be ignored is to ask for a mention without supplying anything usable.
How many mentions do I need before answers change?
Fewer than people expect, if they are on the right sites. Two or three placements on sources an assistant already cites do more than dozens of listings elsewhere, because the assistant is reading those pages already.
What does the free 25-question check include?
It asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions from your niche at $0, then emails a plain-English readout within the hour: how often you were named, who was named in your place, and the first thing to fix. It runs as soon as you ask for it.
Does the $500 audit tell me which sites to target?
Yes. It runs 125 checks across five AI tools and records the sources cited in every answer, so the target list comes out of your own category rather than a generic outreach list. It is in your inbox by this time tomorrow.
How long before a new mention shows up in an answer?
Usually a few weeks. The page carrying your name has to be crawled again, and then chosen over whatever the assistant was already citing, so a mention published today rarely shows up this month.
Your buyers are already asking. Find out what AI tells them.
The free check asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions about your niche and sends you the report within the hour, at $0. If it shows you are already getting named everywhere, we will say so in plain words.
Get my free check →