GEO (generative engine optimization) is about getting your site into the answers AI assistants give. Before content or links matter, the basics have to work. Here is the checklist I run on every site:

1. robots.txt: make sure you don't block GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Bingbot by accident.

2. Server-rendered text: open your page with JavaScript disabled. If the main text disappears, many crawlers won't see it either.

3. Indexing in Google and Bing: AI assistants lean on search indexes. ChatGPT and Copilot rely heavily on Bing, Claude uses Brave, and Brave discovers sites largely through Google and Bing. Verify in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.