Does llms.txt replace SEO?

No. It is an addition, not a substitute: technical SEO, content and structured data remain the foundation. llms.txt adds a summary written for AI engines, and it only works if there is a site behind it worth reading.

Can my WordPress or Wix site have an llms.txt?

Yes, provided the platform lets you publish a text file at the root of the site. On WordPress you do it with a plugin or by uploading the file over FTP; on other builders it depends on your plan and the tools available. On a custom built site it takes minutes.

How do I check whether a site already has one?

Type the site address followed by /llms.txt in your browser, for example bianchiweb.com/llms.txt. If a page of text describing the site appears, the file exists. If you get an error, it does not.

llms.txt: what it is and why your site needs one

llms.txt is a plain text file, published at yoursite.com/llms.txt, that sets out in a few lines who you are, what you do and which pages on your site actually matter. Its job is to give AI engines, including the ones behind ChatGPT and Perplexity, a compact, orderly version of your site, written to be read by a machine.

What it actually does

Websites already have two files aimed at engines: robots.txt, which tells crawlers where they may go, and the sitemap, which lists the pages. A third piece is missing, one that explains. That is what llms.txt is for.

An AI crawler arriving at your site has little time and finds pages cluttered with menus, banners and repetition. llms.txt hands it a shortcut: a natural language description of who you are and what you do, plus an annotated list of the pages that count. Less interpretation for the machine, less room for it to get you wrong.

What goes in it

The format is deliberately simple: text in Markdown, the syntax where headings start with a hash. A typical structure:

The name and a defining sentence. Who you are and what you do, in one line: the sentence you would want an assistant to repeat.
A short description. A few lines on services, the area you cover and your typical clients, in complete sentences and without slogans.
The key pages, with an explanation. Not all of them: the ones that answer customer questions, each with a line saying what is there.

To make it concrete, a minimal llms.txt for a local business:

# Rossi Motors

Independent garage in Verona, Italy, specialising in
hybrid and electric vehicles. Trading since 1998,
by appointment, for private owners and company fleets.

## Main pages

- /services: servicing, diagnostics and repairs for
  hybrid and electric vehicles, with indicative prices
- /booking: how to arrange an appointment
- /contact: address, opening hours, phone

That is all there is to it. No code, no secrets: the difficulty is not technical, it is editorial. Writing ten lines that describe a business precisely is an exercise plenty of companies have never done. Note what is missing too: slogans, superlatives, calls to action. A machine is looking for facts to relay, not enthusiasm to absorb.

Who should have one

Any business whose customers put questions to an AI assistant, which by now is nearly all of them. The bigger the site, the more the file earns its keep: on a five page site a crawler manages well enough on its own, on a site with dozens of pages the summary changes things.

A concrete example: Need4Padel, the padel industry directory I built, has an llms.txt that lays out the whole structure for AI engines: what the directory is, which categories it holds, where to find the companies. A machine that reads that file knows its way around before it has visited a single page.

What it does not do

Some honesty is needed here, because a lot of easy enthusiasm circulates around this file:

It does not guarantee citations. No file does. llms.txt improves readability. It does not buy visibility.
It is not an official standard. It is a recently emerged convention, and adoption across AI engines is uneven: some crawlers use it, others still ignore it.
It does not repair a weak site. If the pages are slow, vague or closed to crawlers, a tidy summary saves nothing. It is the cover, not the book.

So why bother? Because it costs almost nothing, carries no downside, and puts you in the right position while adoption grows. It is the classic piece of work worth doing early precisely because hardly anyone does it.

The most common mistakes

On sites that have already tried adding one, the same problems come up again and again:

Writing it like an advert. "Industry leader for twenty years" gives a machine nothing to quote. The opposite works: name, location, services, typical clients, in dry sentences.
Letting it go stale. An llms.txt describing services you no longer offer does real damage: AI will repeat wrong information with great confidence.
Treating it as the finish line. The file is the front door. If the pages behind it do not confirm and expand on what it promises, the summary is an empty promise.

How to add it to a site

Technically it is a static file published at the root of the domain: a few minutes of work for a developer, plus the time to write it properly. It then needs maintaining. If the services or the pages change, the summary has to change with them.

On the sites I build, llms.txt is part of the technical baseline of every project, alongside structured data and a robots.txt that does not shut AI crawlers out. Three pieces of the same job: making the site legible to the machines that now answer on your behalf.