SAMPLEDThe SEO checklist for business leaders: llms.txt, alt text, Search Console, and three things you can do today
A plain-language, step-by-step guide to the SEO work that actually moves the needle — with the exact clicks, the free tools, and the certifications worth taking.
Most SEO advice aimed at business leaders is written for people who already do SEO. This one is not. It is a working checklist you can hand to whoever runs your site — or do yourself in an afternoon — with the exact clicks, the exact file contents, and the free training that will keep you from having to hire someone for the basics.
Three of these you can finish today: publish an llms.txt, verify your site in Google Search Console and submit a sitemap, and fix the alt text on your top ten images. Everything after that is the longer game.
Do this right now #1 — Publish an llms.txt file
AI assistants increasingly answer questions about your business before anyone reaches your site. llms.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain that tells those systems, in human language, what your site is and which pages matter. It costs nothing and takes about fifteen minutes. The format is documented at llmstxt.org (opens in a new tab).
Exactly how to do it
- Open a plain text editor. Not Word — Notepad, TextEdit in plain text mode, or your site builder's file editor.
- Write the file. Start with a heading that is your business name, a one-line summary in a blockquote, then sections of links with a short description after each colon:
# Northgate Dental
> A three-chair family dental practice in Knoxville, Tennessee, taking new patients.
## Pages
- [Services](https://example.com/services): Cleanings, crowns, whitening, emergency visits, and what each costs.
- [New patients](https://example.com/new-patients): Intake forms, insurance we accept, first-visit expectations.
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact): Hours, address, phone, and the after-hours line.
## Policies
- [Insurance and payment](https://example.com/insurance): Plans accepted and financing options.
- Save it as
llms.txt— lowercase, no.txt.txt. - Upload it so it lives at
https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt. In most site builders that is a "files" or "assets" upload; on a normal web host it goes in the same folder as your homepage. On Lovable (opens in a new tab), you drop it into thepublicfolder and it publishes at the root automatically. - Check it. Type your address plus
/llms.txtin a browser. If you see your text, you are done.
Write it for a person. Vague marketing language helps nobody; concrete facts — prices, service areas, hours, what you do not do — is what gets quoted back accurately.
Do this right now #2 — Verify Search Console and submit your sitemap
Google Search Console (opens in a new tab) is free and it is the only place Google tells you directly which of your pages it has indexed, which search terms brought people to you, and what is broken. Bing Webmaster Tools (opens in a new tab) is the same idea and takes five more minutes.
Exactly how to do it
- Go to Search Console and sign in with a Google account your business controls — not a personal one you will lose access to.
- Choose URL prefix and paste your full homepage address including
https://. - Pick the HTML tag verification method. Google gives you a single line that looks like
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="..." />. - Paste that line into the
<head>of your homepage. Every site builder has a place for this: Squarespace calls it Code Injection, WordPress users usually add it through an SEO plugin's settings, Webflow puts it under Project Settings → Custom Code. On Lovable you can simply ask the editor to add the verification tag and publish. - Publish the site, then click Verify.
- Find your sitemap. It is almost always at
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Open it to confirm it loads and lists your real pages. - In Search Console, open Sitemaps in the left menu, enter
sitemap.xml, and submit. - Come back in a week. Open Pages to see what is indexed and what is excluded, and Performance to see the actual search terms people used.
Do this right now #3 — Fix alt text on your ten most important images
Alt text is the written description attached to an image. It is what a blind visitor's screen reader reads aloud, what shows when an image fails to load, and what search engines use to understand the picture. It is also a legal accessibility consideration in many markets under WCAG (opens in a new tab).
Exactly how to do it
- List your ten most valuable pages — homepage, top services, top products.
- On each, find every image that carries meaning. Purely decorative shapes and background textures should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them.
- Describe what is in the image and why it is there, in a sentence or less. Do not start with "image of" — that is already announced.
- Put your real language in it naturally, never a list of terms.
| Situation | Weak | Strong |
|---|---|---|
| Product photo | alt="chair" | alt="Walnut dining chair with woven rush seat, side view" |
| Team headshot | alt="staff" | alt="Dr. Maria Chen, lead dentist, in the Northgate clinic" |
| Chart | alt="chart" | alt="Bar chart: patient wait times fell from 22 to 9 minutes between 2024 and 2026" |
| Decorative divider | alt="line pattern" | alt="" |
- In a site builder, the field is usually labelled "alt text" or "image description" in the image settings panel. In raw HTML it is the
altattribute:<img src="/chair.jpg" alt="Walnut dining chair with woven rush seat, side view">. - Check your work with the free WAVE accessibility checker (opens in a new tab) — paste a page address and it flags every missing description.
The next tier, once those three are done
Write one honest title and description per page. The page title is what shows as the blue link in search results; aim for under sixty characters and put the useful words first. The description is the grey text under it, under about a hundred and sixty characters, written as a reason to click rather than a keyword dump. Every page needs its own — duplicated titles across a site are one of the most common findings in any audit.
Fix your page speed. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab). The two fixes that account for most of the gain are almost always the same: images that are far larger than the space they display in, and fonts or scripts loading before anything visible. Export your hero images at the width they actually render and save them as WebP.
Claim your Google Business Profile if you have any local presence. Free, and it is the single highest-return hour (opens in a new tab) for a local business — hours, photos, service area, and reviews all feed local search directly.
Check robots.txt. Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If it contains Disallow: / your entire site is asking search engines to stay away. It happens more often than you would think after a redesign.
Add structured data to pages describing a product, an event, a recipe, a local business, or an article. Google's Rich Results Test (opens in a new tab) will tell you whether yours is valid. This is the one item here where a competent developer, or an AI builder, saves real time.
Free and cheap certifications that actually mean something
None of these will make you an SEO. They will make you literate enough to judge whether the person you hire is any good, which is the point.
| Course | Cost | Time | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics Certification (opens in a new tab) (Skillshop) | Free | 4–6 hrs | The official GA4 credential; teaches you to read your own traffic |
| Google Digital Garage — Fundamentals of Digital Marketing (opens in a new tab) | Free | 40 hrs | Broad, accredited by IAB Europe, good for a whole team |
| HubSpot SEO Certification (opens in a new tab) | Free | 4 hrs | Practical on-page and content structure, shareable badge |
| Semrush Academy SEO courses (opens in a new tab) | Free | 2–10 hrs each | Technical SEO and keyword research, taught by working practitioners |
| Ahrefs SEO course (opens in a new tab) | Free | 2 hrs | The clearest short explanation of how ranking actually works |
| W3C accessibility courses on edX (opens in a new tab) | Free to audit | Varies | Accessibility fundamentals; certificate is paid, audit is not |
Ignore any course that promises rankings. The credential is worth having; the guarantee is a warning sign.
Where AI builders fit
Several of the tasks above are mechanical — adding a verification tag, generating a sitemap, writing alt text for a gallery, adding structured data. Tools like Lovable (opens in a new tab) will do these by instruction rather than by hand, which matters if you do not have a developer on staff. This site runs on it, and the sitemap, structured data, and image handling described here were all built that way.
What AI will not do is decide what your pages should say or which ones deserve to exist. That judgment stays with you.
The one-page checklist
-
llms.txtpublished and loading at your root address - Search Console verified, sitemap submitted
- Bing Webmaster Tools verified
- Alt text written on the images across your top ten pages
- A unique title and description on every page that matters
-
robots.txtchecked for an accidental site-wide block - PageSpeed Insights run, oversized images replaced
- Google Business Profile claimed and filled in
- Structured data added and validated on your key page types
- One person on the team through a free certification
Work down it in order. The first three are today.