Beyond keywords: how to future-proof your site for AI-driven search

For decades, SEO was about understanding search engines. Now, it’s about understanding how machines understand us.

ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, Perplexity — they’re not just new tools. They’re becoming the interface through which millions of people access the web. The game is no longer just about ranking in search results. It’s about being cited in an answer, summarised in a chat, or even paraphrased by a machine you didn’t know was reading your content.

This isn’t a prediction. It’s already happening. And if your website isn’t being read — and understood — by these large language models (LLMs), then your audience is slipping away without ever visiting your site.

So, how do you get ahead of this shift?

You start by thinking like a machine. And then, you design like a human.

AI-powered search is becoming the default — not the alternative

Search used to be a two-step process: query, then click. Now it’s a conversation. And the assistant is doing the clicking for you.

When someone asks ChatGPT for the best budgeting apps or Claude for a breakdown of zero-knowledge proofs, the assistant issues a live search, reads multiple sources, and synthesises an answer — often pulling in citations. But the user might never see your headline or visit your site.

In this world, traditional SEO becomes just the start. Getting your page indexed and ranked is still necessary — Bing, Google and Brave all power the search backend for ChatGPT, Bard and Claude, respectively. But the LLM decides what gets used. It reads the top pages, extracts the most relevant passages, and paraphrases or quotes them in a way that feels conversational.

Your headline isn’t enough. Your snippet is the new front door.

Future-proofing your site means thinking beyond rankings

To stay visible, your site needs to be built for two audiences at once: people, and machines that think like people.

This means making your content machine-readable, semantically structured, and factually clear. It also means understanding how LLMs scan the web: they’re looking for trustworthy, structured information that can answer a question fast.

One way to help them find it is through a new (experimental) standard: llms.txt.

Proposed by the AI community, llms.txt is a simple text file you can place at the root of your site. It contains metadata specifically for language models — like your site’s purpose, key pages, and how you’d like to be interpreted. Think of it like robots.txt, but for LLMs.

While it’s not yet widely adopted, early movers like Anthropic are already checking for it. If it gains traction, it could be a major signal — and an early advantage — for visibility in AI summaries.

Crawlers, bots and visibility: what you need to allow

Every LLM has its own way of accessing live data. ChatGPT uses GPTBot. Claude uses Claude-User. Brave has BraveBot, and Perplexity maintains its own light index.

If you’re blocking these crawlers in your robots.txt file — intentionally or not — your content won’t be used. Even if it ranks. Even if it’s perfect.

So now’s the time to audit your bot access. Make sure your site is open to these AI agents, unless you have specific privacy reasons not to. Submit sitemaps not just to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, but also make sure your most important pages are linked clearly from your homepage, and load quickly.

Machines won’t wait for slow, complex, or hidden content.

The content formats LLMs love

AI models don’t care how clever your prose is. They care how usable it is.

That means clear sentences. Descriptive subheadings. Questions followed by answers. If you’re explaining a concept, define it. If you’re giving a recommendation, be direct. Ambiguity is the enemy of citation.

Also: use schema. Not just to please Google, but to give AI tools a machine-readable roadmap. FAQ blocks, HowTo guides, author markup — it all helps.

And for truly future-facing sites, consider writing modular content. Break your pages into digestible, answer-sized blocks. Use formatting that invites extraction. Think like a teacher writing for a textbook, not a blogger writing for clicks.

Why freshness and originality still matter

AI assistants want answers — but they also want new ones. LLMs are wired to value timely, trustworthy information. They’ll often prioritise recently updated pages or cite a source that phrases something uniquely.

That means you should keep your key content fresh. Review old pages regularly. Update statistics. Refresh intros. And when new trends emerge in your industry, be the first to explain them.

A model like Claude or ChatGPT will often pick the page that says it best — not just the one that said it first.

Your edge is still your voice — as long as it’s clear

There’s a risk, in all this, of writing for robots. But that’s not the point.

The point is: write clearly enough that a robot can read you — and still sound human enough that a person wants to learn more.

If you do that, your site won’t just rank. It’ll teach. It’ll travel. It’ll appear in answers, citations, summaries — and maybe even shape what AI says about your industry.

That’s visibility you can’t buy. But you can build it.

Want your site to be future-ready for AI?

Join the Glafos beta and get early access to our AI-optimised content tools — including visibility audits, structured content analysis, and support for emerging standards like llms.txt.

Frequently asked questions

What is llms.txt and should I use it? It’s a proposed new standard — a text file at the root of your site that gives language models (like ChatGPT or Claude) structured info about your content. While experimental, it may become an important visibility signal as AI search grows.

Which AI bots should I allow in my robots.txt? If you want your site to be considered for AI answers, allow crawlers like GPTBot, Claude-User, BraveBot, and Perplexity’s agents. Blocking them could make your site invisible to AI-powered tools, even if it ranks.

Does schema markup help with AI visibility? Yes. Structured data like FAQ, HowTo, and Article schema helps machines parse your content more easily. It increases the chance your content is featured in AI summaries or cited in responses.

What kind of content do AI tools prefer to quote? AI models prefer clear, factual, and concise content — especially content that directly answers a question. Modular formats, updated information, and plain language are all strong signals.