Claude SEO — entity clarity, llms.txt and schema that get your business cited by Claude

What is Claude SEO?

Claude SEO is the practice of making your business easy for Anthropic's Claude to find, verify and recommend when a customer asks it for a service you provide. Unlike Gemini (which reads Google's Business Profile database) or ChatGPT (which leans on Foursquare and Bing), Claude has no business dashboard at all — it forms its picture of you entirely from the open web.

That makes Claude the purest test of your online presence: if your website, schema, directories and reviews tell one consistent story, Claude can retell it. If they don't, it recommends someone whose story checks out.

How Claude picks local businesses

  • Web search over live pages. When asked for a local recommendation, Claude searches the web and reads what it finds — your site, directories, review platforms, local press. Pages that state who you are, where you work and what you do in plain language are the ones it can quote.
  • Entity clarity wins. Same business name, trade, service area and credentials everywhere — site footer, about page, schema markup, directories. Claude cross-checks; agreement reads as trustworthy, ambiguity reads as risk.
  • Structured data is your machine-readable resume. LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage and Person schema tell Claude in its native format exactly what your pages say in English.
  • llms.txt is the welcome mat. A plain-text file at /llms.txt summarizing your business for AI models — services, areas, proof, key pages. Here's this site's live llms.txt; it takes me about twenty minutes to build one for a client.
  • ClaudeBot must be allowed in. Anthropic's crawler respects robots.txt. Sites that block it — sometimes by accident, via aggressive bot rules — simply don't exist to Claude.

My Claude SEO process

  1. Baseline the answers. I ask Claude your customers' questions — trade + city, problem + "who do I call" — and log who it names and which sources it cites.
  2. Entity audit. Every place your business is described — site, schema, GBP, directories, socials — checked for one consistent name, trade, area and phone. Conflicts fixed at the source.
  3. Ship the technical layer. llms.txt written and published, schema markup matching your real-world data, robots.txt open to ClaudeBot, fast crawlable pages.
  4. Make pages quotable. Service pages that answer in the first two sentences, honest pricing guidance, FAQ sections — the exact format an AI assistant can lift into a recommendation.
  5. Extend the trust web. Reviews beyond Google, real community mentions, local press — the third-party evidence Claude uses to confirm your own claims.
  6. Track monthly. Same questions, logged answers, alongside GA4 referrals from claude.ai. Early-mover advantage is measurable here precisely because so few businesses compete yet.

Want to know what Claude says about your business?

I'll ask Claude the questions your customers ask, show you who it recommends in your market and why, and send the exact fixes — including your llms.txt. Free, within 24 hours.

Get My Free Claude Visibility Check

Proof: the site you're reading

This website practices Claude SEO on itself — live llms.txt, Person/Service/FAQ schema on every page, answer-first content. It's the same system I install for electricians, HVAC companies, plumbers and pest control businesses in the US, UK and Canada — as one piece of a full AI search optimization engagement.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Claude find and recommend local businesses?

Through web search and the open web — no dashboard to claim. It rewards entity clarity: consistent name, trade, area and credentials across your site, schema, directories and reviews.

What is llms.txt and does Claude read it?

A plain-text file at /llms.txt giving AI models a clean summary of your business in your own words. It's cheap insurance for AI visibility — this site publishes one, and every client gets one.

Should I block ClaudeBot in robots.txt?

Not if you want Claude recommending you — blocked crawler means invisible business. Check that aggressive bot rules aren't blocking it by accident; it's a common silent mistake.

Is Claude SEO worth it with a smaller user base?

Yes — the work overlaps almost entirely with ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity optimization, and virtually no local business competes for Claude yet. Early movers in empty fields collect the recommendations.