In short
AI answers are written from the pages their search retrieves, and the bots don't run JavaScript. In 2026 the winning moves are answer-first summaries plus evidence (numbers, quotes, sources); keyword stuffing actively hurts. Run this checklist on your money pages.
The checklist
- Answer-first: a 1–2 sentence direct answer at the very top of the page.
- Headings phrased as the questions buyers type (H2/H3).
- Evidence: add a number, a named quote and a cited source per section.
- Entity consistency: identical name, services, pricing and contact across every page.
- Structured data: Organization, WebSite, Product/Offer, FAQPage — accurate, not stuffed.
- Crawlable HTML: content must render server-side (AI crawlers don't run JS).
- Let the bots in: allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended.
- Freshness: update key pages every few months and show the date.
What not to do
- Don't keyword-stuff — it performed below baseline in the GEO benchmark.
- Don't create a separate page for every query variation — Google treats that as spam.
- Don't hide the answer in tabs, images or a PDF.
Measurement
- Search Console → Performance (Web search) + the Generative AI report.
- Bing Webmaster Tools → AI Performance (citations + grounding queries).
- Track a fixed set of buyer prompts monthly across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
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