Back to the Campfire Blog

Optimize for ChatGPT: The Updates That Lead to 105% MoM Increase in Visits

Written by: Luka Matosic Tags: content

Published: Oct 26, 2025

While writing this month’s report for one of our e-commerce clients, a pretty strong site with a DR of 75, I decided to take a peek at the early visibility results of our page improvements.

Using GA4 data drilled down to LLM traffic, total visits were up 59% MoM – a great start. 

To see which types of pages were getting the biggest traffic gains, I exported the data and drilled down to collections, product pages, checkouts, international domains, and more. 

Collection pages, aka category pages, are the pages that organize products into sections like black dresses, men's leather jackets, or items under $100. They can drive a majority of sales on an ecommerce website so I was excited to see that our collection pages were showing the most growth. 

We've been optimizing this set of pages since July 2025 and now four months later, the strategy looked like it was working. 

The numbers were promising:

• August: +62% visits to the collection pages vs July
• September: +105% visits vs August
• A 234% increase from July to September overall

The exact actions we took varied across pages, and it’s hard to isolate which edits drove the most visibility.

All in all, I’d say that regular content updates was the #1 driver behind this growth – showing how important < 9 month freshness is in this new era. 

However, without a healthy structure and the right EEAT signals, even fresh content can fall flat.

This aligns with a post from Lily Grozeva I read recently, in which she shared a very cool infographic from Semrush.

According to their analysis, 95% of ChatGPT citations are from content updated in the last 10 months.

A breakdown of improvements to get better visibility in ChatGPT:

Updated the top navigation / menu bar & the homepage, to feature the target pages

• Added the important pages to the nav bar and homepage to help users navigate to them easily and also strengthen the signal to these pages.
• Built a variety of interlinking through sliders, sidebar elements, and in-article copy.
• With a large set of pages across different themes, we were dealing with a lot of orphaned pages. We created a thematic and automated component that connected these previously poorly linked pages together – something that wasn’t the case previously.

Reworked headings and the copy

• Reworked on-page content to better align with user intent, and to provide more valuable, relevant, and fresh information.
• We edited the copy on the page to reduce fluff and redundancies, and improve readability. 

Optimized and cleaned up URLs

• Rewrote the URLs to include the target keyword, aligning better with the page content and main topic.
• To fully complete the task, we performed a 301 audit; found all instances of the previous URLs and updated them across the site, so that no internal links were routed through redirects.

Built links to the pages

• While the updates were ongoing, we performed personalized outreach and built relevant, contextual links to these pages.
• This was done in hopes of boosting crawling during and after the rollout, and to help direct signaling appropriately.

The takeaway: Upweight freshness, internal linking, and navigability

While these steps are the same as a traditional SEO strategy, here’s why I think they matter when we talk about LLM systems. 

Keep your content fresh within 10 months or earlier

The credibility, usability, and practicality of these systems heavily rely on accurate data – which we know isn’t always the case at the moment. That’s why they have to strive to use the freshest, most relevant data. 

It’s important to start thinking about this with a broader lens now, especially if our content is time-sensitive. For example, "best of" listicles need to be fresh to stay relevant – no one wants to read an outdated review, including an LLM. 

Invest in internal linking because structure and access matters

Nothing really new here – your platform needs to be easily and logically usable, otherwise crawlers and people can’t navigate it efficiently. 

Sometimes I like to take a step back and ask myself: What do we actually need to do to create the most effective setup for the nav bars, headings, footers, other navigational elements, and internal links? 

Ask your colleagues – sometimes what feels logical to you isn’t obvious to everyone else. SEO is better when it’s collaborative.

Quality, relevent backlinks matter

Quality over quantity and “you get what you pay for” are the two main takeaways when it comes to link building. A source page with original data matters more than many of the vanity metrics that can easily distract us. Receiving organic traffic to the source page is also a strong signal.

Of course, regularly updating a large site isn’t easy – it’s resource-heavy, whether you’re an agency, an in-house team, or juggling tasks solo. But moving forward, it’s something we’ll need to keep high on the to-do list if we want to stay visible in LLM systems.

The answer likely lies in automation-driven workflow: Systems that save time at multiple steps but still leave room for a human touch. That final pass – the one only a human can make – is where the real difference (and long-term growth) happens.