Make your facts machine-readable
- Name, address and phone number identical on every page and listing
- Opening hours written out as text, not locked inside an image
- Prices or a price range stated in running text
- Each service named individually, not bundled into one vague line
- Location and service area stated plainly
- Who you're for, described in one clear sentence
Structure a model can actually parse
- Headings phrased as the question a customer would ask
- The answer sits in the first paragraph, not the third
- An FAQ section built from real questions you actually get
- Structured data (Schema.org) in place — it won't move rankings by itself, but it helps a crawler parse the page correctly
- Skip llms.txt unless it's free to add — no major AI search system is confirmed to read it yet
- Robots.txt left open to AI crawlers, not blocking them by default
Mentions, where AI models actually look
- Listed in the industry directory that matters most for you
- Google Business Profile fully filled out
- Recent reviews that say something specific, not just star ratings
- At least one mention in regional or trade press
- The same details repeated consistently across every channel — mention frequency and consistency track with AI citation rate more strongly than backlinks do
- Contradictory information about you actively tracked down and corrected
Answers, and checking they land
- A dedicated answer page for every question you're currently losing
- Paragraphs written to be quoted on their own, out of context
- Marketing language stripped out, leaving only claims you can back up
- Tested by hand in ChatGPT and Perplexity, not just assumed
- Competitors checked the same way, so you know where you actually stand
- A monthly recheck on the calendar — AI answers change faster than search rankings do
- Progress written down somewhere, so you can tell what's working