A robot works on its laptop while pages of html, css, javascript float around and the page closest to it- represents an llms.txt to help it understand.

Agent-Ready: Optimizing Your Site for AI

The New Visibility Problem

The way people access information is changing, and that change directly affects how your business is discovered and understood online. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and a growing ecosystem of AI agents are now being used to retrieve and present content directly from websites—often without sending traffic to those sites at all.

These systems are being integrated into everyday tools, customer service platforms, research workflows, and search alternatives. They’re reading content live, structuring it into answers, and delivering it in contexts where traditional SEO plays no role.

The result is a visibility gap. If your content isn’t accessible to these systems, your business isn’t part of the response. That’s not theoretical—it’s already happening.

This shift raises a question that keeps coming up:
In a world of AI agents, is SEO dead?

The answer today is — not yet. The way sites are discovered and interpreted is no longer limited to search engines. It now includes AI agents that expect structured, machine-readable content. If your site can’t be processed effectively, your message won’t make it through. It has never been more important how well your website or application is built.

How AI Agents Actually Use Your Site

AI systems interact with web content differently than traditional crawlers. They don’t index pages for ranking—they load content directly, parse specific elements like headings, tables, structured data, and summaries, and analyze that content to produce context-aware outputs. This isn’t just about pattern matching keywords. These systems evaluate how content is written, the tone it carries, how it relates to surrounding material, and how it might be interpreted when surfaced alongside other sources. They assess sentiment, extract implied relationships, and factor in usage context. That level of interpretation only works if the content is accessible, structured, and unambiguous.

8 Site Issues to Watch For When Preparing for AI Agents

If you’re currently working with a development team or platform provider, these are the most common issues that prevent your site from being usable by AI agents like ChatGPT, Claude, and others. These aren’t theoretical concerns—they directly affect how your content is accessed, interpreted, and presented by systems your audience is already using.

1. Your content is optimized for search engines, not AI systems

Many websites are still built around search engine rules—keyword placement, backlinks, and metadata. AI systems work differently. They load your site in real time and extract usable content from the page itself.

What to ask your team:
Have we structured the site for AI agents to parse content directly, not just rank well in Google?

2. Critical content is hidden behind JavaScript

If important text or product data only appears after a script runs, most AI systems won’t see it. Lightweight crawlers and language models don’t run JavaScript the way browsers do.

What to ask your team:
Is our key content rendered server-side or immediately visible in the page source?

3. Structured data is missing or incomplete

AI agents need more than visible text—they rely on structured metadata to identify what kind of content they’re seeing (product details, reviews, FAQs, etc.). Without it, they guess—and they often get it wrong.

What to ask your team:
Are we using schema.org or JSON-LD to label important content?

4. We’re relying on robots.txt to manage access

Most AI agents don’t follow robots.txt the way search engines do. That file alone doesn’t give you control over how your content is reused or summarized.

What to ask your team:
Do we have an llms.txt file in place to guide agent access and usage?

5. Pages are cluttered with layout elements

AI systems don’t care about how the page looks. They care about the structure of the underlying code. Modals, sidebars, carousels, and decorative containers can all get in the way.

What to ask your team:
Is our main content clearly structured in the HTML, or buried in layout code?

6. We’re not testing how agents actually see the site

If you’re not testing how AI systems interact with your content, you’re guessing. Most dev tools don’t simulate agent access by default.

What to ask your team:
Have we tested our content using agent-focused tools like Firecrawl or LangChain?

7. We’re not giving AI systems clean summaries to use

If you expect agents to pick the most important parts of a long page, they might not. Summaries should be clearly available—preferably in structured, machine-readable form.

What to ask your team:
Do we have clear summaries or structured endpoints that agents can reference?

8. We’re depending on template site builders without customization

Platforms like Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify often create bloated code that’s hard for agents to process unless it’s customized. That’s especially risky for product data or branded content.

What to ask your team:
Have we cleaned up the structure or created a simplified route for agents to use?

Platform-Specific Guidance

We work with clients on a variety of platforms—not just custom sites and applications. Each has unique challenges and opportunities when preparing for agent-based content access. Here’s what to focus on:

WordPress

WordPress generates sitemap.xml files automatically or through plugins like Yoast. These help agents discover content but don’t guarantee it’s usable. To prepare a WordPress site:

  • Use server-rendered content wherever possible.
  • Apply schema markup using trusted plugins.
  • Remove archive, tag, or media attachment pages from your sitemap.
  • Pair sitemap.xml with an llms.txt file to define usage policies and summary sources.

Recommended Plugins:

  • Yoast SEO or Rank Math (for structured data)
  • AI Engine (for training an on-site chatbot)

Squarespace

Squarespace sites often have deeply nested markup and limited schema flexibility. While customization is restricted, you can still improve agent readiness by:

  • Simplifying page layout and using clear heading structures.
  • Manually adding TL;DR or structured FAQs to key pages.
  • Using Code Injection to add custom JSON-LD where needed.

Shopify

Shopify sites are frequent targets for agent-driven queries—especially around product details, pricing, and reviews. To ensure that content is both usable and up-to-date:

  • Keep product data structured, consistent, and cleanly formatted.
  • Include clear specifications using tables or lists.
  • Use apps that auto-generate schema to enhance agent visibility.
  • Maintain accuracy through structured product feeds.

Recommended Apps:

  • JSON-LD for SEO or Smart SEO
  • LimeSpot or Wiser for improving how products are surfaced via agent interfaces

Each of these platforms can support agent-readiness with the right implementation. What matters is not just how your site looks—but how machines interpret it. And that depends on structure, clarity, and the right technical support.

What’s Next

The systems accessing your site are changing. They don’t behave like search engines, and they don’t follow the same rules. Preparing your content for these systems isn’t about future-proofing—it’s about showing up in the tools people are using right now.

You don’t need to start from scratch. You need a clear strategy, structured content, and the right team to implement it.

Let’s make your site agent-ready.
👉 Book a Demo