Getting cited by AI search: a practical checklist

Buyers increasingly ask an AI assistant before they ask Google. If those assistants cannot read your site, you are invisible in a growing share of research.

1. Let the crawlers in

Check robots.txt. Allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended unless you have a reason not to.

2. Publish a sitemap

A current sitemap.xml tells every crawler which pages exist and when they changed.

3. Add llms.txt

A short plain-text summary of who you are and which pages matter. It is cheap and increasingly read.

4. Write real descriptions

Every page needs a unique title and meta description that says what the page is, in plain words.

5. Use structured data

Organization, Service, and Article markup help models understand what you offer and who you are.

6. Give each topic its own page

Content hidden behind tabs or anchors on one long page is hard to cite. Separate pages with clear headings are easy.

7. Answer the actual questions

FAQ-style content that answers pricing, fit, and process questions directly is exactly what assistants quote.