SEO for Claude
When Claude searches the web to answer a question, it reads a handful of pages and shows the sources it used. We make your site readable to Anthropic's crawlers and give Claude clear, sourced answers worth citing.
Real Mojo Dojo clients, on the record.
How does Claude find and cite websites?
Claude answers from what it learned in training and, when web search is on, from pages it finds and reads at the time of the question. When it uses the web it shows the sources it drew on, and those links are where your visits come from.
Anthropic runs three crawlers, and each one does a different job
ClaudeBot. Collects web content that may be used to train Anthropic's models. Blocking it keeps future content out of training.
Claude-SearchBot. Indexes the web to improve Claude's search results. Blocking it can reduce your visibility in those results.
Claude-User. Visits a page when a person asks Claude something that needs it. Blocking it stops Claude reading your page for that answer.
robots.txt is respected. Anthropic says its bots follow robots.txt, per subdomain, and support the Crawl-delay setting.
Training and answering are separate decisions.
Many sites blocked AI crawlers in a hurry and shut out the bots that send customers along with the ones that train models. Anthropic's own documentation splits them, so you can decide on training without disappearing from answers.
What Claude prefers to cite.
Pages that answer the question directly, state facts plainly, name their sources and are easy to read without running scripts. The same qualities make a page useful to a person reading it in a hurry.
Claude is one of several assistants. Our AI SEO services cover all of them in one programme.
What we see in our own data.
First-party numbers from our audit of 719 B2B companies and the logs of our own website.
What is included in our SEO for Claude.
Access, content and reporting, matched to how Claude reads the web.
Crawler policy
A robots.txt policy that sets ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User deliberately, on every subdomain, with your training choice respected.
Readable pages
Key content served in the page HTML, so it can be read without JavaScript, with clean headings and fast load times.
Answer-first rewrites
Service and comparison pages rewritten so the answer comes first, followed by detail, evidence and examples.
Consistent facts
The same description of your business, services and area on your site, profiles and listings.
References on trusted sites
Mentions and links from industry, review and news sites that Claude can find and weigh up.
Citation tracking
A fixed set of buyer questions run in Claude each month, with whether you were cited and which page was used.
Get your free Claude visibility check.
Send us your website and we will check your robots.txt for Anthropic's crawlers and show you what Claude says about your business today.
How SEO for Claude differs from SEO for ChatGPT.
Mostly the same work, with a few differences that matter.
Different crawlers
Claude uses Anthropic's bots. ChatGPT uses OpenAI's. A robots.txt written for one does not cover the other.
Different audiences
Which assistant your buyers use depends on your industry and theirs. We check which ones send you traffic and which ones name competitors before deciding where to focus.
Same foundations
Both reward pages that answer clearly, cite evidence and come from businesses other sites vouch for. Most of the work helps you in every assistant at once.
See SEO for ChatGPT for the OpenAI side.
Why sites are missing from Claude's answers.
The problems we find most often.
Every AI bot blocked
A blanket block meant for training bots also stops Claude reading pages to answer questions.
Content that needs JavaScript
Pages that load their text with scripts can look empty to a crawler.
The answer is buried
The useful sentence sits halfway down the page, under a long introduction.
Claims without sources
Claude tends to avoid repeating claims it cannot check against other sources.
No outside references
If no other site mentions you, there is little for Claude to find when it searches.
Rules on one host only
robots.txt is read per subdomain, so a shop or blog on another host can be left blocked.
How we measure visibility in Claude.
Tracked questions
We agree a set of real buyer questions and run them in Claude each month, recording whether you are cited, how you are described and which sources appear.
Crawler activity
Your server logs show when ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User visit, and which pages they read. We publish the same data for our own site in our AI crawler index.
Referral traffic
Visits from claude.ai are separated in GA4 so you can see the traffic and enquiries Claude sends.
How we run SEO for Claude.
Five steps, then a monthly cycle.
Baseline
We ask Claude your buyers' questions and record who it cites today.
Access
We set your robots.txt policy for Anthropic's three crawlers and check every subdomain.
Readable pages
We fix rendering, headings and speed on the pages that matter most.
Answers and authority
We rewrite key pages answer-first and earn references on the sites Claude finds.
Monthly reporting
Citations, crawler visits and referral traffic, with next month's pages agreed.
Organic search results from our clients.
These are traditional SEO outcomes from published case studies. They show the authority and content foundations AI answers draw on. We do not present them as AI citation results.
Smarter SMSF
150% increase in course sales
ARP Engineering
292% increase in organic traffic
Planet Ark Power
46% increase in leads
Loan Gallery Finance
438% increase in organic keywords
Anvelo
2278% increase in organic rankings
Babylon Flowers
787% increase in revenue
Claude is one assistant. Your buyers use several.
Most of what helps you in Claude also helps in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. We run it as one programme under our AI SEO services, on top of SEO and digital PR and link building, and report each assistant separately.
“Their team understood our business before we even had to explain it. Enquiries are up 250% and the quality is better than ever.”
How AI engines decide which businesses to name.
A growing share of your buyers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude and never see a results page. How those engines decide which businesses to name, how to become one of them, and how to know if it is working.
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What is SEO for Claude?
It is the work of making your website readable to Anthropic's crawlers and giving Claude clear, sourced answers it can cite. It covers crawler access, page structure, consistent facts about your business and references on other trusted sites.
What is the difference between ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User?
According to Anthropic, ClaudeBot collects content that may be used for training, Claude-SearchBot indexes pages to improve search results, and Claude-User fetches a page when a person asks Claude a question that needs it.
Should I block ClaudeBot?
That is a business decision about training. Blocking ClaudeBot keeps future content out of training data. If you do, keep Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User allowed, or you may also disappear from Claude's answers.
Does Claude search the web for every question?
No. Claude answers many questions from what it already knows, and uses web search when it needs current or specific information. Being findable on the web and well described across it helps in both cases.
How do I know if Claude cites my website?
Ask Claude your buyers' questions on a regular schedule and record the sources it shows, check your server logs for Anthropic's crawlers, and separate visits from claude.ai in GA4. We do all three each month.
How long does it take to appear in Claude?
Access fixes can take effect as soon as pages are recrawled. Content and authority changes usually take one to three months to show up consistently. There is no published recrawl schedule, so we track it rather than guess.
Is SEO for Claude different from SEO for ChatGPT?
The crawlers differ, so access has to be set for each. The content and authority work is largely shared, which is why we run one programme across all assistants.
Is Claude worth targeting for a small business?
It depends on where your buyers ask. We check whether Claude already names you or your competitors before recommending work. For most businesses we start with Google and ChatGPT, and Claude benefits from the same work.
Get your free Claude visibility check.
Send us your website and we will check your robots.txt for Anthropic's crawlers, ask Claude your buyers' questions and show you who it cites today. No obligation.
More AI search and SEO services.
Specialist pages for each AI tool, the SEO underneath it and the guides we publish.