Prepare Your Website for AI Search Engines

If you have 30 minutes right now, do these five things first. They are the highest-leverage moves with the least effort.

The complete checklist. Work through these in order — the earlier steps have the broadest impact and make later steps easier. Each step includes estimated effort for a solo founder doing it for the first time.

1. 01

   Write a clear, entity-based introduction

   < 30 min

   AI systems extract answers by matching questions to entities and relationships in your content. Your opening paragraph should name what you do, who you do it for, and where you are — in plain prose, not just in your brand name.

   • ❯State your core offering in the first 2 sentences (not buried in paragraph 3)
   • ❯Name specific entities: product category, location if local, audience type
   • ❯Use natural phrasing people actually type: "a tool that…", "a service for…"
   • ❯Avoid jargon-first openings — AI engines parse semantics, not buzzwords
   exampleInstead of "Leveraging cutting-edge synergies to disrupt the B2B SaaS paradigm" → write "Cogny is an AI marketing agent for solopreneurs who run their own Google Ads and want to know what to fix each week."
2. 02

   Fix your heading hierarchy

   < 1 hour

   A single <h1>, followed by logical <h2> sections, followed by <h3> subsections — this is the outline AI models use to understand what your page is about and whether it answers a query.

   • ❯One <h1> per page — the topic sentence of your content
   • ❯<h2> headings = your main sub-topics (AI engines treat these as section labels)
   • ❯No heading skips: don't jump from <h1> to <h3>
   • ❯Write headings as questions or clear noun phrases ("How to do X", "What is Y")
   • ❯Avoid purely decorative headings that don't describe the section below
   exampleA landscaping company's service page: <h1>Garden maintenance in Stockholm</h1>, <h2>Services we offer</h2>, <h2>Service areas</h2>, <h2>Pricing</h2> — not "Welcome!" as the h1 and decorative dividers as h2s.
3. 03

   Add structured data for your page type

   1–2 hours

   JSON-LD schema markup gives AI systems a machine-readable summary of your content. Google uses it for rich results; ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini use it to verify and cite facts. The right schema type depends on what the page is.

   • ❯Product or service page → LocalBusiness or Service schema with name, description, areaServed
   • ❯How-to guide → HowTo schema with numbered steps (what you're reading has this)
   • ❯Article or blog post → Article schema with headline, datePublished, author
   • ❯FAQ section → FAQPage schema listing each Q&A pair
   • ❯Validate at schema.org/docs/gs.html#testing and Google's Rich Results Test
   exampleA FAQ block on your pricing page with JSON-LD FAQPage schema means ChatGPT can cite your exact answer when someone asks "how much does [your product] cost?"
4. 04

   Set a canonical URL and accurate meta tags

   < 30 min

   AI crawlers treat duplicate or ambiguous pages the same way Google does — they pick one version and ignore the rest. A canonical tag tells them which version is authoritative. Missing canonicals are one of the most common technical gaps on solo-founder sites.

   • ❯Add <link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/page"> to every page
   • ❯Make sure www. and non-www. versions redirect to one canonical domain
   • ❯Write a meta description that describes the page accurately — it's what AI search engines quote when previewing your content
   • ❯Keep your <title> tag under 60 characters and match the page's actual topic
   • ❯Remove duplicate pages (blog tag archives, paginated duplicates) or noindex them
   exampleIf your site runs on both yoursite.com/services and yoursite.com/services/ (trailing slash), both must serve a canonical pointing to the same URL, or AI engines index two competing versions.
5. 05

   Build author authority (E-E-A-T signals)

   2–4 hours, once

   Google and AI systems weight content by whether the author has demonstrated expertise, experience, authority, and trust. For a solopreneur this is not about having a PhD — it's about making your experience visible.

   • ❯Add an About page with your real name, photo, and professional background
   • ❯Link your About page from your blog posts (byline with a link)
   • ❯Get at least one credible external mention or link (partner, press, directory)
   • ❯Add your LinkedIn URL to your site's schema.org Person or Organization markup
   • ❯If you've worked with recognisable clients, mention them (with permission)
   exampleA solo founder's blog post byline: "Written by [Name], who ran paid search for 50+ DTC brands as a freelance consultant since 2018" — this is a citable credential AI systems can extract.
6. 06

   Fix broken or duplicate content

   1–2 hours

   Broken links, 404 pages, and duplicate content waste AI crawl budget and reduce how much of your site gets indexed. A clean crawl = more of your pages show up in AI answers.

   • ❯Crawl your site with a free tool (Screaming Frog free tier handles 500 URLs)
   • ❯Fix or redirect 404s that have external links pointing to them
   • ❯Consolidate thin or duplicate pages into one comprehensive page
   • ❯Remove or noindex pages that have no unique content (filtered listing pages, etc.)
   • ❯Ensure your robots.txt is not accidentally blocking important pages
   exampleIf you have three blog posts covering the same topic at 300 words each, merge them into one 1,000-word authoritative page and 301-redirect the old URLs — you'll rank higher and get cited more.
7. 07

   Add breadcrumb navigation and internal links

   < 1 hour

   Breadcrumbs give AI crawlers a map of your site hierarchy. Internal links tell them which pages you consider important and how topics relate. Both signals matter for how well AI systems understand your site's structure.

   • ❯Add visible breadcrumb navigation (Home > Category > Page) to inner pages
   • ❯Pair visible breadcrumbs with BreadcrumbList JSON-LD schema
   • ❯Link from high-traffic pages to your most important conversion pages
   • ❯From every blog post, link to at least 2 related posts or service pages
   • ❯Use descriptive anchor text ("see our pricing" not "click here")
   exampleAn online store's product page breadcrumb: Home > Shoes > Running Shoes > Nike Air Max 90 — with matching JSON-LD. Google and Perplexity can then surface the correct category context when someone asks about the product.
8. 08

   Make your content citable and quotable

   Ongoing

   AI systems cite specific facts, figures, and named claims — not vague marketing copy. To show up in AI answers, you need content that contains specific, quotable statements an AI can extract and attribute to you.

   • ❯Include specific numbers: "we serve 200+ clients in 12 countries" not "many clients globally"
   • ❯State your methodology or process explicitly: "we use a 3-step audit that covers X, Y, Z"
   • ❯Define terms your audience searches for — if you're the best source for a definition, AI will cite you
   • ❯Use concrete before/after examples: "client went from 200 to 540 monthly leads in 90 days"
   • ❯Write original insights, not paraphrased industry advice
   exampleChatGPT cited a solo founder's blog post 47 times in one month — not because of domain authority, but because the post contained 12 specific statistics with clear source attribution that no competitor had published.

The checklist above gets your site into shape. But GEO is not a one-time fix. AI engines re-crawl your site constantly. New pages break rules. Rankings shift. Most solopreneurs run the checklist once, then let things drift.