Making Your Website Visible to AI: A Practical Guide to LLM SEO

You ask ChatGPT a question. It gives you an answer with sources at the bottom. Sometimes your competitor's website is there. Sometimes it is not.

What decides this? And more importantly, how do you make sure YOUR site shows up?

That is what this guide is about. We will cover how AI systems find content, what files you need, and how to structure your pages so AI actually cites them.

How AI Actually Finds Your Content

This is different from how Google works. Let me explain.

When you ask ChatGPT something, it does not just pull from memory. Modern AI uses something called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Here is what happens:

1. You ask a question
2. The AI searches the web for relevant pages
3. It grabs content from those pages
4. It generates an answer using that content
5. It cites the sources

Think of it like a research assistant. They do not know everything by heart. They search, read, summarize, and tell you where they found the information.

The key insight: your content needs to be findable and easy to extract. If the AI cannot reach your page or understand what is on it, you are invisible.

The Bots That Crawl Your Site

Different companies have different bots. Here are the main ones you should know:

OpenAI runs three bots:

• GPTBot (for training)
• ChatGPT-User (when users browse)
• OAI-SearchBot (for search features)

Anthropic runs ClaudeBot and anthropic-ai.

Perplexity runs PerplexityBot.

Google runs Google-Extended for Gemini.

There are others too: Applebot-Extended, Bytespider (TikTok), Amazonbot, Meta-ExternalAgent, and CCBot (Common Crawl).

Here is an important distinction: some bots are for training (they collect data to improve models), and some are for search (they fetch content when users ask questions). You can allow one while blocking the other.

Setting Up Your robots.txt

The robots.txt file lives at your website root. It tells bots what they can and cannot access.

Here is a simple setup that allows AI crawlers:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

That is it. Nothing fancy.

Want to block training bots but allow search bots? Do this:

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Now ChatGPT can cite you in answers, but your content will not be used for training.

Quick note on crawl-delay: Most AI bots ignore it. If you need rate limiting, use Cloudflare or your server settings instead.

The llms.txt File

While robots.txt controls access, llms.txt helps AI understand your content. Think of it as a treasure map pointing to your best pages.

It is a markdown file at your domain root. Here is what it looks like:

# Your Site Name

> Brief description of what your site is about.

## Key Pages

- [Home](https://yoursite.com/): Main landing page
- [Blog](https://yoursite.com/blog): Technical articles
- [Docs](https://yoursite.com/docs): Documentation

## Popular Articles

- [How X Works](https://yoursite.com/blog/how-x-works): Explains X in detail
- [Guide to Y](https://yoursite.com/blog/guide-to-y): Complete Y tutorial

Last Updated: 2026-01-09

Keep it short. 10-20 of your best pages. Not a dump of everything on your site.

The goal is simple: when an AI needs information about something you cover, this file tells it exactly where to look.

A note on adoption: llms.txt is a newer spec with growing support. Not all AI systems use it yet. Think of it as forward-looking optimization. Your robots.txt and content structure are the proven foundations.

Your Sitemap

Your sitemap.xml helps AI discover all your pages. Nothing special here, just make sure it exists and is up to date.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://yoursite.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-09</lastmod>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://yoursite.com/blog/article</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-08</lastmod>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Two things matter:

1. Include your llms.txt in the sitemap
2. Use real dates for lastmod, not just today's date

Reference it in your robots.txt with Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

How to Structure Your Content

This is where most people mess up. You can have all the right files, but if your content is hard to parse, AI will skip it.

Use clear headings. H1 for title, H2 for sections, H3 for subsections. AI uses this to understand what your page covers.

Keep paragraphs short. 2-4 sentences max. Long blocks of text are hard to extract.

Answer questions directly. If your page is about "What is X?", the answer should be in the first paragraph. Not buried in the middle somewhere.

Use server-side rendering. Many AI bots do not run JavaScript. If your content loads client-side, they see an empty page. This is critical for React/Next.js apps. To check: view your page source. If you see your actual text in the HTML, you are good. If you see mostly JavaScript and no content, AI bots see an empty page.

What Actually Gets You Cited

Technical setup is table stakes. Here is what makes AI actually choose your content over someone else's:

Be specific. Generic content does not get cited. Detailed explanations with examples do. Compare "React is a JavaScript library" versus "React uses a virtual DOM that batches updates, reducing direct DOM manipulation significantly in typical apps." The second one answers real questions.

Be accurate. AI increasingly cross-checks facts. Wrong information gets filtered out.

Be fresh. Recent publication dates help. Keep your important pages updated.

Be authoritative. Publish under real names. Link to credentials. Cite your sources.

The Quick Checklist

Here is what to do, in order:

1. Check your robots.txt is not blocking AI bots
2. Make sure your content renders server-side (view page source to verify)
3. Create an llms.txt with your top pages
4. Verify your sitemap exists and is referenced in robots.txt
5. Structure your content with clear headings and short paragraphs
6. Test by asking AI assistants questions about topics you cover

That last step is important. Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity something your site answers. Does it cite you? If not, figure out why.

The Bottom Line

AI search is not replacing Google. It is adding a new channel. Some users will keep googling. Others will ask AI directly. You want to show up in both.

The good news: most of this is just good web practice anyway. Clear structure, fast loading, accurate content. Things you should be doing regardless.

Start with the basics. Create your llms.txt, fix your robots.txt, check your rendering. Then test and iterate.

Your content deserves to be found. Make sure AI can find it.

Further Reading

• llms.txt Specification
• OpenAI Crawler Docs
• Perplexity Bot Docs