You build the product, launch it, and then nobody finds it. The old playbook was simple: rank in Google. That playbook is half dead. People now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot questions, and those tools answer from the web without showing ten blue links. If your site is not crawlable, structured, and quotable, both search engines and AI assistants skip you.

This covers both. Search Engine Optimization gets you into Google. AI Engine Optimization gets you cited by machines. Most of it overlaps, some of it does not. Tick items off as you go, and keep the order: foundation first, everything else after.

Why a Founder Is the Right One to Run ItPermalink to “Why a Founder Is the Right One to Run It”

An agency will do most of this list for you, and it will do the search half better. The AEO half depends on product knowledge only you have: what to name your product, how to phrase it, and which customer questions are real. Those are the parts AI assistants quote.

The order is founder-shaped too. The foundation items take about an hour and cost nothing, and they only need you at a laptop. The content items are exactly what your first marketer inherits. You will know which pages pull, because you ran the foundation yourself.

Foundation and IndexingPermalink to “Foundation and Indexing”

Do these first, before anything else. Crawlers that cannot read your site make every later item pointless.

• Submit to Google Search Console. Verify ownership with a DNS TXT record or HTML tag. This is your real-time window into how Google sees your site, and where you catch indexing problems before they cost you rankings.
• Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing powers Copilot search, so skipping this makes your product invisible to everyone asking Copilot for a recommendation.
• Generate and submit sitemap.xml. Lists every canonical page, not just the homepage, so crawlers find your deep and new pages fast instead of discovering them one internal link at a time.
• Add robots.txt. Explicitly allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot unless you have a reason to block them. LLMs respect this file, so a missing permission means AI assistants cannot read or cite you.
• Verify every page is indexable. Check for accidental noindex meta tags, stray X-Robots-Tag headers, and Cloudflare rules that block crawlers. A page Google cannot read does not rank, and AI assistants skip it too.
• Set canonical tags on all pages. If /pricing, /pricing/, and /pricing?ref=x all serve the same page, crawlers treat them as separate pages, split your ranking signal, and may index the version you want least.

On-Page and Technical SEOPermalink to “On-Page and Technical SEO”

These make each page readable, rankable, and quotable by machines. Work through them one page at a time.

• One unique <title> per page. Format: Primary Keyword - Brand, under 60 characters. It is the headline in search results and the line AI assistants quote when they cite you. Homepage titles should say what you do, not just your company name.
• Write a meta description for every page. 160 characters max. They show up in search results and inside AI-generated summaries, so treat them like ad copy: state the benefit and give a reason to click.
• Use a real heading hierarchy. One H1 per page containing your target keyword, then H2s and H3s beneath. The nesting is how Google and AI parsers learn what a page covers and how to quote it.
• Make the site fast. Run PageSpeed Insights, target an LCP under 2.5 seconds, lazy-load images, compress assets. Speed is a ranking signal, and slow pages lose visitors before the content loads.
• Make it mobile-responsive. Google indexes mobile-first, so the mobile version is the one that gets ranked. Make it responsive and test it on an actual phone.
• Fix 404s. The Search Console Coverage report lists them. Every broken link burns crawl budget and costs you trust with crawlers and visitors.
• Alt text on every image. Describe what is in the image. That text is what image search and AI assistants read when they parse the page, and what screen readers voice for visually impaired users.
• HTTPS and clean URLs. HTTPS is a ranking signal, and mixing /page and /page/ splits one page into two. Canonical should look like https://yourdomain.com/page.

AI Engine OptimizationPermalink to “AI Engine Optimization”

Same foundation, different reader. This half makes your pages quotable, so an AI assistant names your product when someone asks for a recommendation. Start here once the site is crawlable.

• Ship /llms.txt. A machine-readable file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt that summarizes what your product does, who it is for, and the key URLs. LLMs crawling your site use it to understand and cite you.
• Add JSON-LD structured data (Schema.org). At minimum SoftwareApplication or Product schema, with name, description, URL, category, and pricing. This feeds both AI answer boxes and search engines.
• Add FAQ schema to marketing pages. Pre-packaged Q&A that AI assistants can cite directly. Write the real questions your customers ask, not boilerplate.
• Answer questions directly, near the top of the page. One question, one clear answer. AI assistants prefer exactly this shape, and it doubles as featured-snippet bait.
• Define your product as a clear entity. Use the same name, category, and use case everywhere. If your product is a “LinkedIn post scheduler for developers,” write exactly that on key pages and in metadata, so AI assistants match you to search intent without guessing.
• Build a glossary or docs page. Define 10–20 terms your ideal customers search for. Definition pages are exactly what AI assistants cite when someone asks what a term means.
• Get listed on product directories. Product Hunt, G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, AlternativeTo. AI assistants cross-reference these listings as trust signals before they recommend a product.

Content and AuthorityPermalink to “Content and Authority”

Search gets you visits. These items turn visits into ranks, citations, and links. Schedule them and keep a steady pace.

• One pillar page per core use case. 1,500+ words, targeting one high-intent keyword. This is your anchor content, and everything else on the site should link into it.
• Write comparison pages. “You vs Buffer,” “You vs Competitor for your audience.” High-intent traffic, and founders hate writing them. They convert.
• Write “best X for Y” pages. “Best LinkedIn post tools for developers.” Captures decision-stage traffic, and AI assistants pull from these constantly.
• Add real testimonials with structured markup. Review schema with rating, author, and published date. Google and AI assistants read these as credibility signals before answering “is this product good?”
• Build backlinks from real publications. Guest posts, podcasts, directory listings, HARO responses. One quality link beats a hundred spammy ones.
• Publish to a changelog or blog consistently. Signals the site is alive to Google and hands AI assistants fresh material to index and cite. Weekly is enough.

Monitoring and AnalyticsPermalink to “Monitoring and Analytics”

Set these once, check them on a schedule, and act on what moves.

• Set up analytics early. GA4, or Plausible/Fathom if you value privacy. Watch for “direct” traffic spikes, which are often AI referrals that do not pass a referrer header.
• Check Search Console weekly. Impressions, clicks, average position, coverage errors. These numbers tell you what is working and what just lost rankings, so you can double down and fix.
• Track keyword rankings monthly. You need a baseline to see movement. Ahrefs or Semrush work; free options are Search Console plus Looker Studio.
• Monitor uptime. Downtime kills crawl budget and ranking signals. UptimeRobot and Better Stack both have free tiers.
• Set brand mention alerts. Google Alerts for your product name. Every citation is a potential link or a case study, and most never reach out to claim either.

Indexability comes first, so do not skip ahead to pillar pages on a site search engines cannot read. AEO grows out of the same foundation: structure, schema, and direct answers. Do both and you get found by people and by machines.