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AI SEO Expert Groundwork: Run The Audit, Crawler, Schema, Brief And Outreach Prompts In Your Agent OS

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Most of what an AI SEO expert does in the first fortnight is fact-finding, and your Agent OS can do that groundwork for you.

This guide sets the agent up safely, gives you five copy-paste prompts, and shows where the human expert's judgement still has to take over.

Prefer an expert's eyes from the start? Book a free strategy session with Julian Goldie's team.

What your agent can take off an expert's plate

An AI SEO expert splits time between gathering facts and making calls.

Gathering is repetitive: fetching robots.txt, sweeping tags, reading pages, listing questions.

That is exactly what an agent is good at.

The calls (what to fix first, what to say, who to pitch) stay with a person.

Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features says AEO and GEO are still SEO from Google's side, so none of the groundwork below is exotic.

Quick start: four rules before the first prompt

1. Make a project folder called ai-seo-groundwork and add your sitemap URL plus your ten most valuable pages.
2. Give the agent web fetch access only. No CMS login, no email sending, no publishing rights.
3. Add a standing instruction: "Draft only. Never change the live site. Ask before any action outside this folder."
4. Have it save each result as a dated markdown file so you keep a record.

Prompt 1: a fast technical audit of your key pages

Read pages.txt. For each URL, fetch the page and report:
- HTTP status and final URL after redirects
- title tag, meta description and H1
- robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag header
- whether noindex, nosnippet, max-snippet or data-nosnippet appears
- whether the main text is in the raw HTML or only after JavaScript
Flag anything that could keep the page out of Google's
AI Overviews or AI Mode. Save as audit.md. Change nothing.

Google's robots meta tag reference confirms that nosnippet also keeps text out of AI Overviews and AI Mode as a direct input.

A stray tag on one template can hide dozens of pages.

Prompt 2: check robots.txt for every AI crawler

Fetch https://[yourdomain]/robots.txt.
For each user agent, say allowed, blocked or not mentioned,
and quote the matching line:
Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User,
PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot,
ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Google-Extended.
Then request three key pages normally and report any 403,
captcha or challenge page.
Save as crawlers.md. Do not edit robots.txt.

OpenAI says robots.txt changes take around a day to register, so recheck tomorrow.

📞 Want an AI SEO expert to read your crawler report?

Julian's team can go through what your agent found and turn it into a priority list. Book a free SEO strategy session to get started.

→ Get my free strategy session

Prompt 3: draft your Organisation schema

Read my About and Contact pages.
Draft JSON-LD using schema.org Organization, or LocalBusiness
if customers visit us or we serve a local area.
Include name, url, logo, address, telephone and sameAs links
to our official profiles only.
Every value must match visible text on my site.
List anything you could not confirm rather than guessing.
Save as schema-draft.json. Do not publish.

Google's Organisation markup documentation explains how this helps it tell your business apart from similar names.

Google's AI features page also says no special schema is needed for AI Overviews, so this is about clarity, not a shortcut.

Prompt 4: build a content brief from real customer questions

Read the call notes and emails in /questions.
List the 10 questions customers ask most before buying,
in their own words.
For the page [URL], mark each question as answered,
partly answered or missing.
Suggest first-hand material only we can supply:
real examples, photos, process steps, numbers we publish.
Do not write the page. Save as brief-[slug].md.

Google's guide says unique, non-commodity content will likely matter more than any other suggestion it makes.

The agent finds the gaps; you fill them with what only your business knows.

Prompt 5: research outreach targets, draft only

Find 20 websites relevant to [industry] in [region] that
publish guides, local news or supplier features.
For each: site name, URL, the page type that fits us,
and one story angle based on our real work.
Do not contact anyone. Do not draft emails yet.
Mark any site that sells links as "skip".
Save as outreach-list.md.

Google's spam policies treat links made mainly to manipulate rankings as link spam.

Paid placements are fine when marked rel="sponsored", per Google's link qualification guide.

A person reviews the list and sends every pitch.

Reading the results: the three findings that matter most

Your agent will hand back a lot of lines, and most of them are noise.

Three findings deserve your attention before anything else.

1. A blocked search crawler. If OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot is blocked, that platform's search can't use your pages.
2. A snippet tag on a money page. nosnippet or a tight max-snippet on a service page limits what Google's AI features can draw on.
3. Main text that only appears after JavaScript runs. Google can render it, but not every bot can, so important copy belongs in the HTML.

Everything else, from missing meta descriptions to untidy headings, can wait a week.

Ask the agent to sort its own findings into "fix now", "fix this month" and "ignore" before you read them.

What to bring when you hand over

An AI SEO expert works faster when the groundwork arrives in order.

• The dated audit, crawler and schema files from your project folder.
• Your ten most valuable pages and why they matter.
• Read access to Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• The customer questions file behind Prompt 4.

That pack turns the first meeting into a priorities discussion rather than a fact-finding one.

It also lets you check the expert's plan against evidence you gathered yourself, which is the best protection against vague advice.

If their first recommendation contradicts what the platforms' own documentation says, ask them to show you the source.

A short weekly workflow

1. Monday: rerun Prompts 1 and 2 and compare with last week's files.
2. Tuesday: run Prompt 4 for the next page on your list.
3. Wednesday: write and publish the page yourself, then validate the schema.
4. Thursday: review the outreach list and send two pitches by hand.
5. Friday: check Search Console's generative AI report and Bing's AI Performance view.

Small-business example: a mobile physiotherapist

1. Prompt 2 finds Claude-SearchBot blocked by an old blanket rule; she asks her web person to allow it.
2. Prompt 3 drafts LocalBusiness markup listing the areas she covers, matching her contact page.
3. Prompt 4 turns client questions about home visits into a brief for a new page.
4. She writes the page with her own treatment notes and publishes it.
5. Prompt 5 lists three local running clubs that publish injury guides; she pitches one herself.

When to hand it to an AI SEO expert

The groundwork tells you what is wrong; it doesn't decide what matters most.

Hand over when:

• The audit throws up more fixes than you can rank by importance.
• Firewall or CDN rules need changing.
• Rivals already show up in AI answers and you need content and outreach running together.
• You need monthly reporting you can trust.

Nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking, as Google's hiring guide says, so judge any expert on process and evidence.

Julian Goldie is a useful reference point: by his own published numbers he has worked on 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns, and he shares AI SEO tests with 425K+ YouTube subscribers.

His about page says the team tests strategies on its own sites every week before using them for clients.

Prefer to keep building the skill in-house? Learn AI SEO yourself inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

🔥 Learn AI SEO yourself with the Agent OS

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step trainings, four weekly coaching calls and a daily Q&A.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

📞 Ready for the expert part?

Book a free SEO strategy session and bring your agent's files. Julian's team will tell you what to fix first.

→ Book my free strategy session

📘 Two free extras for your agent

Load the 200+ AI SEO Prompts into your project folder, and read the free link building book before you send a pitch.

→ Book a free SEO strategy session

FAQ

Can my Agent OS replace an AI SEO expert?

It can do the fact-finding: audits, crawler checks, schema drafts, briefs and target lists. Priorities, content and outreach still need a person.

Is it safe to point an agent at my website?

Yes, if it is read-only and draft-only. Give it fetch access only, no CMS login, and a rule to ask before anything outside its folder.

Should the agent create an llms.txt file?

Not for Google. Google says Google Search does not use llms.txt, so spend the time on crawler access and content instead.

How often should I rerun the prompts?

Run the audit and crawler prompts weekly, and the brief prompt each time you plan a new page.

Final word on AI SEO Expert Groundwork

Run the five prompts, keep everything as drafts, and book a free strategy session or join the AI Profit Boardroom when you are ready to brief an ai seo expert.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Top AI SEO Experts: Vet Them With Your Agent OS

→ AI SEO Specialist Prep: Build The Brief In Your Agent OS

→ AEO Specialist Groundwork: Run It In Your Agent OS

→ GEO Specialist Groundwork: 5 Prompts For Your Agent OS

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