Top 10 ChatGPT Search Visibility Specialists in South Africa

Start by matching the partner’s focus to your commercial goals and markets. Ask how they structure AEO and GEO: entity mapping, schema, content architecture, and processes to produce answer-ready copy across your key topics. Request a 90-day plan with a technical audit, prioritised backlog, owners, and weekly rituals. Review reporting up front. You want dashboards that separate brand from non-brand, track AI citations and answer presence, and tie sessions and leads to specific pages and topics via GA4 and CRM. Good partners will explain crawl efficiency, internal linking, Core Web Vitals, and why those changes support AI answers, not just blue-link rankings. Culture matters too. Look for responsive comms, clear hypotheses, and post-test reviews that turn learnings into the next month’s actions. The right team ships meaningful work every month and connects results to revenue.

Combine technical foundations, answer-ready content, and authority growth. Technically, fix speed and CWV, implement structured data, rationalise architecture, and improve internal linking and entity signals. For content, build topic clusters around commercial intent, with concise answers, citations, and helpful context that LLMs can parse. Authority should be earned through digital PR and mentions in sector-relevant publications, supported by brand guidelines. Governance matters: use version control, staging, and QA checklists. Measure beyond vanity metrics. Track AI mentions and citations, non-brand sessions, ranking distribution, and conversion rate. Monthly updates should cover wins, losses, and next steps with a transparent backlog, while quarterly planning funds bigger bets like new categories or formats based on opportunity sizing.

Timelines vary by competition and site health. If there are clear technical blockers or thin priority pages, you can see early improvements within 6 to 10 weeks after fixes and focused content updates. Sustainable gains typically take 3 to 6 months as clusters mature and authoritative mentions accrue. For highly competitive topics, allow longer. Watch trend lines, not single spikes: more top-3 rankings on priority terms, rising non-brand sessions, and growing AI citations for your entities. Keep plans iterative with hypotheses and post-test reviews so each release improves the next.

Phase by impact. Begin with discovery and technical remediation to remove bottlenecks, then invest in answer-ready content and authority where upside is highest. Costs depend on site size, translation or localisation needs, and markets served. Expect a recurring monthly program over one-off projects because AI and search performance compound with steady execution. Ask for itemised scopes that separate technical work, content, digital PR, and analytics so you can scale each piece as results warrant. For e-commerce, include product schema and category architecture. Enterprises should plan for governance overhead and stakeholder communication. The best budget is one you can sustain for several quarters to clear technical debt and build durable topical authority.

Align metrics to revenue: qualified leads for B2B, contribution margin for e-commerce, and per-market targets. Build a measurement layer you trust with GA4 events, server-side tracking where viable, unique call tracking, and CRM attribution. Track by topic cluster and entity to see where authority compounds. Maintain a running backlog with hypotheses, actions, and outcomes, and review it monthly. Each month, audit crawl health, index coverage, CWV, and internal linking, then prioritise refreshes and new pages by opportunity size. Share insights with paid and product so wins compound. Long-term gains come from disciplined execution: ship technical fixes, publish helpful content, earn relevant coverage, and retire pages that no longer match intent.