Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO

Tips To Be More Visible In AI Searches

Episode 172

This episode breaks down how to structure website content for the emerging trust economy. You’ll learn the three technical steps every site should take (LLMS file, navigation, page length) and how to format blogs so both people and AI instantly understand your content.

Timestamps
[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] From attention to trust economy
[0:56] AI becomes an information filter
[1:36] Using AI vs Google
[1:57] Why clarity matters 
[2:56] The role of an LLMS.txt file
[3:44] Navigation that AI can actually read
[3:58] Why page length matters
[6:21] How to format content for AI and people
[10:05] Updating old blogs with AI-first structure

Resources
How to Create an LLMS file
https://www.meredithshusband.com/blog/create-llms-txt-file

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Meredith's Husband:

Do you remember last week we talked about the trust economy?

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

Actually, we started with the attention economy. It used to be years ago there was this thing everybody was calling the attention economy.

Meredith:

Right.

Meredith's Husband:

And social media capitalized on the attention economy. And now there is so much I feel like we've spent all of our attention. We were all running on zero. And so now what we have is something different with too much information.

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

It's the trust economy. With so much information out there, what are you going to trust?

Meredith:

Yeah. Who are you going to trust? And what's real?

Meredith's Husband:

And increasingly AI is going to kind of make that, or it's going to help us make that decision.

Meredith:

Is it?

Meredith's Husband:

As you have well, yeah, already.

Meredith:

Or is it going to help complicate it because more things are going to be AI'd?

Meredith's Husband:

Oh, more things will be AI'd. But AI is still if if you have an AI assistant, which you I basically do, I consider ChatGPT now my AI assistant.

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband:

It can only it can literally only give me one thing at a time. Like it can't feed me a thousand results and show me 1,500 videos that I scroll through. It just gives me one thing at a time.

Meredith:

Yes, true, true, true.

Meredith's Husband:

So it's going to filter out a lot of stuff.

Meredith:

Yeah. And in fact, I've realized that if you just want one piece of information, you go to AI. And if you want to look at a bunch, that's when you go to Google.

Meredith's Husband:

Yeah, true. So the question for us as business owners and peop, you know, we want people we want to stand out to people.

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

We want people to see our stuff. We don't want to.

Meredith:

See the right people.

Meredith's Husband:

Yeah, we don't want to be filtered out.

unknown:

True.

Meredith's Husband:

So let in that last episode we talked about, well, what does that mean? And I introduced the concept of clarity. Like clarity is going to be is, it's not not new, but it's super important. Clarity is great for SEO and always has been. It's great for people and always has been. And it's great for AI.

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

It's a win-win-win. So so I talked about that concept, building trust, and how that's kind of the a new goal when you are creating content for your website. Now, and I mentioned we'll get into the specifics, the sort of technical side, not really technically, but this more the specifics of what that means in today's episode.

Meredith:

Well, how about that?

Meredith's Husband:

So I've mentioned a few things. I I don't remember which episode it was, but I mentioned there were three things. I'm going to repeat them because they are they are the most important things you want to do. So I don't want to omit omit them thinking you've heard that episode. You got to create what we call an LLMS.txt file.

Meredith:

Oh, right.

Meredith's Husband:

And that's like the site map. So Google has you have a site map for Google. For AI, you're going to have an you're going to have this instead.

Meredith:

Okay.

Meredith's Husband:

I actually have a blog if you want to check that out on how to create that. And I have a sample one there, which you can probably use. You can also just go to Chat GPT and say, can you help me create an LLMS file for my website? By the way, that only works on WordPress, does not work on Squarespace. You don't have the right access. And to my knowledge, to date, it you can't do it on ShowIt either. I wouldn't be too surprised if Show It fixes that somehow in the future. But right, but right now, so if you're on WordPress, you got to create an LLMS.txt file.

Meredith:

Just rolls off the tongue.

Meredith's Husband:

It does, doesn't it? The other thing is your navigation.

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

Take your important pages. Yes. Like your service pages, like your children and family and pet photographer. So take your children photography page and your family event photography page and your pet. Don't put them in drop-downs in your navigation.

Meredith:

Oh.

Meredith's Husband:

Okay. AI cannot open that. AI cannot look inside drop-downs. Again, again, to today, they might change that at some point, but as of now. As of right now. So make it make, and this is also making your website clear. If navigation is right there, it's very clear to people as well. And then your page length. I talked a little bit about page length and how you could have long pages. AI does not mind long pages. It can read, I don't know how fast it reads, but you can have a you can put the entire encyclopedia on a single page and it will probably read it in a second. Like so don't worry about long pages. Just make sure to break it up so that it's organized and clear. A user has to be able to use it also. So if you if you have a if you have a a long, a really long blog page, how can you break it up so that it's very easy for a person to like scan if they want to scan, to jump into some bits if they want to read some bits and not others, to move around to know where different information is. That's it's clarity. It's got to be clear. So a few moments later. So now what do we do about the actual content? Let's say we're gonna do those things and we're gonna write a new blog and we wanna do something that's going to be it's gonna be snappy. It's uh it's going to get AI's attention. So how do we how do we do that?

Meredith:

We put a really attractive other AI on the Yeah, right.

Meredith's Husband:

Two AI bots having a romance. You know, they you know they did some, they didn't do it wasn't a romance, but they had they there was a test somebody did, some university, like one of the Ivy Leagues or something, I think. And they they had two AI bots communicate, have a conversation together, and they wanted to see what happened.

Meredith:

Yeah, yeah.

Meredith's Husband:

And so it was like within a couple minutes, they were no longer talking in words. I don't even I don't even mean English, I mean words. They were communicating in like vector diagrams. It was some sort of weird mathematical language that they created in like two minutes. And then somebody, somebody was smart enough to say, hey, let's turn this off. This is freaking me out. Okay, so anyway, so you're building your blog. Let's get back to my point. You're built your you want to create a blog, you want to get AI's attention. Yes. Normally, when you create, when you package information for a person to consume, you want to put it into some context.

Meredith:

Yes.

Meredith's Husband:

Like uh adult uh uh Well, I can't just give you information without telling you why that why it why I'm giving it to you, what you should do with it, how it's applicable. It's it's adult learning theory. Actually, it's learning theory of all. Like people are going to be a whole lot more interested and involved if you give if you give the information as to why they you're giving them something. Okay. So that's developing content for people.

Meredith:

Right.

Meredith's Husband:

Kind of like kind of like this, kind of like what I'm doing right now. Like this, like, okay, so AI, not so much. They AI just wants the information, just like boom, right? Where it is. Yeah, doesn't really care about the story as much.

Meredith:

Doesn't care about like empty space around it to get to the point in time. Yes, exactly.

Meredith's Husband:

Yes, yeah, negative space. Is that what they call it? Doesn't care about negative space.

Meredith:

I dream of negative space.

Meredith's Husband:

Okay, so a question then, which I hope is on your mind. Well, well, well then what should how should we format our stuff then? Do we do it for AI or do we do it for people? Like because what I'm what I'm s what I'm suggesting to you is oh, AI likes the format that is not really going to appeal to people. People want some sort of context, AI doesn't care. AI is just going to look for the answers if you have it. Yeah. Well, yes and no.

Meredith:

Eventually, if it's what they want to do, yes, true, true, true.

Meredith's Husband:

True, yes. Now, there's two two points there. Number one, web traffic, especially to blogs, will probably continue to fall off in the future.

Meredith:

Aaron Ross Powell But it's still important, right?

Meredith's Husband:

But it's still important because you need to be giving AI, you want AI to be relying on you for information, just like you the way you want Google to be relying on your website as a source for its users. Okay. So, and number two, yeah, people will still ideally, hopefully, get to your blog. So you want to do it for both, but what you want to do is you want to put the you want to get straight to the point for AI and then have the context for your readers. I kind of think of it like putting the punchline before the joke. So that's kind of what you want to do for AI. You want to give the information right away, and then you want to essentially then have your blog.

Meredith:

Is it is it kind of like an outline kind of thing? Like your think yeah.

Meredith's Husband:

Think of it like um almost like Cliff's notes. No, not like Cliff's notes. Think of it like the um the the paragraph.

Meredith:

Summary.

Meredith's Husband:

Yeah.

Meredith:

Table of contents.

Meredith's Husband:

No, not exactly. This is before the table of contents. This would be like the the the small paragraph about what this book is about.

Meredith:

Okay, like the review that some fancy person wrote.

Meredith's Husband:

No, think of it as like a one-paragraph summary.

Meredith:

Oh, okay.

Meredith's Husband:

Like so let's say you're writing a blog about how to photograph uh your kids in a in the park outdoors. Okay. And then you're so you're gonna have a bunch of things that they could do to make this better. But what you should do is the headline of the blog would be something like, you know, what's the most important aspect of photom photographing people outside? In that very first summary, you should say something like, the most important thing is lighting. And then maybe some additional details, and then the blog is going to flush all that stuff out. Then you would have your table of contents that would have that would uh if it's a long blog, especially. Then the table of contents that would be what we call jump links to that section in the blog.

Meredith:

Yes, I love jump links.

Meredith's Husband:

Yeah, jump links. And then that's where you would focus on your clarity, bullet points if you have them, things like that, dates, factual information, the story that you the context that you want to include. Um, so that's when you are creating new blog pages.

Meredith:

Got it.

Meredith's Husband:

We shouldn't go back and now that is an excellent question, which you are about to ask.

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband:

What about your old blogs? Because they pro they probably don't follow that format. Well, this would be a fantastic time to go back and revise some of those old blogs.

Meredith:

Now, here's my question. Would you put that blog into AI and say, what is the most important information? How should I restructure this?

Meredith's Husband:

You could do that. What I would do is remember, you want it you want clarity. So that's ask it to be you know very clear on things and say, hey, you know, here's this blog I wrote. What are some some of the most common questions that people would ask about this stuff?

Meredith:

Right.

Meredith's Husband:

Okay. And those questions then can become the hopefully, hopefully you've answered those questions in the blog. And then those so those questions would become the subheadings.

Meredith:

Got it.

Meredith's Husband:

Okay. So so when somebody does a search for that question, boom, it's a subheading. When AI looks at your page and it sees your table of contents right up at the top, which up which is just your subheadings all listed together, bam, it's going to find that information. It's super clear. It's right there.

Meredith:

With the jump links.

Meredith's Husband:

Also, it's good for people. Just it's just very that's a very easy format for people to use. Now, how do you decide which blogs you should do this with?

Meredith:

Yeah, that's my question.

Meredith's Husband:

That's what we're going to talk about next week. Which blogs you want to start with. How to find which blogs you want to do this first for.

Meredith:

Excellent.

Meredith's Husband:

All right.

Meredith:

This is good. I'm at the edge of my seat.

Meredith's Husband:

Yeah, I don't believe it, but you look pretty much right in the center.

Meredith:

The only time I'm right in the center.

Meredith's Husband:

This is the only time that Meredith is not on the edge of her seat. These episodes.

Meredith:

No, that's not true.