Marketing SkillsView repo

Marketing Skill

AI SEO

A playbook for getting your content cited by AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — instead of just ranked in blue links. Point your agent at it to audit your AI visibility, restructure content for extraction, and figure out why competitors show up in AI answers when you don't.

Maintained by Corey Hainesv2.2.0Updated 2026-07-095 references
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills

Installs the full library — AI SEO included

MarkdownView source

To show up in AI answers, optimize on three pillars: Structure (make content extractable), Authority (make it citable), and Presence (be where AI looks). Lead each section with a direct 40–60 word answer, use headings that match how people phrase queries, and prefer tables and numbered lists over prose. Princeton's GEO research found citing sources boosts AI visibility ~40%, adding statistics ~37%, and expert quotations ~30%, while keyword stuffing actively hurts (-10%). Then build off-site presence — Wikipedia, Reddit, review sites, and YouTube get cited more than your own domain — and make sure AI crawlers like GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot aren't blocked in robots.txt, or those engines literally cannot cite you.

What's inside

The playbook covers

Before StartingHow AI Search WorksAI Visibility AuditOptimization StrategyFreeProEnterpriseAgentic ExperiencesContent Types That Get Cited MostMonitoring AI VisibilityWhat NOT to DoAI SEO by Content TypeCommon MistakesTool IntegrationsTask-Specific Questions

Reference library — 5 deep-dives

Citations vs. Recommendations: The AI Visibility LadderBeing cited by an AI engine and being recommended by it are two different outcomes governed by two different systems. A citation means your page was useful enough to pull information from. A recommendation means the model put your brand on the buyer's shortlist. Optimizing for the first does not automatically earn the second — and for smaller brands, conflating them leads to content strategies that can actively help competitors.AEO and GEO Content PatternsReusable content block patterns optimized for answer engines and AI citation.AI SEO by Content TypeTactical guidance for optimizing specific content types for AI search citation. These tactics work for non-Google AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot) and don't hurt Google AI Overviews / AI Mode.Open Knowledge Format (OKF)Google's v0.1 markdown spec for representing site content as an agent-readable bundle. Introduced on the Google Cloud blog on 2026-06-12 and shipped inside Knowledge Catalog.How Each AI Platform Picks SourcesEach AI search platform has its own search index, ranking logic, and content preferences. This guide covers what matters for getting cited on each one.

See it in action

You ask

How do I make sure our SaaS product shows up in AI search results? We're a project management tool and we keep getting left out of ChatGPT and Perplexity recommendations when people ask about project management software.

The skill delivers
Extractability audit (per page)

☐ Clear definition in the first paragraph ☐ Self-contained 40–60 word answer blocks ☐ Statistics with cited sources + dates ☐ Comparison table for "[X] vs [Y]" queries ☐ FAQ section in natural-language questions ☐ Schema markup (FAQ, HowTo, Article, Product) ☐ Named author with credentials ☐ Updated within 6 months ☐ AI bots allowed in robots.txt

FAQ

How do I get my content cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Make it extractable and citable. Lead sections with direct 40–60 word answers, add comparison tables and FAQ blocks, and back claims with cited statistics and expert quotes — Princeton's GEO study found citations lift AI visibility ~40% and statistics ~37%. Then build third-party presence (Wikipedia, Reddit, review sites) since AI engines cite those heavily, and confirm your robots.txt allows GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot.

Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

Only if you're willing to give up AI citations. Blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, or Google-Extended prevents those platforms from citing and recommending you — you can't appear in answers a crawler was never allowed to read. A middle ground is blocking training-only crawlers like CCBot (Common Crawl) while allowing the search-and-cite bots so you stay visible in AI answers.

What's the difference between being cited and being recommended?

Being cited means AI found your page useful to consult; being recommended means you're on the buyer's actual shortlist. Recommendation is governed by web-wide consensus — reviews, forums, analysts, press — largely independent of your own content. Self-promotional "best [category]" listicles from low-authority brands often backfire: in one 100-query B2B study, 69% of the citations those listicles earned appeared in answers that recommended competitors instead.

Related skills

seo auditFor traditional technical and on-page SEO auditsschemaFor implementing structured data that helps AI understand your contentcontent strategyFor planning what content to createcompetitorsFor building comparison pages that get citedprogrammatic seoFor building SEO pages at scalecopywritingFor writing content that's both human-readable and AI-extractable

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