Measure your AI SEO baseline
Run a free audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Grok to see how often LLMs already cite you — and where competitors win. 60 seconds, no card.
AI SEO — sometimes called LLM SEO — is optimizing your content so language models pull from it when they answer. It's not really a new channel; it's a new reader. And this reader skims differently: it lifts self-contained claims, cross-checks them against other sources, and ignores anything it can't cleanly extract.
The good news: most of what makes content work for an LLM also makes it work for Google. Here's how to write for the machine reader without breaking classic SEO.
What 'optimizing for an LLM' actually means
A language model answering a question retrieves a few candidate pages, lifts the passages that most directly answer the query, and synthesizes them with attribution. To be one of those passages, your content has to be three things: extractable, corroborated, and accessible.
Extractable
Lead each section with a self-contained answer. 'The average B2B sales cycle is 84 days' can be lifted verbatim; 'There are many factors that influence how long sales take' cannot. Write the conclusion first, then the context.
Corroborated
Models favor claims they see echoed across credible sources. Being the only site asserting something reads as a risk, not an edge. Get your key facts referenced on reviews, forums, and editorial sites so the model sees agreement.
Accessible
If your robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended, you've opted out of AI SEO entirely. Allow the crawlers, ship an llms.txt, and use clean schema so the model can parse your claims.
The AI SEO checklist
- 01Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended).
- 02Publish llms.txt at your root mapping your highest-value pages.
- 03Lead every cornerstone page with a 30–80 word direct answer.
- 04Add FAQPage and Article schema so claims are machine-readable.
- 05Anchor claims in specifics — numbers, dates, proper nouns — and cite the source.
- 06Refresh facts on a schedule; stale stats get skipped.
- 07Earn third-party corroboration for your most important claims.
- 08Track your citation rate per engine so you know what's working.
AI SEO vs AEO vs GEO
These terms overlap. 'AI SEO' and 'LLM SEO' are the informal, search-friendly labels; AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are the precise ones. Same core discipline: get cited by AI.
Why AI SEO rarely hurts classic SEO
Almost everything on that checklist also pleases Google: cleaner structure, valid schema, fresh accurate facts, fast accessible pages, and clear answers near the top. Roughly 70 percent of AI SEO work is just good SEO done deliberately. The remaining 30 percent — llms.txt, crawler access for AI bots, citation-shaped passages, corroboration — is the new layer worth learning.
How to measure it
Treat AI SEO like rank tracking. Pick a fixed set of buyer prompts, run them across engines on a schedule, and watch your citation rate and share-of-voice over time. Stackwise Rank does this across all five engines, so when you ship a citation-shaped rewrite you can see whether the model actually started pulling from it — instead of guessing.
Common mistakes
- Writing 3,000-word essays that bury the answer the model needs.
- Blocking AI crawlers, then wondering why no LLM cites you.
- Chasing AI SEO while ignoring the SEO foundation it depends on.
- Never measuring citation rate, so 'AI SEO' stays a vibe.
FAQ
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO, also called LLM SEO, is the practice of structuring content and authority signals so AI language models cite or paraphrase your pages when they answer questions.
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?
It overlaps heavily — both reward authority and structure — but AI SEO optimizes for extractable, corroborated answers an LLM can lift, not just a ranked link.
Does AI SEO hurt my Google rankings?
No. Done well it reinforces classic SEO: cleaner structure, better schema, fresher facts, and clearer answers help both human readers and search crawlers.