Being cited by an assistant is not luck. It follows from a few things you can control, done consistently. Here is a practical checklist, in the order that tends to matter most.
1. Let the crawlers in
Check that robots.txt allows the major AI crawlers and that your key pages render without requiring a browser to run scripts. If a model cannot fetch and read the page, nothing else on this list counts. Add an llms.txt file to point crawlers at what matters.
2. Lead with the answer
Open each page with a direct, quotable answer to the question a buyer would ask, then add the detail beneath it. Assistants lift from the top, so the first two sentences do the heavy lifting. Clear headings and short paragraphs make a page easier to parse and easier to quote.
3. Mark up your facts
Structured data helps a machine understand what your page is and what your claims mean. Product, FAQ and organization markup turn plain text into labelled facts an assistant can use with confidence.
4. Build authority off your site
Citations, reviews and mentions on sources an assistant already trusts raise your odds of being named, especially for competitive questions. This is slower work, but it is often what separates two otherwise similar brands. It is one of the reasons a strong brand can still be missing from AI answers if it neglects it.
5. Measure and repeat
Track which questions you win and lose, fix the pages that lose, and watch what changes. GEO is a loop, not a one-time task, and the honest version measures rather than assumes. Start with a free scan to see your current blockers, ranked.