February 24, 2026
6 min readHow to rank in ChatGPT and other AI tools
Table Of contents
AI tools like ChatGPT are now recommending or omitting rehab practices every day. If your information isn’t clear and specific, your practice is simply left out – even if your outcomes are stellar.
Over 40 million Americans use ChatGPT daily for healthcare questions, making visibility (not just expertise) what brings people to your door.
Client behavior is changing
Clients are already using AI as their first step for understanding symptoms and choosing care, with these behaviors growing fast:
- One in four ChatGPT users submits a health-related prompt weekly.
- ChatGPT handles over 580,000 healthcare questions a week from “hospital deserts.”
- Millions use AI tools because they’re fast, available, and feel less intimidating than search engines.
These habits directly affect your bottom line: if your practice’s name never appears in AI-driven conversations, clients simply don’t call. Visibility in these tools now ties directly to revenue and new referrals.
How AI tools decide what to show
AI tools (also called large language models, or LLMs) build answers from the details you and others publish online and only choose providers they can trust to be a clear, correct fit.
Consistency across sources: If your website says “Downtown Therapy Group,” but Google calls you “DTG, LLC” and your Yelp listing is “Downtown Clinic,” AI gets confused (and might not list you at all). Matching the same Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) on your website and all directories makes you a “safe” recommendation.
Condition-level specificity: AI tools look for plain, direct, condition-focused language:
- “Anxiety therapy for teens”
- “Post-surgical knee rehab therapy”
Structured, answer-first content: Pages using clear headings, short paragraphs, and direct answers are more likely to be cited in AI Overviews and ChatGPT results.
Clarity = visibility
Confusion = invisibility
How AI visibility is different from traditional SEO
You may have done SEO before – this is a different layer.
- SEO gets your website ranked higher in Google search results by using keywords and gaining backlinks. It leads clients to your website pages.
- AI visibility decides whether AI tools like ChatGPT actually recommend your practice when a client asks, “Who offers grief counseling in my town?” Instead of pointing only to websites, these tools need enough clear, specific details so they can confidently mention your practice by name.
With SEO, you focused on search terms. With AI, use clear, plain language and name the exact conditions you treat. AI models don’t care about clever headlines – they want to see: Who are you? What do you treat? Is your information consistent and recent?
Why this isn’t marketing – it’s access
A parent types, “Where can I find occupational therapist for sensory processing in Madison?” into ChatGPT. Your practice offers it – but your website only says “occupational therapy” and never mentions sensory. The AI skips you, and that family never finds your support, costing both a potential referral and a chance to help someone in your wheelhouse.
The risk here is omission. When details are missing, AI tools may tell clients you don’t treat conditions you specialize in – or route the wrong-fit cases to your front desk. When you own your digital footprint, you give the right clients an open path to your services.
How to make your practice findable by AI
So how can you show up in AI tools like ChatGPT? AI tools need consistency, specificity, and plain language. Simply put: you need to make your practice easier for machines to read.
Below are three high-impact steps that can help that happen.
1. Strengthening your online footprint
- Visit your online directories – Google, Healthgrades, Yelp, insurance sites – and make sure your name, address, and phone (NAP) match your website word for word.
- Update your service pages to call out specific conditions (“Therapy for ADHD,” “Dysphagia therapy for adults”).
- Make sure your location and hours are the same everywhere clients look.
- Edit provider bios to mention their practice specialty (“Sarah Jones, OT, specializes in handwriting and fine motor challenges for kids”).
Just a few precise updates raise your odds that AI tools will list you as a safe, accurate match for client needs.
2. Using question-first content‑first content
Clients phrase their questions informally, and AI tools echo that phrasing. When your website answers those questions directly – for example “Do I need physical therapy for chronic neck pain?” or “Does my child need speech therapy for a lisp?”-AI tools can map those questions back to your content with fewer interpretive leaps.
To do this fast, you can add these questions to an FAQ section at the bottom of your service page. If you want to go the extra mile, another way to do this is by writing short, helpful blog posts.
They don’t need to be long or complicated – just clear, helpful, and structured around a single idea. And you don’t have to write it from scratch each time. You can use the dictation tool in your Word or Docs app to “brain-dump” ideas onto a page, then use AI to clean it up, smooth transitions, add context, or fill in gaps. It’s still your expertise – just polished in minutes instead of hours.
3. Improving structural clarity on your website
AI needs to scan and associate your services quickly. Use simple section headers for each main condition or service:
“CBT for depression”
“Physical therapist for rotator cuff injuries”
*Pro tip: Most clients search and read in plain language – so spelling out titles at first mention improves clarity and visibility (e.g., physical therapist (PT), family therapist (LMFT)). After that, using the acronym is fine.
For photos, use one-line captions that spell out the scenario: “Speech therapist practicing ‘S’ sounds with a child.”
Before and after: Making service descriptions AI-readable‑readable
| Vague | Clear |
|---|---|
| “Supporting emotional well being for all ages.” | “We provide therapy for anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, stress, and family communication challenges.” |
| “Improving communication for all ages through personalized speech therapy.” | “We provide speech therapy for expressive and receptive language delays, articulation challenges, fluency difficulties, and early feeding concerns.” |
| “We offer holistic, individualized care to support your whole-body wellness.” | “We provide outpatient physical therapy for back pain, sciatica, post-surgical recovery, and chronic joint pain.” |
| “Helping kids reach their full potential through dynamic occupational therapy sessions.” | “We offer pediatric occupational therapy for grasp development, sensory processing challenges, handwriting difficulties, and daily living skills.” |
Start small
Clients are already turning to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools to understand symptoms, gauge urgency, and decide where to seek care. That behavior is now part of how they find you – or don’t.
You can start small:
- Fix one online directory listing to exactly match your website info.
- Rewrite one service page to call out a specific diagnosis or condition you treat.
- Add one FAQ – real question and answer – to a service or FAQ page.
- Make your NAP (name, address, phone) consistent in at least three places.
Most practices can get these done in under an hour. Every step you take makes it easier for AI tools to recognize, recommend, and route the right clients to your practice.
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