How to optimise for Claude AI.

Section 01

How does Claude find and use sources?

Two ways. For general knowledge, Claude draws on its training data, which is where unprompted brand mentions come from. For current information, Claude searches the web, reads the results, and cites its sources inline, much like Perplexity and ChatGPT. Anthropic does not publish ranking factors, and anyone claiming to know exactly how Claude weighs sources is guessing. What is observable: clearly structured, factual pages from consistently described businesses get retrieved and quoted accurately, while vague marketing pages get passed over or paraphrased badly. That gives you two jobs: be reachable, and be quotable.

Section 02

Does structured data help with Claude?

It helps in an honest, unglamorous way: it reduces ambiguity. When your Organisation schema clearly defines your business name, location, and services, a retrieval system can resolve your entity with higher confidence. When your Article schema specifies the author and publication date, your content can be attributed more accurately. Nobody outside Anthropic can tell you how much weight that carries in source selection. What it reliably prevents is misrepresentation, and being represented accurately is the foundation of being cited rather than mangled.

• /Organisation schema: business name, location, services.
• /Person schema: author names, credentials, expertise areas.
• /Article and FAQ schema: topic clarity, date accuracy, structured answers.
• /Service schema: clear definitions of what your business offers.
• /SameAs properties: links between your site and authoritative external profiles.

Section 03

Why does entity consistency matter so much?

Because models build their picture of you from many sources at once. If your business appears with different names, descriptions, or service definitions across different sites, that internal picture fragments, and a fragmented entity is less likely to be confidently named for any specific query. Entity consistency means your name, description, key services, and location are identical across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories, and anywhere else you appear. It is not just about having a presence everywhere. It is about having the same, accurate presence everywhere. Consistency builds confidence, and model confidence drives citations.

• /Use the exact same business name across every platform and directory.
• /Describe your services using the same language and terminology everywhere.
• /Ensure location details are identical across all profiles.
• /Link all external profiles back to your canonical website URL.
• /Correct any outdated or inconsistent information on third-party sites.

Section 04

What practical steps optimise for Claude?

First, check your robots.txt allows ClaudeBot, Anthropic's crawler. Blocking it cuts you off at the front door. Second, audit your entity consistency and fix every mismatch you find. Third, implement schema markup across your important pages. Fourth, replace unverifiable claims with specific, checkable statements: Claude quotes facts far more readily than slogans. Fifth, publish an llms.txt file to summarise your site for AI crawlers. Then test your visibility regularly by asking Claude the questions your customers ask. This is the same change set our agent ships for clients through our GEO services, with a senior SEO approving every change and a live-page check after each one lands.

• /Allow ClaudeBot in robots.txt (User-agent: ClaudeBot, Allow: /).
• /Audit and fix entity consistency across all web presences.
• /Implement comprehensive schema markup on every important page.
• /Replace vague marketing claims with specific, verifiable statements.
• /Publish case studies with real numbers and methodology details.
• /Deploy an llms.txt file to guide AI crawlers to your best content.
• /Re-run your tracked customer questions in Claude and record the results.