Beginner's Guide to AI Search Optimization
The practical starting point. What AI search is, why it matters, and what you can actually do about it today.
Read the Guide →
Resource library
The stuff worth reading.
The stuff worth reading.
Curated, not dumped.
Official docs, LLMAO guides, tools, and templates — organized by what you're actually trying to do, with plain-English context so you know which one to open first.
📄 LLMAO guides & tools
🔗 Curated official docs
🗺️ Reading paths by goal
Start with LLMAO
Our guides and tools, first.
Before you go down an official-docs rabbit hole, these are the plain-English starting points that cover 80% of what most people need.
AI Search Content Checklist
A page-by-page checklist for structure, clarity, answers, schema, internal links, and trust signals.
Use the Checklist →AEO vs GEO vs SEO: What's the Difference?
A plain breakdown of the acronyms flying around AI search conversations — without the hot takes.
Read the Explainer →FAQ Schema Template
A ready-to-use structured data template for building FAQ sections machines can actually parse.
Get the Template →Content Structure Template
A page layout template for guides, explainers, comparisons, and resource articles with good bones.
View the Template →Glossary of AI Search Terms
Short, useful definitions for AEO, GEO, RAG, schema, entity SEO, AI crawlers, and more. No jargon inside jargon.
Browse the Glossary →
Where to start
Pick a path based on what you're trying to do.
Rather than grouping everything by category, these paths are organized by what you're actually trying to fix.
👋 I'm brand new to this
1
LLMAO Beginner's Guide
Start here. Plain English, no assumed knowledge.
2
AEO vs GEO vs SEO
Understand the acronyms before you dive in.
3
Google SEO Starter Guide ↗
The official baseline. Still relevant.
4
Google AI Features & Your Website ↗
What AI Overviews mean for your site.
🤖 I want AI tools to understand my site
1
Content Structure Guide
Headings, answers, summaries, formatting.
2
Schema Markup Basics
What schema does and doesn't do for AI search.
3
OpenAI Crawlers Docs ↗
GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot — how to manage them.
4
Perplexity Crawlers Docs ↗
PerplexityBot and how to control access.
🛠️ I'm improving an existing page
1
AI Search Content Checklist
Run this first. Spot the gaps quickly.
2
FAQ Page Guide
FAQs are one of the highest-value improvements.
3
FAQ Schema Template
Add structured data while you're at it.
4
Google Search Essentials ↗
Crawlability, indexing, and quality baseline.
⚙️ I'm technical and want the specs
1
Schema.org Documentation ↗
The full vocabulary for structured data.
2
Google Structured Data Intro ↗
Google's implementation notes — follow these over Schema.org for Google Search.
3
OpenAI Crawlers Docs ↗
Robots.txt, user agents, crawl management.
4
Perplexity Crawlers Docs ↗
PerplexityBot specs and access controls.
Official SEO docs
Where SEO still comes from Google.
These are the actual sources worth bookmarking — with notes on what they're actually useful for, and which LLMAO guide goes alongside each one.
Google Search Central
SEO Starter Guide
Google's own foundational SEO guide — covers crawling, indexing, page quality, and common improvements. Still the most useful starting point for anyone building a site they want Google to understand. Not flashy. Very reliable.
Google Search Central
Google Search Essentials
Covers Google's core quality expectations: people-first content, crawlable links, descriptive text, and what gets you into trouble. Think of this as the minimum bar your site needs to clear before worrying about anything fancier.
Microsoft Bing
Bing Webmaster Guidelines
Worth including because Bing says these guidelines apply across Bing Search, Copilot, and grounding APIs. If you want your content to be available to AI tools powered by Bing's index — including Microsoft Copilot — this is the official signal source.
AI search & answer docs
The LLMAO-specific lane.
This is where it gets interesting. These are the docs people search for when they realize traditional SEO doesn't fully explain what's happening with AI tools.
Google Search Central
AI Features and Your Website
Directly relevant to anyone asking "how do I show up in AI Overviews?" Covers AI Overviews and AI Mode from a site owner's perspective — what Google says about how content gets selected, surfaced, and cited. Read this one carefully.
OpenAI
OpenAI Crawlers Documentation
Explains GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot — what they do, how to manage them with robots.txt, and what allowing or blocking them means in practice. If you've ever wondered how ChatGPT gets its information, this is the starting point.
Perplexity AI
PerplexityBot Documentation
Covers PerplexityBot specifically — what it is, how Perplexity says webmasters can manage crawler access, and what it means for your content being used as a source in Perplexity answers. Useful companion to the OpenAI crawler docs.
Schema & structured data
One of the highest-value improvements you can make.
Schema markup is consistently worth doing. Here are the official sources alongside LLMAO's simpler starting points — because the official docs are accurate but not exactly light reading.
Google Search Central
Introduction to Structured Data
Google says most Search structured data uses schema.org vocabulary — but Google Search Central is the source to trust for how it applies to Google Search specifically. Start here, not Schema.org, if your goal is showing up in Google. The two sometimes differ on implementation details.
Schema.org
Schema.org Documentation
The broader vocabulary for structured data on the web. Schema.org describes itself as providing extensible schemas for embedding structured data in webpages — useful for understanding the full range of types, properties, and relationships. More comprehensive than Google's docs but more abstract too.
LLMAO schema templates — simpler starting points
LLMAO Template
FAQ Schema Template
A ready-to-use JSON-LD template for FAQ pages. Copy, edit your questions and answers, and drop it in your page head.
LLMAO Template
Article Structure Template
A complete page structure template for guides and explainers — headings, summary blocks, FAQs, and Article schema included.
Tools & validators
Tools that help make your content easier to crawl, parse, and understand.
Useful across the board — whether you're checking schema, testing page speed, or auditing crawl access.
Rich Results Test
Google's official tool for checking if your structured data is valid and eligible for rich results.
Test your schema ↗Schema Markup Validator
Checks whether your schema.org markup is syntactically correct — separate from Google's rich results eligibility.
Validate your markup ↗PageSpeed Insights
Google's Core Web Vitals and performance scoring tool. Slow pages have lower crawl priority and hurt user experience.
Check page speed ↗Robots.txt Tester
Google Search Console's robots.txt tester — confirm your rules are letting the right crawlers in and keeping the wrong ones out.
Open Search Console ↗XML Sitemap Validator
Validates your sitemap format so search engines and AI crawlers can discover your pages reliably.
Validate your sitemap ↗WAVE Accessibility Checker
Semantic HTML and accessibility go hand-in-hand with AI parsability. WAVE checks both quickly and visually.
Check accessibility ↗Google Search Console
The main dashboard for monitoring how Google crawls, indexes, and shows your pages. Essential baseline tool.
Open Search Console ↗Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing's equivalent to Search Console — worth setting up because Bing's index also powers Microsoft Copilot.
Open Bing Webmaster ↗Meta Tags Inspector
Preview how your page title, description, and Open Graph tags appear across Google, Twitter/X, and LinkedIn.
Inspect meta tags ↗
Research & industry reading
For when you want the data, not just the advice.
Studies, reports, and in-depth pieces on how AI search is actually changing visibility. Lower on the page because beginners should start elsewhere — but worth bookmarking as you go deeper.
01
Google: How AI Overviews work
Read ↗
Google's own explanation of how AI Overviews select, summarize, and cite web content. The most authoritative source on AI Overview behaviour from a site owner's standpoint.
02
Google Search Central Blog
Read ↗
The official blog for announcements, algorithm changes, structured data updates, and guidance from the Google Search team. Bookmark this over third-party SEO news sites for primary source information.
03
Bing: Responsible use of AI content
Read ↗
Bing's guidance on AI-generated content and what it means for how Bing evaluates content quality and trustworthiness — relevant given Bing's role powering Microsoft Copilot.
04
OpenAI: Data partnerships and content policy
Read ↗
OpenAI's public documentation on how content is used in training and what website owners can do about it. Relevant context alongside the crawler docs.