Guide: prepare your site for AI
How to prepare your site so AI understands and recommends it
AI only recommends what it can read, understand and verify in external sources. This list goes from the technical, fixable in a day, to what takes months.
Let AI search bots in
Check your robots.txt: bots such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot must not be blocked if you want AI to cite your site. Publish a sitemap and declare it in robots.txt.
Say what you do in the text, not only in metadata
If your H1 is only your name and the message lives in the meta description, AI has nothing to cite. Put on the page, in words, what you do, for whom and where.
Answer directly, at the top of each page
Start each page with two or three sentences that answer the question it serves. Engines extract short, clear answers; filler paragraphs do not get cited.
Structured data that tells the truth
Schema helps only if it matches what is visible. A format, price or rating the text does not back up is false information for engines. Less schema, but accurate, is better.
An llms.txt and a single identity
An llms.txt summarizes your site for language models. And use the same name, description and domain on your site, profiles and directories: AI trusts a consistent entity more.
External mentions: what takes longest
AI recommends what others mention. Identify which sources it cites in your category (blogs, comparisons, directories) and get listed there with verifiable information. It is months of work, not a day.