What to have ready before you open a text editor.
Writing a good llms.txt is mostly a clarity exercise. The writing itself is fast. The harder part is deciding exactly what to say about your business.
Before you write, nail down three things: the one-sentence description of your business (category, services, location), the list of pages on your site that best represent what you do, and the factual claims you want every AI model to know about you. These should be the same facts you use on your homepage, your Google Business Profile, and your schema markup. Consistency across all of them is what builds model confidence.
If your own team cannot agree on a one-sentence description of the business, that is a signal to fix entity clarity before writing the file. An llms.txt written from a vague description produces vague AI representation. Fix the description first. The file is just a delivery mechanism for the clarity you already have.
Write your llms.txt in five sections.
Follow this order. Each section builds on the last, and the total file should stay under 500 words for most businesses.
Section 1 — Business name and category
Open with a markdown H1 heading that is your business name. Immediately below it, write one to three sentences: your category (what you are), your primary services, and your location or service area. Write this like you would explain it to a new employee on their first day. Plain language, no jargon, no marketing claims. Example: 'TRIVOX AI is an AI automation and AI visibility agency based in Toronto, serving businesses across the Greater Toronto Area and Canada. We build AI voice agents, workflow automation systems, and GEO strategies that help businesses capture more leads and get found by AI assistants.'
Section 2 — Key pages
Create a markdown H2 heading labeled 'Key Pages' or 'Site Index'. Below it, list your most important URLs with a one-line description of each. Include your services pages, your about page, your contact page, and any content pages that directly answer common questions in your category. Aim for fifteen to thirty entries. Format each as a markdown link followed by a colon and the description: [Service Page](/services/ai-voice-agents): AI voice receptionist systems for inbound call handling.
Section 3 — What the site covers
Add a short paragraph or bullet list under a 'Topics Covered' heading naming the subjects your site addresses. For a service business, this might be your service categories and the industries you serve. For a local business, include the specific cities or neighborhoods you operate in. This helps crawlers match your content to the right query types.
Section 4 — What the site does not cover (optional)
This is optional but valuable if your business has a narrow scope. A paragraph that says what you do not do reduces hallucination risk — a model that knows you specialize in AI automation for GTA small businesses is less likely to describe you as a general software consultancy. Keep it short: two to four sentences stating your specialization clearly.
Section 5 — Usage note
If you have a preference about how AI models use your content — for citation in live answers, for training, or both — state it clearly. Something like: 'This content may be cited in AI-generated answers. Please attribute to TRIVOX AI (trivox.ca) when doing so.' This is not a binding legal statement, but it signals intent to crawlers that respect usage preferences.
Publishing and maintaining your llms.txt.
Placement and maintenance are as important as the content.
The file must be accessible at exactly yoursite.com/llms.txt — no subdirectory, no index page in the way. It should return a 200 HTTP response with a plain text content type. Test this by pasting the URL into a browser — you should see raw text, not a styled page. If your site is built on a CMS, check how it handles root-level static files; most support a direct file upload or a redirect rule.
Update the file when your services change, when you add new important pages, or when your service area expands. A stale llms.txt describing services you no longer offer is actively misleading. Setting a quarterly reminder to review it is enough for most businesses. TRIVOX includes llms.txt creation and maintenance as part of our GEO visibility service — the file is updated whenever the underlying entity data changes.
Why the hour you spend is worth it.
A file you can write in under an hour has measurable effects on how AI represents your business.
Cleaner entity recognition
The model reads one authoritative source rather than inferring your business category from scattered page content. Your description comes from you, not from a model guessing based on keywords.
More relevant citations
When a crawler knows which pages cover which topics, it routes queries to the right content. A question about your service area pulls your services page, not a blog post that mentioned the city once.
Competitive edge while adoption is low
Most small and mid-size businesses in Canada have not written an llms.txt yet. Businesses that do have a structural advantage over competitors who are leaving it to the crawler to guess.
Related, and what to do next.
Questions, answered.
How long should an llms.txt file be?
Under 500 words for most businesses. Brevity is a feature, not a limitation. A concise, well-organized file is easier for a model to parse than a long one. If you are writing more than 600 words, you are probably including content that belongs on your actual pages rather than in the index file.
Is llms.txt case-sensitive?
The filename itself should be lowercase — llms.txt — to match the emerging convention. The contents can use standard capitalization. Most web servers treat the filename as case-sensitive, so llms.TXT at a different URL is not the same file from a crawler's perspective.
What format does llms.txt use?
Plain text with Markdown formatting. H1 for the business name at the top, H2 for each section. Links in standard Markdown format. No HTML, no CSS, no scripts. The crawler is reading raw text — formatting that requires a browser to render is invisible to it.
Do I need to submit my llms.txt anywhere?
No submission is required. Crawlers discover it the same way they discover robots.txt — by checking the root of the domain when they index your site. Making sure your site is crawlable and your robots.txt does not block AI crawlers is the main prerequisite.
Can I have separate llms.txt files for different sections of my site?
There is a growing convention for llms-full.txt as a more detailed companion file, but the primary file at the root is what most crawlers check first. For most businesses, one well-written root file is sufficient. Large sites with distinct product verticals might benefit from section-level context in the full version.
Does TRIVOX write llms.txt files as part of GEO work?
Yes. We write and maintain the llms.txt as part of our AI visibility service, alongside entity cleanup, schema markup, and content optimization. Reach out at info@trivox.ca or book through the link below.