AI agents can search, compare options, and complete actions on behalf of users.
That means they decide which brands to partner with and show them to users.
If your site is designed in a way that agents can interpret reliably, they are more likely to stay and engage. That includes reducing the complexity of JavaScript and ensuring that your content is easy to understand.
In this article, we will show you how to use Semrush to improve your site’s readiness to be seen and selected in the agent’s search experience.
But first, let’s define what it means to be agent ready.
What does agent readiness mean?
Agent readiness is whether an AI agent can live on your site, understand your content, and complete tasks. Such as accessing pricing information, submitting a form, or making a purchase.
This builds on AI visibility.
Similar signals help your product appear in AI-generated responses and determine whether AI agents can access, interpret, and use your content.
For example, someone asks their AI agent to find and evaluate software vendors. An agent may review multiple sites, rule out prices and features, and narrow down options.
If one site presents that information clearly and supports direct interaction, it can continue the process. If one hides important information behind PDFs or relies on complex client interactions, the process may stop there.
To support this workflow, your site needs to be easy for AI agents to access, interpret, and interact with. This process is called Agentic Search Optimization (ASO).
1. Make sure AI crawlers can access your site
Use the Semrush Site Audit tool to check the accessibility of these pages.
Just open the tool, show the pages to be crawled, and run the test.
Once the test is complete, review your AI Search Health score. This shows how optimized your pages are for AI search.
A higher score indicates that your content is more accessible to AI searchers, better structured for understanding, and more likely to be included in AI-generated answers.
Review the “Blocked From AI Searches” widget to see which AI crawlers you are blocking with your robots.txt file (which tells crawlers which pages they should and shouldn’t access) and which pages are affected.
If key bots are blocked, your content will not be accessible to AI crawlers.
Go to “Problems” tab and select “AI Search” filter to see if your site has issues that may affect your ability to appear in AI-generated responses, such as:
- Links without anchor text
- Pages with only one internal link
- Pages need content improvement
- Llms.txt not found
Next, use the Log File Analyzer to understand how AI bots are actually crawling your site.
Upload or connect your server logs, and filter user agents such as GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, and ClaudeBot.
Use this report to analyze:
- Which pages get the most bot activity
- What status codes do bots encounter
- Whether certain pages or file types are skipped
2. Identify and optimize your key pages for clarity and structure
Next, identify your key pages to optimize.
These are the pages of your site that explain who you are, what you offer, and why you’re important, as well as action pages like demo requests, registration, or contact forms to ensure AI crawlers can access them. Make a list of these URLs in a spreadsheet.
If these pages are not accessible or configured to be accessible, AI agents cannot interpret your content or complete tasks such as retrieving values or submitting forms.
AI agents rely on what is clearly found on the page. So if any important information is missing, unclear, or difficult to extract, it is less likely to appear in AI responses or agent actions.
Start by reviewing whether each page clearly communicates what is important:
- What you give
- Whose
- How different
- What is the next step
Then focus on how that information is presented.
Use Semrush’s On Page SEO Checker to review and improve how your content is structured.
Start by launching the tool and optimizing your campaign with your target pages and keywords.
When the analysis is finished, you will get to the “”Overview”” report.
Here, you’ll see a list of pages prioritized based on potential impact, traffic opportunity, and ease of use.
Review when important information (such as prices, features, or availability) may be difficult to find or interpret.
Design your content so it’s easy to extract and reuse:
- Use clear descriptive headings that match the topic of each section
- Make sure that each paragraph directly answers the question or topic presented by the article
- Break up dense text into short paragraphs or bulleted lists
- Keep related information grouped together so that the sections are self-contained
These principles are consistent with established search engine guidelines and emerging standards such as the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which emphasize clear, accessible, and machine-readable information.
Make it a priority to ensure that your landing pages are complete and well-designed.
3. Review your edited data
The impact of structured data on AI visibility is not clearly established. Current evidence suggests that AI agents rely on visual page content, not schema markup, when extracting and summarizing information.
That said, it’s still worth keeping as part of your SEO foundation. It helps search engines understand the entities on your site (such as your brand and products) and the relationships between them.
Use the Site Inspection tool to identify structural data issues on your site.
Go to “Problems” tab and search for “structured” to see if you have any pages with invalid structured data.
On each page, you will see the type of structured data and some fields that are missing or incorrect.
Focus on the schema types tied to your most important pages:
- Product pages product
- Local Business or Restaurant for local pages
- Organization of administrative information about your business
Related: How are the technical aspects of SEO affecting search AI? [Study]
4. Measure the visibility of your AI
Visibility is the first criterion for being prepared for an agency search. Before agents can use your site, they need to find it.
Use the overview report within Semrush’s AI visibility toolkit to get a baseline across all AI platforms. Metrics like mentions, citations, and cited pages show whether your visibility is increasing or decreasing – and how you stack up against competitors.
Check yours Pages Cited to understand which of your pages the AI systems are citing.
To browse any of your important pages, simply use the “Sort by URL” option.
Review your AI visibility regularly to keep an eye on progress, identify gaps, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
To maximize your AI visibility, focus on:
- Finding the questions and topics your audience is asking AI
- Publishing original content on those topics
- Visibility with consistent messages across third-party websites such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and trusted industry publications
- Increasing your word of mouth and good vibes across the web
Get your site ready for work with Semrush
The SEO basics you prepare today will continue to shape the way AI agents interact with your site. But you won’t always know when you’re over or over.
Semrush helps you see why – and what to fix. Check for transparency access issues, unclear content on main pages, and whether competitors are talking about AI responding more than you.
With Semrush One, all the tools covered in this article are in one place – so you can continue to improve your visibility in all traditional and AI-driven searches.