Technical AEO: Schema, Robots.txt, and llms.txt

Technical AEO is about making your content as accessible and understandable as possible to AI systems. This guide covers the three key technical foundations.

1. Schema Markup (JSON-LD)

Structured data helps AI understand the context and meaning of your content. Key schemas for AEO include:

• Organization: Establishes your brand identity, logo, and social profiles
• FAQPage: Marks up Q&A content for direct extraction by AI
• HowTo: Step-by-step processes that AI can cite as instructions
• Article: Blog posts with proper author, date, and publisher attribution
• Product: Product details including pricing, availability, and reviews
• BreadcrumbList: Site structure for contextual understanding

Use our free FAQ Schema Generator to create JSON-LD markup for your FAQ content.

2. Robots.txt for AI Crawlers

AI search engines use specific crawlers that you need to explicitly allow in your robots.txt:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

Many websites inadvertently block these crawlers, making their content invisible to AI. Use our Robots.txt AI Generator to create a properly configured file.

3. The llms.txt Standard

The llms.txt file is a machine-readable summary of your website specifically designed for AI systems. Place it at your site root (/llms.txt) to provide AI with:

• A concise description of your product/service
• Key features and capabilities
• Pricing information
• Important page URLs
• Contact and social information

Generate yours automatically with our llms.txt Generator.

Implementation Checklist

1. Add Organization and WebSite JSON-LD to your homepage
2. Add FAQPage schema to any page with FAQ content
3. Configure robots.txt to allow all major AI crawlers
4. Create and deploy llms.txt and llms-full.txt
5. Add Article schema to all blog posts
6. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console

Check your technical AEO score for free, or explore Elynn's plans for automated monitoring.