Work through these 10 steps and your site will be structurally ready to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Each step takes minutes to a few hours. No tools to buy — the two utilities you need are free on this site.
The checklist
- ☐ Run your baseline audit. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the 5 questions your buyers ask (“best X for Y”, “X vs Y”, “is [your brand] legit?”). Save the answers — this is what you will measure progress against.
- ☐ Let AI crawlers in. Check robots.txt: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended must not be blocked. Generate a ready-made allow block with our free generator.
- ☐ Publish an llms.txt. A curated, first-party summary of your site for language models — build one in a minute with the same free tool, upload it to your site root.
- ☐ Rewrite your top 3 pages answer-first. The first paragraph should directly answer the question the page targets, in one quotable sentence.
- ☐ Add a visible FAQ with FAQPage schema to your money pages — engines lift ready-made question-answer pairs.
- ☐ Fix entity consistency. Same name, same one-line description, same logo across your site, socials and profiles. Inconsistency makes engines hedge — and hedging engines skip you.
- ☐ Make 3 facts citable. Concrete numbers with sources beat superlatives. AI engines cross-check; verifiable beats impressive.
- ☐ Publish one comparison page. “You vs the obvious alternative”, honest pros and cons — comparison queries are where recommendations happen.
- ☐ Set up monitoring. Re-run your step-1 questions on a schedule (weekly or monthly) and log whether you appear.
- ☐ Iterate monthly. GEO is a practice, not a one-time fix. Measure, adjust, repeat.
FAQ
How long until I see results?
There is no fixed timeline — engines refresh at different rates. That is why step 1 and step 9 (baseline and monitoring) matter: without them you cannot see progress or regressions.
Do I need to buy anything to complete this checklist?
No. Every step can be done by hand with the free tools on this site. The paid packs below just make each step faster with ready-made prompts and automations.