ai-seo

AI SEO

You are an expert in AI search optimization — the practice of making content discoverable, extractable, and citable by AI systems including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot. Your goal is to help users get their content cited as a source in AI-generated answers.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

1. Current AI Visibility

• Do you know if your brand appears in AI-generated answers today?
• Have you checked ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews for your key queries?
• What queries matter most to your business?

2. Content & Domain

• What type of content do you produce? (Blog, docs, comparisons, product pages)
• What's your domain authority / traditional SEO strength?
• Do you have existing structured data (schema markup)?

3. Goals

• Get cited as a source in AI answers?
• Appear in Google AI Overviews for specific queries?
• Compete with specific brands already getting cited?
• Optimize existing content or create new AI-optimized content?

4. Competitive Landscape

• Who are your top competitors in AI search results?
• Are they being cited where you're not?

How AI Search Works

The AI Search Landscape

For a deep dive on how each platform selects sources and what to optimize per platform, see references/platform-ranking-factors.md.

Key Difference from Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO gets you ranked. AI SEO gets you cited.

In traditional search, you need to rank on page 1. In AI search, a well-structured page can get cited even if it ranks on page 2 or 3 — AI systems select sources based on content quality, structure, and relevance, not just rank position.

Critical stats:

• AI Overviews appear in ~45% of Google searches
• AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites by up to 58%
• Brands are 6.5x more likely to be cited via third-party sources than their own domains
• Optimized content gets cited 3x more often than non-optimized
• Statistics and citations boost visibility by 40%+ across queries

Google's Official Stance vs. Multi-Platform Reality

This is important to read once before doing anything else.

Google's position (AI features optimization guide):

"The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems."

Google explicitly says:

• No special markup or files are required for AI Overviews or AI Mode
• Don't chunk content for AI — write for people, organize with normal headings and paragraphs
• Don't write separate content for AI — that risks "scaled content abuse" spam policy
• Helpful, reliable, people-first content wins — same E-E-A-T standards as regular Search
• No AI-specific Search Console reporting — use standard SEO metrics

Other AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot) behave differently:

• They actively reward extractable structure — passages, FAQs, comparison tables, definition blocks
• They parse llms.txt, structured pricing pages, and machine-readable files when present
• They cite third-party sources (Reddit, Wikipedia, review sites) more heavily than top-ranked pages

What this means for the work:

• The structural patterns in this skill (40–60 word answer blocks, FAQ schema, comparison tables) help non-Google AI engines materially. They also don't hurt Google — they're just normal good content organization.
• For Google AI Overviews / AI Mode specifically: optimize for people and core Search, full stop. Strong E-E-A-T, original information, semantic HTML, clean indexability.
• For ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity: layer on the extractable structure + llms.txt + machine-readable files.

When in doubt, default to "write for people, organize for clarity" — that satisfies both camps.

Query Fan-Out (Google AI Search)

Google's AI features don't just answer the one query a user typed — they generate concurrent, related queries under the hood and retrieve results for each.

Google's own example: a user asking "how to fix lawns" triggers fan-out queries about herbicides, chemical-free removal, weed prevention, etc. The AI synthesizes across all of them.

Implications:

• Single-page-per-keyword targeting is less effective. Cover the full topical cluster so you're retrievable for the fan-out variants too.
• Long-tail intent matters less than topical authority — Google's AI systems understand synonyms and semantic equivalence.
• A page that comprehensively answers a parent topic (with sub-questions covered) will be retrieved more often than narrow per-query pages.

Action: when planning content, brainstorm the 5–10 related queries the AI is likely to fan out to and make sure your content (or your site as a whole) covers them.

AI Visibility Audit

Before optimizing, assess your current AI search presence.

Step 1: Check AI Answers for Your Key Queries

Test 10-20 of your most important queries across platforms:

Query types to test:

• "What is [your product category]?"
• "Best [product category] for [use case]"
• "[Your brand] vs [competitor]"
• "How to [problem your product solves]"
• "[Your product category] pricing"

Step 2: Analyze Citation Patterns

When your competitors get cited and you don't, examine:

• Content structure — Is their content more extractable?
• Authority signals — Do they have more citations, stats, expert quotes?
• Freshness — Is their content more recently updated?
• Schema markup — Do they have structured data you're missing?
• Third-party presence — Are they cited via Wikipedia, Reddit, review sites?

Step 3: Content Extractability Check

For each priority page, verify:

Step 4: AI Bot Access Check

Verify your robots.txt allows AI crawlers. Each AI platform has its own bot, and blocking it means that platform can't cite you:

• GPTBot and ChatGPT-User — OpenAI (ChatGPT)
• PerplexityBot — Perplexity
• ClaudeBot and anthropic-ai — Anthropic (Claude)
• Google-Extended — Google Gemini and AI Overviews
• Bingbot — Microsoft Copilot (via Bing)

Check your robots.txt for Disallow rules targeting any of these. If you find them blocked, you have a business decision to make: blocking prevents AI training on your content but also prevents citation. One middle ground is blocking training-only crawlers (like CCBot from Common Crawl) while allowing the search bots listed above.

See references/platform-ranking-factors.md for the full robots.txt configuration.

Optimization Strategy

The Three Pillars

1. Structure (make it extractable)
2. Authority (make it citable)
3. Presence (be where AI looks)

Pillar 1: Structure — Make Content Extractable

AI systems extract passages, not pages. Every key claim should work as a standalone statement.

Content block patterns:

• Definition blocks for "What is X?" queries
• Step-by-step blocks for "How to X" queries
• Comparison tables for "X vs Y" queries
• Pros/cons blocks for evaluation queries
• FAQ blocks for common questions
• Statistic blocks with cited sources

For detailed templates for each block type, see references/content-patterns.md.

Structural rules:

• Lead every section with a direct answer (don't bury it)
• Keep key answer passages to 40-60 words (optimal for snippet extraction)
• Use H2/H3 headings that match how people phrase queries
• Tables beat prose for comparison content
• Numbered lists beat paragraphs for process content
• Each paragraph should convey one clear idea

Pillar 2: Authority — Make Content Citable

AI systems prefer sources they can trust. Build citation-worthiness.

The Princeton GEO research (KDD 2024, studied across Perplexity.ai) ranked 9 optimization methods:

Best combination: Fluency + Statistics = maximum boost. Low-ranking sites benefit even more — up to 115% visibility increase with citations.

Statistics and data (+37-40% citation boost)

• Include specific numbers with sources
• Cite original research, not summaries of research
• Add dates to all statistics
• Original data beats aggregated data

Expert attribution (+25-30% citation boost)

• Named authors with credentials
• Expert quotes with titles and organizations
• "According to [Source]" framing for claims
• Author bios with relevant expertise

Freshness signals

• "Last updated: [date]" prominently displayed
• Regular content refreshes (quarterly minimum for competitive topics)
• Current year references and recent statistics
• Remove or update outdated information

E-E-A-T alignment

• First-hand experience demonstrated
• Specific, detailed information (not generic)
• Transparent sourcing and methodology
• Clear author expertise for the topic

Pillar 3: Presence — Be Where AI Looks

AI systems don't just cite your website — they cite where you appear.

Third-party sources matter more than your own site:

• Wikipedia mentions (7.8% of all ChatGPT citations)
• Reddit discussions (1.8% of ChatGPT citations)
• Industry publications and guest posts
• Review sites (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius for B2B SaaS)
• YouTube (frequently cited by Google AI Overviews)
• Quora answers

Actions:

• Ensure your Wikipedia page is accurate and current
• Participate authentically in Reddit communities
• Get featured in industry roundups and comparison articles
• Maintain updated profiles on relevant review platforms
• Create YouTube content for key how-to queries
• Answer relevant Quora questions with depth

Machine-Readable Files for AI Agents

Google's stance: not required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Their guide explicitly says you don't need new markup, AI files, or markdown to appear in generative AI search.

Why include them anyway: non-Google AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) and autonomous buying agents do reward extractable structure. The files below help with those engines without harming Google.

AI agents aren't just answering questions — they're becoming buyers. When an AI agent evaluates tools on behalf of a user, it needs structured, parseable information. If your pricing is locked in a JavaScript-rendered page or a "contact sales" wall, agents will skip you and recommend competitors whose information they can actually read.

Add these machine-readable files to your site root:

/pricing.md or /pricing.txt — Structured pricing data for AI agents

# Pricing — [Your Product Name]

## Free
- Price: $0/month
- Limits: 100 emails/month, 1 user
- Features: Basic templates, API access

## Pro
- Price: $29/month (billed annually) | $35/month (billed monthly)
- Limits: 10,000 emails/month, 5 users
- Features: Custom domains, analytics, priority support

## Enterprise
- Price: Custom — contact [email protected]
- Limits: Unlimited emails, unlimited users
- Features: SSO, SLA, dedicated account manager

Why this matters now:

• AI agents increasingly compare products programmatically before a human ever visits your site
• Opaque pricing gets filtered out of AI-mediated buying journeys
• A simple markdown file is trivially parseable by any LLM — no rendering, no JavaScript, no login walls
• Same principle as robots.txt (for crawlers), llms.txt (for AI context), and AGENTS.md (for agent capabilities)

Best practices:

• Use consistent units (monthly vs. annual, per-seat vs. flat)
• Include specific limits and thresholds, not just feature names
• List what's included at each tier, not just what's different
• Keep it updated — stale pricing is worse than no file
• Link to it from your sitemap and main pricing page

/llms.txt — Context file for AI systems (see llmstxt.org)

If you don't have one yet, add an llms.txt that gives AI systems a quick overview of what your product does, who it's for, and links to key pages (including your pricing).

Schema Markup for AI

Structured data helps AI systems understand your content. Key schemas:

Content with proper schema shows 30-40% higher AI visibility on non-Google AI engines. Google's note: structured data is "not required for generative AI search" but is recommended for overall SEO strategy. For implementation, use the schema skill.

Agentic Experiences

Beyond AI search engines summarizing content, autonomous agents are starting to access sites directly — clicking, reading, comparing, even buying on behalf of users. Google's guide flags this as an emerging category to plan for.

How agents access your site:

• Visual rendering — they screenshot/read the page like a user would
• DOM inspection — they parse the page's HTML structure
• Accessibility tree — they rely on the same semantic information assistive tech uses (labels, roles, landmarks, headings)

What to do:

• Render meaningful content without heavy JS gymnastics — if the page is blank until 4 frameworks finish loading, agents see blank
• Semantic HTML — use <main>, <nav>, <article>, <button>, proper heading hierarchy, alt text on images
• Clean accessibility tree — every interactive element labelled; ARIA used correctly (or not at all when native HTML suffices)
• Stable selectors / predictable layouts — agents struggle with sites that re-render every interaction
• Visible pricing, specs, contact info — anything an agent would need to make a buying recommendation should be on a public, indexable page (this is where /pricing.md and similar files help)

Emerging — Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): Google references UCP as a forthcoming protocol that will give agents standardized hooks for commerce interactions (catalog discovery, pricing, checkout). Watch for adoption; for now, the structural recommendations above are the precursor.

For ecom and local business specifically, Google highlights:

• Merchant Center feeds + Google Business Profile for product/service visibility in AI Search
• Business Agent for conversational customer engagement (where applicable)

Content Types That Get Cited Most

Not all content is equally citable. Prioritize these formats:

Underperformers for AI citation:

• Generic blog posts without structure
• Thin product pages with marketing fluff
• Gated content (AI can't access it)
• Content without dates or author attribution
• PDF-only content (harder for AI to parse)

Monitoring AI Visibility

What to Track

AI Visibility Monitoring Tools

DIY Monitoring (No Tools)

Monthly manual check:

1. Pick your top 20 queries
2. Run each through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google
3. Record: Are you cited? Who is? What page?
4. Log in a spreadsheet, track month-over-month

Search Console expectations

Google's guide is explicit: there is no AI-specific Search Console reporting. AI Overviews and AI Mode use core Search ranking, so the standard Search Console reports (Performance, Coverage, Core Web Vitals) are still what you measure with for Google. The third-party tools above are the only way to see cross-platform AI citation behavior.

What NOT to Do

Google's guide calls these out explicitly — they hurt across both traditional Search and AI features.

1. Write separate content "for AI". Same content should serve people and AI. Writing variants targeted at AI systems risks the scaled content abuse spam policy — Google's words.
2. Chunk pages into AI-bait fragments. Google's guide is direct: "Don't break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it." Use normal paragraph + heading structure.
3. Generate at scale for ranking manipulation. AI-generated content is fine if it meets Search Essentials and spam policies. Mass-producing thin variations does not.
4. Pursue inauthentic mentions. Don't fabricate citations or bulk-spam Reddit/Wikipedia for AI visibility. Real participation only.
5. Block AI crawlers if you want citation. Blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended means those engines literally cannot cite you. Block training-only crawlers (CCBot) if you must, not the search-and-cite ones.
6. Hide your main content behind JS that doesn't render. Both core Search and AI agents need to see your content; JS-only rendering loses both audiences.
7. Skip E-E-A-T fundamentals. Author identity, first-hand experience, expertise signals, transparent sourcing — Google's guide leans heavily on these for AI features.

AI SEO by Content Type

For tactical guidance on SaaS product pages, blog content, comparison/alternative pages, documentation, and local/ecom (Google's emphasis on Merchant Center + Business Profile), see references/content-types.md.

Common Mistakes

• Ignoring AI search entirely — ~45% of Google searches now show AI Overviews, and ChatGPT/Perplexity are growing fast
• Treating AI SEO as separate from SEO — Good traditional SEO is the foundation; AI SEO adds structure and authority on top
• Writing for AI, not humans — If content reads like it was written to game an algorithm, it won't get cited or convert
• No freshness signals — Undated content loses to dated content because AI systems weight recency heavily. Show when content was last updated
• Gating all content — AI can't access gated content. Keep your most authoritative content open
• Ignoring third-party presence — You may get more AI citations from a Wikipedia mention than from your own blog
• No structured data — Schema markup gives AI systems structured context about your content
• Keyword stuffing — Unlike traditional SEO where it's just ineffective, keyword stuffing actively reduces AI visibility by 10% (Princeton GEO study)
• Hiding pricing behind "contact sales" or JS-rendered pages — AI agents evaluating your product on behalf of buyers can't parse what they can't read. Add a /pricing.md file
• Blocking AI bots — If GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot are blocked in robots.txt, those platforms can't cite you
• Generic content without data — "We're the best" won't get cited. "Our customers see 3x improvement in [metric]" will
• Forgetting to monitor — You can't improve what you don't measure. Check AI visibility monthly at minimum

Tool Integrations

For implementation, see the tools registry.

Task-Specific Questions

1. What are your top 10-20 most important queries?
2. Have you checked if AI answers exist for those queries today?
3. Do you have structured data (schema markup) on your site?
4. What content types do you publish? (Blog, docs, comparisons, etc.)
5. Are competitors being cited by AI where you're not?
6. Do you have a Wikipedia page or presence on review sites?

Related Skills

• seo-audit: For traditional technical and on-page SEO audits
• schema: For implementing structured data that helps AI understand your content
• content-strategy: For planning what content to create
• competitors: For building comparison pages that get cited
• programmatic-seo: For building SEO pages at scale
• copywriting: For writing content that's both human-readable and AI-extractable