Optimizing your website for AI agents

Voice assistants, AI chatbots, and generative search engines are changing the digital landscape.

In this 20-minute session, Zach Rattner, CTO of Yembo and AI advisory board member at CSU Fullerton, will break down how AI agents index, interpret, and surface web content.

Attendees walk away with an actionable checklist for being seen and reaching customers in the age of machine-driven search.

Transcript

1. Optimizing Your Website for AI Agents Zach Rattner Yembo https://zachrattner.com @zachrattner @zachrattner
2. Optimizing Your Website for AI Agents Zach Rattner, CTO & Co-Founder, Yembo
4. Yembo is invited into over 1,000 homes each day
5. Source: GSQI, June 2025 AI search is growing rapidly, but organic is not dead (yet) Organic: millions per week, fl at growth AI: 1000x smaller, +300% in under a year Source: GSQI, June 2025
6. What I believe The race just started No one is an expert yet Best practices age like milk, not wine 1 2 3
7. Business leaders who believe their AI investments have reached maturity 1% Source: OpenAI, April 2025
8. In an era of change, what remains constant? People appreciate quality Patience always decreases People buy from who they trust 1 2 3 Source: Zach’s gut feeling based on his post-utero experience
9. How are behaviors changing?
10. Activities that used to get you promoted will now get you fi red Source: Haider Shawl
11. It’s much more dif fi cult to create content that ranks Source: Fiona Triaca
12. DIY is dead. DIFY is in. Source: Tyson Davis
13. What’s an enterprising marketer to do?
14. Don't be all things to all people. But to the people you want to reach, be the best. Quality, quality, quality Source: Nick La ff erty
15. Rethink your business model Source: Chris Long If an AI crawler goes to a site with Pay Per Crawl, they either need to present a payment via request headers or they'll receive a "402 Payment Required" status. Publishers are then able to either allow, charge or block AI crawlers as they see fi t. “ Source: Chris Long
16. Source: Nikkei Asia
17. Ten quick tips to get started today
18. Tip 1: Do not block LLMs in robots.txt LLM User Agent ChatGPT GPTBot Claude ClaudeBot Gemini Google-Extended Perplexity PerplexityBot Source: Privacy Journal Source: Privacy Journal
19. Tip 2: Encourage discovery with llms.txt Speci fi cation at https://llmstxt.org Source: llmstxt.site Source: llmstxt.site
20. Tip 3: Semantic HTML + Backlinks are still desirable Google Lighthouse Mozilla Observatory Hubspot Grader Source: Google Lighthouse 01 02 03
21. Tip 4: Keyword density doesn’t matter as much anymore Source: InsightLand
22. Source: Popupsmart Tip 5: Structure content as answers to questions
23. Tip 5: Structure content as answers to questions Source: Spendesk
24. Source: Octopus Tip 5: Structure content as answers to questions
25. Source: OpenAI Tip 6: Write like you want LLMs to cite you
26. Source: Google Tip 6: Write like you want LLMs to cite you
27. Tip 7: Group related topics into a single page Source: Tabitha W Source: Tabitha Whiting
28. Tip 8: Update stats often Source: Social Surge Marketing Source: Social Surge Marketing
29. Source: Break The Web
30. Tip 10: Prioritize brand mentions over simple backlinks Monitoring tools: Source: Cognizo • Cognizo • Otterly • Ceel • Knowatoa • Peec • Mangools AI Grader
31. zach@zachrattner.com @zachrattner