This is the foundation under GEO and AEO. If these basics fail, the best-written practice page on your site may never be shown.
What Google says you do not need
Google's guidance on AI features is direct: no new machine-readable files, no AI text files, no special markup, and no special schema.org structured data are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That rules out a lot of what is being sold to firms as AI optimization. See whether a law firm needs an llms.txt file.
Foundations that still decide visibility
- IndexingThe page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.
- Titles and descriptionsEach page names the matter and the place, distinct from every other page on the site.
- HeadingsOne question or topic per section, phrased the way clients ask it.
- Internal linksEach page links to the pages a reader needs next, once.
- Structured dataMarkup that matches what the page visibly says, covered in whether schema gets a firm into AI answers.
Crawlers and controls
Two kinds of control matter. Robots.txt rules decide which crawlers can reach your pages; Google names Googlebot rules as the control for Search. Snippet controls such as nosnippet and max-snippet limit how much of a page Google can show, including in AI features, so a setting added years ago can quietly keep your text out of answers.
On the OpenAI side, OAI-SearchBot governs ChatGPT search and GPTBot relates to model training, and OpenAI says each setting works independently. It also notes robots.txt changes can take about a day to affect search.
Architecture for a law firm site
Search engines and assistants read structure. A firm site that ranks and gets cited usually has one page per practice area, location pages only where the firm actually takes clients, and a library of short answers that link back to those pages. What hurts is a pile of near-identical city pages with the town name swapped. The practice-area guides show the pages each practice tends to need.
Measuring AI SEO
Google counts AI feature traffic as part of overall search traffic, reported under the Web search type in Search Console rather than as a separate line. That means firms cannot isolate AI Overview clicks from Search Console alone, and need dated question tests alongside it.
Common questions
Is AI SEO a separate service from SEO?
Not really. It is SEO with attention to how AI features quote pages and which crawlers can reach them. A firm should not pay twice for the same technical work.
Should our firm block AI crawlers?
Usually not the search crawlers. Blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers. Training crawlers are a separate decision.
Does site speed matter for AI search?
Page experience is part of standard search practice, and Google says standard practices apply to its AI features. Fast, accessible pages also serve the people who click through.