LLM SEO: optimizing a website for large language models.

What is LLM SEO?

LLM SEO (also called AEO, GEO, LLMO or AI search optimization) is optimizing content for the way large language models select sources. When a model answers with web search, it retrieves a handful of pages, reads them in chunks, and composes an answer from the chunks it finds clearest and most credible. When it answers from training data, it draws on what the web said about you at training time. LLM SEO improves both: the chunks on your site, and the picture of your business across the web.

What do LLMs actually read on your site?

• ✓Text, chunked. Models split a page into passages of a few hundred words. A passage that starts with a question and answers it is far more likely to be lifted than one that starts mid-argument.
• ✓Headings. H2 and H3 text is the label on each chunk. "How much does it cost?" is a label a model can match to a question. "Investment" is not.
• ✓Structured data. JSON-LD schema (Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article) tells the model what the page and the business are without inference.
• ✓Dates and authorship. Visible "last updated" lines and named authors raise the model's confidence in freshness and accountability.
• ✓llms.txt. A plain-text summary at your site root, increasingly read by AI crawlers as a starting map.
• ✓What others say. Reviews, directory listings, Reddit threads, YouTube transcripts. The model checks your claims against the rest of the web.

How do I optimize a website for LLMs?

1. 1.Allow the crawlers. GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended in robots.txt. Blocked bots are the most common reason a business is invisible to AI.
2. 2.Rewrite headings as questions. Take the questions customers ask and use them verbatim as H2s.
3. 3.Answer first, then elaborate. The first 40 to 60 words under each heading must stand alone as a complete answer with specifics.
4. 4.Add schema. Organization or LocalBusiness on every page, FAQPage where there are questions, Service for each service, Article for guides.
5. 5.Fix the entity. One consistent name, address, description and founder across your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories.
6. 6.Publish llms.txt. Business summary, services, pricing, key FAQs, links to the pages that matter.
7. 7.Earn mentions. A YouTube video, a Reddit answer, a listicle inclusion. In our sampling of AI answers, YouTube was cited 141 times and Reddit 41 times across 102 answers, more than every software vendor combined.

What is an LLM SEO tool?

An LLM SEO tool does one or both of two jobs. Monitoring tools (Profound, Peec, Otterly) ask AI models a set of questions on a schedule and report how often your brand is named. Implementation tools audit your pages against the signals above and change them. Most tools on the market do monitoring only and leave the changes to you.

Pemba does both. The monthly audit scores every page on LLM-readability, citation tracking samples ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI for your questions, and on the Full Implementation plan the content, schema and llms.txt changes are made on your site. The AEO tools comparison lays out the options.

How do I measure LLM SEO?

Citation rate. Take the questions that matter, ask each model several times (answers vary run to run), and record the share of runs that name you. Track it monthly. A single mention is noise; a rate that moves from 0% to 40% over a quarter is a result. Pemba samples each tracked question five times per platform and reports the rate with the change from last month.

The free AI visibility check covers the on-page half in about 15 seconds: it scores whether your site has the structure, schema and signals LLMs look for, and lists what to fix.