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AI SEO Firm Prep: Build The Evidence Pack In Your Agent OS Before You Sign

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Before you brief an AI SEO firm, let your Agent OS build the evidence pack: a baseline audit, a crawler check, a schema draft, a content brief, an outreach shortlist and a proposal scan.

You'll know what the firm should be fixing before it tells you, and you'll spot a weak proposal in minutes.

When the pack is ready, book a free SEO strategy session and bring it along.

Quick start: set the agent up as read-only

1. Create a folder called firm-prep; every output saves there with the date in its filename.
2. Export your Search Console Performance and Pages reports as CSV files into it.
3. Give the agent public web access and your exports only: no CMS login, no hosting panel, no DNS.
4. Pin this standing rule: "Draft and report only. Never publish, email, submit or edit anything live."

That mirrors Google's own hiring advice, which says to give an SEO read access only while it audits.

Prompt 1: the baseline audit

This freezes where you stand, so you can judge the firm's work later.

Site: https://YOURSITE.com
Read firm-prep/performance.csv and firm-prep/pages.csv.
1. List my 20 pages with the most impressions and their clicks.
2. Fetch each page and note: title, H1, word count, canonical,
   meta robots value, and whether the main text is in the HTML.
3. Flag pages with impressions but almost no clicks.
4. Flag pages that are noindex, nosnippet or max-snippet:0.
Save as firm-prep/baseline-YYYY-MM-DD.md with a 10-line summary.
Report only.

Google's AI features page says nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex limit what shows from a page, including in AI Overviews, so the agent flags them first.

Prompt 2: robots.txt check for AI crawlers

Fetch https://YOURSITE.com/robots.txt.
For each agent, mark allowed / blocked / not named:
Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User,
PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot, ClaudeBot,
Claude-User, Google-Extended.
Next to each, write whether it is a search, training or
user-triggered agent, and link the vendor page you used.
Do not change the file. Suggest edits as a diff only.

Check what it reports against the vendors' own pages:

• OpenAI's bot documentation: OAI-SearchBot is the search crawler, GPTBot is for training, and each can be set separately.
• Perplexity's crawler page: PerplexityBot surfaces sites in its results and isn't used for model training.
• Anthropic's help article: blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce how visible you are in Claude.
• Google's common crawlers page: Google-Extended doesn't affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

Prompt 3: an Organisation schema draft

Read my homepage and About page at https://YOURSITE.com.
Draft Organization JSON-LD (or LocalBusiness if I have a
shop or office customers visit) using ONLY facts visible on
those pages: name, url, logo, address, telephone, sameAs links.
List any field you left out and why.
Output the code block only. Do not add it to the site.

Google's Organisation markup guide says the markup helps it tell your business apart from others, and recommends sameAs for your official profiles.

Google's AI guide also says no special schema is needed for AI features, so treat this as tidy groundwork, not a shortcut.

Prompt 4: a content brief from real questions

I sell [SERVICE] to [CUSTOMER TYPE] in [AREA].
List 25 questions buyers ask before choosing a provider like me,
grouped by stage: problem, options, choosing, logistics.
For the 5 most important, write a brief:
- the direct answer in 2 sentences
- the first-hand proof I should add (photos, steps, examples)
- the page on my site it belongs to, or "new page"
Save as firm-prep/briefs.md. Do not write the full articles.

The briefs show the firm what your customers ask, and stop it writing generic filler.

They also give you a fair test: ask each firm on your shortlist how it would turn brief number one into a page, and compare the answers.

🔥 Want the trainings behind these prompts?

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you learn AI SEO yourself, with step-by-step videos, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Prompt 5: outreach list research, draft only

Find 30 real websites in [NICHE] that publish guides, lists or
local news a business like mine could be featured in.
For each: URL, what they publish, a named editor if public,
and one story idea that would genuinely help their readers.
Exclude sites that sell links openly or look like link farms.
Save as firm-prep/outreach.csv. Draft only. Contact no one.

Google's spam policies treat links made mainly to manipulate rankings as link spam, and its outbound link guide says paid placements should carry rel="sponsored".

Hand this list to the firm and ask how its outreach plan compares.

A good firm will have its own, better list; a weak one will ask to use yours and nothing more.

Prompt 6: scan the firm's proposal before you sign

Read firm-prep/proposal.pdf.
1. List every deliverable it names, with any dates.
2. Flag: guaranteed rankings, guaranteed AI mentions,
   "special relationship" with Google, secret methods,
   private blog networks, links back to the firm,
   llms.txt sold as the main fix.
3. Check for: content ownership, a change log, a link list,
   access roles, an exit clause, who does the work.
4. Write 8 questions I should ask on the next call.
Report only.

Every flag in step 2 comes from Google's hiring page or its generative AI guide, which says Google Search ignores llms.txt files.

Reading the agent's output without fooling yourself

An agent report is a starting point, so check three things before you trust it.

• Sources: every crawler claim should link the vendor's own page; if it can't name one, treat the line as a guess.
• Live values: open two or three flagged pages yourself and view the source to confirm the meta robots tag is really there.
• Scope creep: if the agent suggests rewriting the whole site, cut the list back to the ten pages that earn impressions.

Write your own one-paragraph summary at the top of the folder, in plain words, before any firm sees it.

That summary becomes the brief, and it stops a sales team reframing your problem for you.

A weekly routine once the firm starts

1. Every Monday, re-run Prompt 2 so you catch any robots.txt change the same week it happens.
2. Ask the agent to compare the firm's change log against the agreed scope and list anything unexpected.
3. Once a month, re-run Prompt 1 and compare it with the first baseline in the folder.
4. Check Google's generative AI report in Search Console and Bing's citation numbers side by side.
5. Bring any surprises to the next call as questions, not accusations.

Twenty minutes a week keeps you in charge of the engagement without doing the firm's job.

Keep ownership while the firm works

Search Console's permissions page and Business Profile's owners and managers page explain each role.

📞 Pack ready? Get a pro to read it.

Book a free SEO strategy session and my team will turn your agent's findings into a ranked plan.

→ Book the free session

When to hand it to a pro

The agent gathers facts; it doesn't earn links, make judgement calls on a redesign, or take responsibility for live changes.

Hand it over when:

• the baseline shows indexing or rendering problems you can't fix yourself;
• you need links and mentions earned through real outreach;
• you're planning a redesign, which Google calls the best time to bring in an SEO;
• you want AI-search reporting from Search Console and Bing's AI Performance report run for you.

Goldie Agency, Julian Goldie's agency, takes that hand-off; by Julian's own published numbers it has run 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns for 240+ clients, and his channel has 425K+ YouTube subscribers.

Its link building is described as "Manual outreach, no PBNs", and like any reputable firm it won't guarantee a #1 spot.

Whichever firm you choose, send the whole firm-prep folder before the first call, so the meeting starts with your evidence rather than their slides.

Ask them to say which three findings they would act on first, and why, and judge them on that answer.

Book a free SEO strategy session when you're ready.

Example: a dog-grooming salon in five steps

1. The owner runs Prompt 1 and finds the booking page has impressions but nearly no clicks.
2. Prompt 2 shows the robots.txt blocks every bot except Googlebot, including OAI-SearchBot and Bingbot.
3. Prompt 3 drafts LocalBusiness markup from the address and hours already on the site.
4. Prompt 6 flags a proposal promising "guaranteed AI mentions", so that firm is dropped.
5. The owner takes the folder to a strategy session and hires a firm on a written scope, keeping every account.

Got your own folder ready? Book a free SEO strategy session and we'll go through it with you.

Want to run more of this yourself? Learn AI SEO yourself inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

📘 Two free downloads for your Agent OS

Load the 200+ AI SEO Prompts into your agent, and read the free link building book, Link Building Mastery, before you judge any outreach plan.

→ Or learn it all in the AI Profit Boardroom

Ran the prompts above and want a second pair of eyes on the output? Book a free SEO strategy session and bring your Agent OS notes along.

FAQ

Can my Agent OS replace an AI SEO firm?

No. It gathers evidence and drafts, but it does not earn links, take responsibility for live changes or make redesign calls.

Why keep the agent read-only?

So nothing changes on your live site without a person approving it, which also matches Google's advice to give read access only during an audit.

Which robots.txt agents matter for AI search?

OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot for AI search, alongside Googlebot and Bingbot. GPTBot and ClaudeBot are training crawlers you can set separately.

What should the proposal scan flag?

Guaranteed rankings or AI mentions, claimed ties to Google, secret methods, private blog networks and missing ownership or exit terms.

Final word on AI SEO Firm Prep

Run the six prompts, keep every account in your name, and book a free strategy session when you are ready to brief an AI SEO firm.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ AI SEO Company Groundwork: 6 Prompts To Run In Your Agent OS

→ Hire SEO Agency Prep: Do The Groundwork In Your Agent OS

→ AI SEO Digital Agency Prep: 5 Prompts For Your Agent OS

→ Outsource SEO Services: Do the Groundwork In Your Agent OS

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