The 15-Minute Audit: Making Your Website AI-Readable
AI is being positioned to your customers before they ever open a browser tab. They ask Claude and ChatGPT for vendor recommendations, compare options, and form opinions based on whatever the AI can scrape from your site.
If your homepage hides its value proposition behind a JavaScript animation, buries services in marketing prose, or uses heading tags as font sizes, the scraper moves on. Your business gets summarised as "a company in this space" or, worse, never mentioned.
This is a 15-minute audit you can run yourself. Three engineering shifts plus one validation step. Pass it and AI engines will read your site. Fail it and your competitors will be the ones being recommended.
- With JavaScript off, my homepage still shows headline, services, and contact
- Services and prices are in lists or tables, not paragraphs
- One H1 per page, H2s for sections, H3s for items
- An AI can correctly name what I do, what I offer, and at what price
You will need: a browser with Developer Tools, Lighthouse (built into Chrome), and access to Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. 15 minutes.
The 15-Minute Audit
Three fixes plus one validation. Each fix is about 3 minutes to audit and an hour or so to ship. Run them in order. Stop where you find a problem.
Step 1: Strip the JavaScript Bloat— ~3 min audit, ~1 hour fix
AI scrapers do not wait for loading screens. If your value proposition only renders after a JavaScript animation fires, the scraper is already gone before your page finishes.
The audit. Open your homepage in Chrome. Open DevTools (Cmd+Opt+J on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows/Linux), click the gear icon, tick "Disable JavaScript", and reload. If your headline, services, and contact details are still readable, you pass. On Safari: Preferences → Advanced → enable Develop, then Develop → Disable JavaScript.
The fix. Move your core text into the HTML so it loads immediately. JavaScript should enhance the page, not deliver the message. Same text, out of a script-rendered component, into a static <h1> or <p> the server sends with the page.
<h1>Automated workflows for operations directors</h1>
<p>We integrate your existing tools and route work through AI agents.</p>
<a href="mailto:hello@acme.example">hello@acme.example</a>Step 2: Structure the Data, Kill the Stories— ~3 min audit, ~1 hour fix
AI does not care about your brand journey. It wants hard facts. If you are burying what you actually do inside paragraphs of adjectives, the LLM cannot extract it.
The audit. Open your Services and Pricing pages. Are deliverables buried in heavy paragraphs? Are prices hidden in accordions that need a click? Are you describing what you do in adjectives when you could be describing it in nouns?
The fix. Lists, bullet points, clean tables. Serve product details and pricing in structured formats an LLM can parse instantly. This site does this on every pricing and feature block, which is why an AI can answer "what does Practical AI offer and at what price" without hallucinating.
| Human-Optimised (Bloated) | AI-Optimised (Structured) |
|---|---|
| "Since our founding, we have prided ourselves on delivering bespoke, synergistic workflows tailored to empower your unique enterprise journey." | Core Service: Automated Workflows Deliverable: API integration and AI routing Target: Operations Directors |
If you only do ONE thing, do this step. Most AI scrapers will eventually handle JS-rendered text. None of them can read what is not on the page. Structure wins.
Step 3: Fix Your Semantic Tree— ~3 min audit, ~1 hour fix
H1, H2, and H3 are not font sizes. They are a database schema that tells the LLM how to index your business. Most websites get this wrong: multiple H1s, H2s used for decoration, H3s that mix company name and tagline into a run-on.
The audit. Run Lighthouse (Chrome DevTools → Lighthouse tab → SEO category) and look at the header tag tree. Exactly one H1 per page, H2s for major sections, H3s for items within those sections.
The fix. Your H1 should explicitly state what the business does, in plain language. H2s are your core services or sections. H3s are features, deliverables, or pricing tiers. Add Schema.org JSON-LD on top — same idea, deeper level, and most AI engines prefer it to prose.
<h1>Acme Consulting: AI Workflow Automation</h1>
<h2>Services</h2>
<h3>API Integration</h3>
<h3>AI Agent Routing</h3>
<h2>Pricing</h2>
<h3>Starter — £1,200/day</h3>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Acme Consulting",
"url": "https://acme.example",
"description": "AI workflow automation for operations directors." }
</script>Step 4: Validate With an AI— ~5 min, repeat monthly
The closing test. Open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and ask, without looking at your site:
"What does [your company] do, what do they offer, and at what price?"
"Which of their services would suit a [your target customer]?"
If the answer is wrong, hedged, or vague (a hallucinated service you do not offer, or a real one missing), your prospects are getting the same wrong information. Run the same two prompts a month after the fixes ship and compare.
Pilot the audit on your homepage first. If your homepage passes, the rest of the site usually does too.
Beyond the Basics: /llms.txt for Builders
If you have a developer on hand, /llms.txt is worth doing. It is a new standard (live at llmstxt.org) where you publish a clean Markdown file at the root of your site describing what your business does, what it offers, and how to contact you. AI scrapers are starting to look for it the way they look for sitemap.xml or robots.txt.
# Acme Consulting
> AI workflow automation for operations directors.
## Services
- API integration and AI routing
- Workflow audit and redesign
## Pricing
- Starter: £1,200/day
- Retainer: from £8,000/month
## Contact
- Email: hello@acme.example
- Web: https://acme.exampleDrop this at /llms.txt on your domain. Most businesses do not need it yet, but if you are serious about being recommended by AI, it is the next step.
Optimising for LLMs is not a dark art. It is a basic data pipeline problem. Fix the text, structure the facts, label the schema, and validate the result.
Where to Start
Run Step 1 in the next 15 minutes. If you pass all four boxes in the score at the top, you are ahead of most competitors. If you fail anywhere, that failure is your morning's work. Re-run the validation prompts in a month and see what changed.
Once the basics are solid, the free "5 AI Wins You Can Action This Week" guide shows how to put AI to work inside your business once your website is doing its job.
This is what an AI strategy session actually covers
Website readability is one piece. The bigger picture is which AI ecosystem, which frontier model, how to govern AI safely, and where to start. Our Executive AI Strategy sessions work through your specific business: your current site, your existing contracts, your team's actual workflows. You leave with a 30-day action plan that prioritises the changes that move the needle first.
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