The problem nobody is talking about
Ask ChatGPT a question about your industry. Go ahead, do it right now.
Does your website show up in the response? Does it get cited as a source?
For 90%+ of businesses, the answer is no. Your site is invisible. It doesn't exist in the AI search world. And that world is growing fast.
ChatGPT has over 200 million weekly active users. Perplexity passed 15 million. Google's AI Overviews now appear on roughly 30% of search queries. These aren't experimental toys anymore. They're where people get answers.
Here's what makes this different from regular SEO: in traditional search, you at least show up on page 3 or page 7. You exist. In AI search, you either get cited or you don't. There's no page 2. You're visible or invisible. Binary.
I've audited over 100 sites for AI search readiness in the last six months. The patterns are clear. Most sites fail for the same handful of reasons, and most of those reasons are fixable in a weekend.
What AI search engines actually want
Forget everything you know about keyword density and backlink profiles for a second. AI search engines process your site differently than Google's traditional crawler.
They want to understand three things:
- What does this page actually say? Not what keywords it targets. What information it contains.
- Who wrote it, and why should anyone trust them? Author bios, credentials, company info.
- Is this content structured in a way I can parse? Headings, lists, schema markup, clear sections.
That's it. AI models are surprisingly good at understanding content quality, but they need help understanding context and trust.
Think about it from the AI's perspective. It's processing millions of pages to answer a single question. It needs to quickly determine: is this source reliable, is this information specific, and can I extract a clear answer from it?
If your page is a wall of text with no headings, no author, no structured data, and vague claims, the AI skips you. Not because your content is bad. Because it can't efficiently verify and cite you.
The 10-point AI visibility checklist
I've boiled this down to the things that actually move the needle. No theory. Just what works.
1. Don't block AI crawlers in robots.txt
This sounds obvious, but I see it constantly. Check your robots.txt right now. If you see any of these, you have a problem:
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /
About 26% of the top 1,000 websites block GPTBot. Some do it intentionally. Most don't realize they're doing it with overly broad disallow rules.
Fix: Explicitly allow AI crawlers, or at minimum, don't block them.
2. Add FAQ schema to your top pages
FAQ schema is the single highest-impact change for AI visibility. When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a question and your page has FAQ schema with that exact question, you're far more likely to get cited.
{
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "How do I make my website visible to ChatGPT?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Add structured data, ensure AI crawlers can access your site..."
}
}]
}
Pick the 5 questions people actually ask about your business. Add FAQ schema for each one. This takes 30 minutes.
3. Use proper heading hierarchy
AI models rely heavily on headings to understand content structure. Every page needs one H1. Sections under it get H2s. Sub-sections get H3s. Don't skip levels. Don't use headings for styling.
This isn't new advice, but it matters more now. A well-structured page is 3x easier for an AI to parse and cite than a flat wall of text.
4. Add author and organization schema
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) isn't just a Google thing anymore. AI models weight content differently based on who wrote it.
Add Person schema for authors. Add Organization schema for your company. Include credentials, experience, and links to other authoritative profiles (LinkedIn, industry publications).
5. Write long-form, specific content
Thin pages with 300 words don't get cited. Ever. AI search engines prefer comprehensive content that thoroughly covers a topic.
The sweet spot is 1,500 to 3,000 words per page on your core topics. Not fluff. Specific, detailed, opinionated content with real data points.
6. Include statistics and specific claims
"Our product is great" gets you nothing. "Our product reduced page load time by 43% across 200 client sites" gets cited.
AI models love specificity. Numbers, percentages, dates, named studies. Every specific claim is a potential citation anchor.
7. Implement OpenGraph and meta descriptions properly
When an AI does cite you, it pulls your OG title, description, and image to build the citation card. If these are missing or generic ("Welcome to our website"), you lose the click even when you win the citation.
Every page needs a unique, descriptive OG title and description. Not a keyword-stuffed mess. A clear statement of what the page covers.
8. Create a clear site architecture
AI crawlers follow your internal links just like Googlebot. If your best content is buried 5 clicks deep with no internal links pointing to it, it won't get indexed well.
Your most important content should be reachable within 2 clicks from your homepage. Use a logical URL structure. Link related content together.
9. Publish content that answers questions directly
Look at how ChatGPT responds: it answers questions. If your content is structured as clear answers to specific questions, you're aligned with how AI search works.
Start sections with the answer. Then explain. Don't bury the answer in paragraph 4 of a meandering introduction.
10. Keep content fresh
AI models learn from recent crawls. A page last updated in 2021 gets weighted less than one updated last month. Add dateModified to your schema. Actually update your content regularly.
This doesn't mean changing a comma. It means reviewing your content quarterly and updating facts, stats, and recommendations.
The three mistakes I see everywhere
Mistake 1: Blocking AI crawlers "for safety." Some site owners block GPTBot because they don't want AI "stealing" their content. I get the concern. But blocking crawlers doesn't prevent AI from learning about your content through other sources. It just prevents you from getting cited and getting traffic. You lose, the AI doesn't care.
Mistake 2: Having zero structured data. No schema, no FAQ markup, no author info. Your content might be brilliant, but you're making the AI do all the work to understand it. That's a competitive disadvantage when 50 other sites make it easy.
Mistake 3: Writing for keywords instead of questions. Traditional SEO trained us to think in keywords. AI search thinks in questions and answers. If your page title is "Best SEO Services Copenhagen 2026" instead of "How to choose an SEO agency in Copenhagen," you're optimizing for the wrong paradigm.
How to check your AI visibility right now
Here's a 5-minute test:
- Open ChatGPT (or Perplexity, or Google with AI Overviews)
- Ask a question your website should answer
- Check if your site gets cited
- Try 5 different questions related to your business
- If you get zero citations, you have work to do
You can also check your server logs for GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, and PerplexityBot user agents. If they're not crawling you, the crawlers either can't find you or you're blocking them.
For a more thorough analysis, run a full AI readiness audit. Check your schema markup with Google's Rich Results Test. Validate your robots.txt allows AI crawlers. Review your heading structure. Test your content specificity.
What to do next
Don't try to fix everything at once. Start with the biggest wins:
- Check and fix robots.txt (5 minutes)
- Add FAQ schema to your top 5 pages (2 hours)
- Add author schema to your blog (1 hour)
- Review and improve your top 10 pages for specificity (ongoing)
That's a weekend of work that puts you ahead of 90% of your competitors. Most businesses haven't even started thinking about AI search optimization. By the time they do, the early movers will already own the citations.
