DIY SEOOnline visibility basics
Online visibility basics are the minimum you need in place before customers can find you. That goes for Google and Maps, and increasingly for AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, which answer a question without anyone having to click through. The goal isn't to rank first nationwide. It's to make sure the people already looking for what you do end up with you.
I wrote the first version of this series in 2017, in Dutch. A lot has changed since then, mostly because of AI, but the basics themselves have barely moved. This page covers all of it, in the order you'd tackle it.
What are visibility basics?
Five things you need in place before anyone can find you. A website on its own isn't visibility. You're visible when someone with a question ends up with you: through Google, through Maps, through an AI answer or because someone else mentioned you.
- Your business details are correct everywhere. That starts with your Google Business Profile.
- Your website makes sense to visitors and to the software that reads it.
- Your text answers real questions with things only you can say.
- Other people mention you. Mentions outside your own website count for more than they used to.
- You measure what can be measured and stay honest about the rest.
That's it, and there's no trick to it. When it goes wrong, it's rarely because someone can't do one of these five. Usually nobody ever looked at them side by side.
What won't visibility fix?
An offer nobody wants. This series is about getting found, and that's one part of your marketing. Advertising, positioning, pricing and the offer itself aren't covered here.
I put this up front on purpose, because it's the misdiagnosis I run into most. If nobody wants what you're selling, being easier to find won't help. It just means more people get to say no. Getting found widens the reach of what you already have. It doesn't fix it.
Not sure whether the problem is your visibility or your offer? That's exactly the question I'd rather answer before anyone spends money. See what I do, or read how I think about SEO and AI visibility.
Where do you start?
With whichever part is weakest for you, not whichever part sounds most interesting. Find what you recognize in the table.
| What you notice | What it usually comes down to | Read on |
|---|---|---|
| People nearby can't find you | Your business details differ from place to place | Your Google Business Profile |
| Visitors land on the wrong page | Your site has no clear structure | Structuring your website |
| Google finds you, but AI never names you | A crawler isn't allowed in, or your text is hard to quote | AI crawlers and text AI can cite |
| You publish a lot, but little comes of it | You're writing what ten other people already wrote | Brand name and mentions |
| You don't know whether any of it works | You're measuring what can't be measured cleanly anymore | Measuring honestly |
Four checks you can run right now, in about five minutes total:
- Search for your company name in Google. Is the box with your business details correct, hours included?
- Open
yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Is there anything in there you don't understand, or nothing at all? - Turn off JavaScript in your browser and reload your most important page. Whatever you can't see then, plenty of crawlers can't see either.
- Ask ChatGPT or Gemini a question you should be the answer to. Who gets named?
Whatever comes out of that is your starting point. The rest of this page covers what to do about each part.
What's changed since 2017?
Four things: your business profile has a new name, Google Analytics works differently, measuring has become partly estimating, and AI increasingly gives the answer itself. That's enough to rewrite this series.
- Google My Business is now Google Business Profile. The separate app went away in 2022. You now manage your profile right in Google Search and Maps; with multiple locations, you also use Business Profile Manager.
- Universal Analytics stopped in July 2023. GA4 measures differently, so your new numbers don't compare cleanly with your old ones.
- Measuring has become partly estimating. For visitors in the EEA you need consent, and since March 2024 Consent Mode v2 has been required if you use Google's advertising services. Part of your reporting is modeled, not observed.
- A layer got added. Google shows AI Overviews, and for many people ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini have become a starting point. More and more often, someone gets an answer without clicking through.
One thing hasn't changed: a solid foundation beats a trick. That was true in 2017, and it's truer now, because tricks get noticed faster.
What should you do with your Google Business Profile?
Make it complete, and make sure it says the same thing as your website. This was part one of the series in 2017, and it's still where you start, especially if your customers are local. Your profile decides whether you show up in Google Maps and in the local search results. It's also one of the sources AI answers pull business details from.
Keep your name, address, phone number and hours exactly the same everywhere: on your profile, on your website and anywhere else you're listed. Small differences are the most common reason a system can't be sure it's looking at the same business.
The details, from choosing a category to cleaning up a duplicate profile, are in my guide to setting up your Google Business Profile.
Ask customers for reviews, and respond to what they write. Not because some number crosses a magic threshold, but because a recent review with a specific story says something you can't credibly say about yourself.
Which reviews count depends on the market. In Norway I see people look past your Google reviews, to Trustpilot and to platforms in their own industry. That and other differences are in the article on visibility in the Netherlands and Norway.
How do you structure your website?
With one clear subject per page, laid out so you can reach anything from your homepage in a few clicks. This was part two of the series, and the core hasn't changed.
- One subject per page. Put two services on one page, and you won't rank well for either.
- Headings in order. One h1, h2s under it and h3s only under those. Don't skip levels.
- Link text that says where it goes. "Read more" tells nobody anything. "How to set up your Google Business Profile" does.
- Readable URLs that stay put. Every change costs you part of the value of the links pointing to them.
I made that last mistake myself. This series has had three different URL structures over the years, and every move cost part of what it had built up.
If you do have to move, redirect every old URL to the page that actually replaces it. That work falls under SEO and AI visibility.
How does AI search work?
It searches first and writes second. An AI tool searches an index, gets a handful of sources back and writes an answer from them, with references. That's called grounding: the answer rests on sources it found, not just on what the model already knows.
That leads to the most important conclusion in this whole series: if you're not in the search index, you can't be in the answer either. Ordinary visibility in search engines still does by far the most for you. What gets sold as "AI SEO" is mostly just SEO, plus text that's easy to quote.
You don't have to take my word for it. Google says so itself in its guide to generative AI features in Search: "The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant." According to Google, the AI features in Search rely on the same ranking and quality systems as the ordinary results. It's the same engine.
So be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise. A lot is being sold right now on promises nobody can back up. What I can do for you here is under SEO and AI visibility.
Which AI crawlers should you allow?
For almost everyone: all of them. It's a real decision, though, and it often goes wrong because crawlers get lumped together. They don't do the same job: some fill a search index, some fetch a page because someone asked for it right then, and some collect text to train AI models on.
| Name in robots.txt | What it's for | If you block it |
|---|---|---|
Googlebot | Google's search index, which also feeds AI Overviews | You disappear from Google entirely |
Google-Extended | Not a crawler but a setting: whether Google may use your pages for Gemini | Gemini won't use your pages for training or grounding; Google Search isn't affected |
OAI-SearchBot | ChatGPT's search index | You stop appearing in ChatGPT search results |
ChatGPT-User | Fetches a page when a user asks for it | Can't be reliably blocked through robots.txt |
GPTBot | Collects text to train OpenAI models | GPTBot stops fetching your text for training |
ClaudeBot | Collects text to train Anthropic models | ClaudeBot stops fetching your text for training |
Claude-User | Fetches a page when a user asks for it | Claude can't open your page when someone asks |
Claude-SearchBot | Claude's search index | You become less visible in Claude's search results |
PerplexityBot | Perplexity's index | You stop appearing in Perplexity |
CCBot | Common Crawl, a public web archive many AI datasets draw on | Your text stays out of that archive |
Applebot-Extended | Not a crawler but a setting: whether Apple may use your pages to train models | Apple won't use what Applebot fetches for training |
What each name does is documented by OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Apple.
One misunderstanding is stubborn enough to call out on its own: you can't opt out of AI Overviews through robots.txt. They're built on Google's ordinary search index. Blocking Google-Extended is about Gemini, not AI Overviews. Google says as much in its overview of crawlers: "Google-Extended does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search." If you really want out, the only levers are nosnippet and max-snippet, and those trim your ordinary search snippet too.
Everything is open on this website, training crawlers included. I'd recommend that even if your text is your product. The reasoning, the alternatives and a robots.txt you can copy are in the article on allowing or blocking AI crawlers.
Not sure what's in your robots.txt right now, or what it's keeping out? Send me your website and your question. I'll tell you honestly whether anything needs changing.
How do you write text AI can cite?
Put the answer first. AI tools pull individual passages, not whole pages. A paragraph that makes sense on its own gets used. A paragraph where the answer shows up in the fourth sentence doesn't.
- Answer in the first sentence under every heading. Explanation, nuance and examples come after.
- Write your headings as questions someone would actually ask.
- One claim per paragraph, with the evidence in the same paragraph.
- Be specific. A year, an amount, a name. "Many companies find that" isn't information.
Back in 2017, the advice was to write unique text. That's outdated. Unique text is the minimum, not an edge. What sets you apart is what you've actually been through and can back up.
This page is written the same way. Read just the first sentence under each heading, and you've got the gist.
What does structured data do for you, and what doesn't it?
It helps Google understand your pages and your business. There's no evidence it gets you into AI answers.
Structured data, usually schema.org in JSON-LD, tells a machine exactly what's on a page: this is a company, this is a person, this is an article with this date and this author.
What it demonstrably does: it lets Google show certain search features, such as breadcrumbs. And it helps tell you apart from a company or person with the same name, especially if you point to your other profiles with sameAs.
What it doesn't do: no AI search provider has documented that JSON-LD counts when choosing sources. Anyone who tells you schema.org gets you into ChatGPT is selling you something.
Two kinds of markup don't earn anything anymore. In August 2023, Google announced that FAQ results would only show for authoritative government and health sites and that HowTo results would go away. HowTo results no longer show at all. If you have that markup on your site, you don't need to remove it. Just don't expect anything from it.
Source: Google Search Central on the changes to HowTo and FAQ results.
Why does your brand name matter more than your keywords?
Because AI tools combine sources instead of counting links. If your company name shows up in several independent places in the same context, the odds go up that you get named when someone asks about that subject. Think of a trade publication, a customer story, an industry association or a podcast.
That holds for mentions without a link, too. That's a real change from ten years ago, when a mention without a link got you almost nothing.
In practice: be genuinely good at something, and make sure people notice outside your own website. That's slower than putting keywords on a page. It's also a lot harder to copy.
What can you still measure honestly?
Less than your reporting suggests. That's no reason to stop measuring, but it is a reason to read your numbers differently.
Visitors who don't give consent aren't measured. Part of what they do gets estimated and filled in. And the path from first contact to signed work rarely runs through a single channel.
On top of that, traffic from AI answers is hard to recognize, because plenty of AI tools don't pass along where a visitor came from. How big that share is, I don't know, and I haven't seen a measurement of it I'd trust. Assume you're underestimating it rather than overestimating it, but don't put a percentage on it.
So focus on what you know for sure. How many inquiries did you get, from what kind of companies, and what were they worth? Ask new clients how they found you. The answer is imprecise, but it's honestly imprecise. That's worth more than a dashboard that suggests a certainty that isn't there.
Measuring goes wrong even more often with advertising. I write about that under performance marketing.
What's proven and what isn't?
Less than people claim. Below is what you can reasonably expect from each claim, so you can judge for yourself what someone is selling you.
| Claim | Status | Why |
|---|---|---|
| If a crawler can't fetch your page, you can't be cited | Demonstrably true | You control access in robots.txt and can check it per crawler |
| AI answers lean on the ordinary search index | Well supported | Search comes before writing; published field tests point the same way |
| Putting the answer first helps | Well supported | AI tools pull individual passages, not whole pages |
| Schema.org gets you into AI answers | Overstated | No provider names JSON-LD as a signal in choosing sources |
| FAQ and HowTo markup earns a rich result | No longer true | Google limited FAQ results to government and health sites; HowTo results no longer show |
llms.txt improves your visibility in Google | Refuted | Google says Search ignores such files: they neither help nor hurt |
| AI visibility scores measure your position | Overstated | They're a sample from a system that doesn't give the same answer twice |
The bottom four rows are currently where the most money gets spent on work that returns nothing. Don't leave out schema.org: it helps Google understand you. Just don't buy it as an AI solution.
Google is clear about llms.txt now. According to its guide to generative AI features, you don't need separate AI files to appear in Search, and such a file neither helps nor hurts you. The reason Google gives: "Google Search ignores them." That's why there's no llms.txt on this website.
Want to go through this together?
Tell me briefly what your business does and where you're stuck. I'll tell you honestly whether getting found is your problem, or whether something else is going on.
Dominique@framvekst.noYou'll hear back within three business days.
See my contact details