AI engines do not rank pages, they quote them. This is the exact list I run on every site: the signals that make an AI assistant able to find, parse and cite your page. Copy-paste each fix, tick it off, done.
How to use this: work top to bottom. Items 1-3 are the heavy hitters (structured data + an AI-readable index of your site). Items 4-8 are clean technical hygiene. Items 9-10 are what actually gets you quoted: freshness and a single liftable answer the model can drop into a response verbatim. Do all ten on your most important page first, then repeat per page.
Structured data tells the model who you are and links your profiles together. This is the single strongest "who is this" signal for AI.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Brand",
"url": "https://yoursite.com/",
"description": "One sentence on what you do and for whom.",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourbrand",
"https://x.com/yourbrand",
"https://www.youtube.com/@yourbrand"
]
}
</script>
Put it in the <head>. Use "@type": "Person" instead if it is a personal brand.
AI loves question-shaped content. A FAQPage block gives the model ready-made question/answer pairs to lift straight into a reply.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "What does your product do?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "A clear, self-contained one-paragraph answer."
}
}]
}
</script>
Rule: the visible page must contain the same Q&A text. Schema that does not match the page can be ignored or penalised.
A plain-text map at /llms.txt that tells AI crawlers what your site is and which pages matter. The emerging robots.txt for language models.
# Your Brand > One sentence: what you do, for whom, what makes you different. ## Key pages - [Home](https://yoursite.com/): What you do and how it works. - [Pricing](https://yoursite.com/pricing): Plans and what each includes. - [About](https://yoursite.com/about): Who is behind it. ## Contact hello@yoursite.com
Save as llms.txt at your site root, next to robots.txt.
Longer titles get truncated, and the model leans on the title to decide what the page is about. Front-load the topic.
<title>AI Marketing for Small Business | Your Brand</title>
Format: Primary topic | Brand. Put the words people actually search first.
It is often the snippet an AI quotes when it summarises you. Make it a clean, factual sentence, not a slogan.
<meta name="description" content="Done-for-you AI marketing for small business: one AI employee live in 48 hours, a full team in 30 days.">
Test: if it reads well as the first line of an AI answer about you, it is good.
Models parse pages by headings. One H1 states the topic; descriptive H2s let the model find the exact section to quote.
<h1>The one thing this page is about</h1> <h2>What it is</h2> <h2>How it works</h2> <h2>What it costs</h2>
Avoid multiple H1s and headings used only for styling. Write H2s as the questions people ask.
OG tags give every engine a clean title, description and image to attach to your link, instead of guessing.
<meta property="og:title" content="Page title"> <meta property="og:description" content="One clear sentence."> <meta property="og:image" content="https://yoursite.com/og.png"> <meta property="og:url" content="https://yoursite.com/page">
Image: 1200×630px. Make one per important page.
Tells engines the one true address for the page so your authority is not split across duplicates.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/page">
One per page, pointing to itself (or to the master version if it is a duplicate).
AI strongly prefers content it believes is current. A visible "updated" date plus the current year signals the page is alive.
<p>Last updated: June 2026</p> <!-- and in Article schema --> "dateModified": "2026-06-22"
Do it for real: update the content when you update the date. Stale content with a fresh date gets found out.
The highest-leverage fix. Give the model one self-contained paragraph (roughly 110-380 characters) that fully answers the core question, so it can quote you verbatim.
<p><strong>What is [your thing]?</strong> [Your thing] is a [category] that helps [audience] [outcome] by [how]. Unlike [alternative], it [key difference].</p>
Place it high on the page, right after the H1. Write it so it makes sense lifted out of the page entirely.
Paste your domain into the free scanner and get an instant GEO score with the exact fixes for your site.
Scan my site free →