[Checklist] How-to Audit Your Website for AI-Readiness

Your website has a new and increasingly important audience: artificial intelligence. AI assistants, conversational search engines, and other automated agents are constantly scanning the web to build their knowledge and answer user questions. If your website isn't optimized for this machine audience, you are at risk of becoming invisible in this new ecosystem.

But what does it mean for a website to be "AI-ready"? It's not about flashy animations or complex design. It's about clarity, structure, and accessibility. It's about making it as easy as possible for a machine to understand the fundamental facts about your business: who you are, what you do, where you are, and when you're open.

Many businesses are completely in the dark about their own AI readiness. This practical checklist is designed to change that. It will guide you through a simple but comprehensive audit of your website, covering both the technical foundations and the content strategy. By the end of this audit, you'll have a clear picture of your website's strengths and weaknesses in the age of AI and a prioritized list of actions to improve your discoverability.

The AI-Readiness Audit Checklist

Work through these steps for your own website. For each item, give yourself a simple pass or fail, and make a note of what needs to be fixed.

Section 1: The Technical Foundation

This section covers the 'under the hood' elements that are critical for machine readability.

1. Do you have a sitemap.xml file?

• What it is: A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the important pages on your website. It's like providing a table of contents to search engines and AIs, making sure they don't miss any of your key content.
• How to Check: Go to https://[yourwebsite.com]/sitemap.xml. If you see a page of structured text listing your URLs, you pass. If you get a '404 Not Found' error, you fail.
• Action if Fail: Most modern CMS platforms (like WordPress with an SEO plugin, Shopify, or Squarespace) can generate a sitemap for you automatically. Check your platform's settings or install a popular SEO plugin to enable this.

2. Do you have a robots.txt file?

• What it is: The robots.txt file is the traffic cop for your website, telling good bots which areas they are and are not allowed to access.
• How to Check: Go to https://[yourwebsite.com]/robots.txt. You should see a plain text file. If it's not there, you fail.
• Action if Fail: You can create a simple robots.txt file yourself. For most businesses, a basic file that allows all crawlers is sufficient. A web developer can help you create a more customized one if needed.

3. Do you pass the Structured Data (Schema) Test?

• What it is: This is the most important technical check. Structured data is the code that labels your content so machines can understand it.
• How to Check: Go to Google's Rich Results Test tool and enter your homepage URL.
  • Pass: The tool detects multiple items, especially a specific business type like LocalBusiness, Restaurant, or ProfessionalService. You see green checkmarks and a detailed breakdown of the detected entities.
  • Fail: The tool says "No items detected" or only finds a generic Website item. This means your site is not providing the factual, structured data AIs need.
• Action if Fail: Implementing structured data is a critical priority. This may require a plugin for your CMS or the help of a developer or a specialized service like Platinum.ai. Start by ensuring your business name, address, phone number (NAP), and business type are correctly marked up.

4. Is your website mobile-friendly and fast?

• What it is: AIs and search engines prioritize sites that provide a good user experience, and that includes mobile responsiveness and fast loading times.
• How to Check: Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test and PageSpeed Insights tools.
• Action if Fail: Improving site speed and mobile-friendliness can be complex, involving image optimization, code cleanup, and better hosting. This is a crucial task to discuss with your web developer.

Section 2: Content and Data Accessibility

This section covers whether the actual information on your site is easy for a machine to access and parse.

5. Can you easily copy-paste your key business information?

• What it is: A simple but surprisingly revealing test. Some visual website builders create text as part of an image or within complex code, making it impossible for a machine (or a user) to select and copy.
• How to Check: Go to your contact page. Try to highlight and copy your business address and phone number with your mouse. If you can't, it's likely an image, and you fail.
• Action if Fail: Work with your web designer to ensure all critical text information is actual HTML text, not embedded in images.

6. Is your core information available in HTML format (not just PDFs)?

• What it is: Many businesses, especially restaurants, put their most important information, like their menu, inside a PDF file. AIs cannot reliably read or parse the content of PDFs.
• How to Check: Is your restaurant menu, list of services, or price list only available as a PDF download? If yes, you fail.
• Action if Fail: Recreate that information as a proper HTML page on your website. This makes it indexable, readable, and ready for structured data markup.

7. Is your Google Business Profile complete and accurate?

• What it is: For local businesses, Google Business Profile (GBP) is a major source of factual data for Google's AI and Knowledge Graph.
• How to Check: Search for your business on Google. Look at your GBP listing on the right. Is every single field filled out? Are your hours, address, and phone number 100% correct and consistent with your website?
• Action if Fail: Log in to your GBP account and fill out every possible section: services, attributes (like 'wheelchair accessible' or 'free Wi-Fi'), photos, and posts. Consistency between your GBP and your website is key.

8. Do you have dedicated pages for each core service?

• What it is: Instead of listing all your services on one generic page, having a dedicated page for each one (e.g., a page for 'Tax Preparation' and a separate page for 'Bookkeeping') helps AIs clearly understand the specifics of what you offer.
• How to Check: Review your website's navigation. Are your key services broken out into their own pages?
• Action if Fail: Plan to build out separate, detailed pages for each of your primary services. This is good for both AI-readiness and traditional SEO.

Section 3: Advanced Readiness

This section covers forward-thinking elements that signal a high level of AI maturity.

9. Do you have a comprehensive FAQ page?

• What it is: A well-structured FAQ page is a goldmine for AI. It provides clear question-and-answer pairs that an AI can easily use to respond to user queries.
• How to Check: Do you have a dedicated FAQ page? Is it organized with clear headings? If so, have you used FAQPage schema to mark it up (see item #3)?
• Action if Fail: Create an FAQ page that answers the top 10-20 questions your customers ask. This is a high-value content project.

10. Have you considered an LLMs.txt file?

• What it is: An emerging standard file that tells AI models how they are allowed to use your content (e.g., whether they can use it for training).
• How to Check: Go to https://[yourwebsite.com]/llms.txt. If a file exists, you pass with flying colors.
• Action if Fail: This is an advanced step, but creating a simple LLMs.txt file to state your data usage preferences is a proactive way to control your intellectual property.

Your AI-Readiness Scorecard

Once you've completed the audit, tally up your passes and fails. This isn't about getting a perfect score. It's about creating a prioritized to-do list. Address the failures in the Technical Foundation section first, with a special focus on implementing structured data. Then, move on to improving your content accessibility. By systematically working through this checklist, you can ensure that when the future asks a question, your business is ready with the answer.