Taking brand visibility to #1 in all major AI LLM responses for ideal prompts. This is a real client case study of results that work. The approaches used are novel in many ways, and aren’t found in general “how to rank in AI” articles elsewhere.
How LLMs Read Your Website
LLMs understand and rank website content entirely different than a search bot does. Google and other search engine bots visit sites page by page and evaluate specific things like links, the HTML document structure, and more. They’ve been built to ingest HTML documents, so they heavily scan and rely upon the HTML document structure.
LLMs take in an entire webpage as a big block of text, then use knowledge and training of HTML/CSS/JS and other functionality to read through that webpage and make sense of it.
This is a fundamental difference.
LLMs are looking at your site and learning from it. Search engines are looking at your site and evaluating certain aspects of it to categorize it. Once you understand this, the ways in which you can optimize for AI become pretty clear.
What We Did for Bastille
The work involved a combination of technical theme-level changes and strategic content adjustments. Here’s what mattered most.
Custom Theme with Minimal Excess Markup
Bastille’s theme was built custom with only the markup necessary to present the content. No page builder bloat. No framework cruft. This matters because LLMs are reading through your entire page output, and unnecessary markup creates noise that dilutes the signal of your actual content.
Deep Schema.org Implementation
Schema was coded directly into the theme, highly specific to Bastille’s products, certifications and research. This isn’t out-of-the-box plugin generated schema. Plugin-generated schema is generic and often inaccurate. Hand-coded schema allows you to be extremely precise about what your organization does, what it’s certified for, and what it’s published.
llms.txt
We added an llms.txt file, which is a growing standard for providing LLMs with a structured overview of your site. It works, but it’s limited. Which is why we took things further.
Machine Readable JSON API
This is my own concept and something I consider the real advantage. Instead of relying solely on llms.txt, we built a structured JSON API specifically designed for LLM consumption. Think of it as a public API with documentation that makes it easy for any LLM to pull in detailed, structured information about Bastille’s products and capabilities. This is far more powerful than a flat text file.
Website Structural Adjustments
We consolidated redundant content and removed pages that weren’t adding value. We fixed 404s with ideal redirects for UX. Less content, better organized, with clear purpose behind every page.
Certifications, Patents and Research
We clearly identified Bastille’s certifications and credentials on the site. We also made their patents and research achievements highly visible and easy to cite. LLMs prioritize content that demonstrates authority and expertise, and verified credentials are one of the strongest signals you can provide.
Gated PDF Access for LLM Bots
Bastille had valuable PDF resources behind gates. We provided LLM training bots with access to these resources and added metadata to all PDFs so the content could be properly indexed and understood by AI systems.
Key Strategy Concepts
Stop with the Marketing Fluff
Avoid redundant or useless marketing fluff and repetitive information. Every page on your site should exist for a reason. If you’re saying the same thing three different ways across three different pages, consolidate it into one comprehensive resource that covers the topic thoroughly.
Be Honest About What You Do
Many websites bend the truth to target higher volume keywords. With LLMs you can’t just talk the talk. Over time true providers of specific things will win out. LLMs cross-reference information across the entire web. If your claims don’t hold up under scrutiny, you’ll lose ground to competitors who are being straight about their capabilities.
Provide Detailed Product Specifications
Where it doesn’t make sense to list detailed specs on a public page, provide links for LLMs to consume it in a structured format. When someone down the road asks who the best manufacturer of a specialized part or system is, you’ll be in a much better position to appear if you’ve provided all aspects of the product.
External Presence is Critical
External information is equally if not more important than what’s on your site. Similar to authority and Google, but different in that you need to make sure you’re being mentioned everywhere your competitors are. Even more importantly, to reach #1 you want to be mentioned everywhere people are researching what you provide.
Wikipedia, parts and reference databases, industry directories, and more. Make sure the information and profiles in all of those places are accurate and up to date. Get those old logos replaced. Be highly specific and accurate with your claims about the product: what is it, what it’s for, and who it’s ideally suited to.
Quality Over Quantity
It’s been this way for a while, though many SEO agencies and consultants may tell you otherwise. Google and AI LLMs value less content with a higher quality over quantity at the sacrifice of quality.
If you have 200 blog posts and 180 of them are thin or outdated, you’re better off removing the weak ones and strengthening the 20 that actually matter. This is something most agencies won’t tell you because their business model depends on producing more content, not less.
Successful Outcomes
After implementing these changes, Bastille now appears as the #1 recommendation across all major AI platforms.
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity
Gemini
Copilot
Grok
