SMARTSITES · THE FOUNDATION · PATH 02
SmartSites — websites engineered to be found by humans and AI
Website design in St. George built to rank on Google and get cited by AI search — with structured data, performance gates, and the scanner that proves it.
Free scan · No email required for the score · Results in < 60 seconds
WHAT IS A SMARTSITE
A website engineered for two audiences at once.
Most websites are built for one audience: the human visitor. A SmartSite is built for two — the human visitor and the AI engines that increasingly answer purchase-intent questions before that visitor ever clicks a link.
Ranked by Google. Cited by AI.
Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity all pull answers from the open web. Your site needs to be readable, structured, and trusted by those systems — not just indexed. A SmartSite is the foundation that makes every other marketing effort compound.
Built to book the job.
Schema, performance, and AEO without conversion design is academic. SmartSites combine the technical foundation with clear hierarchy, trust signals, and CTAs that move a visitor to a booked appointment — on mobile, in under five seconds.
The gap most local sites have right now
No structured data
Most local service sites ship zero JSON-LD. No structured data means no knowledge graph — AI engines can't cite you accurately even when they want to.
Crawlers locked out
A single Disallow: / in robots.txt or a default Cloudflare bot-block quietly zeros out your AI citation score. It's the most common — and most fixable — mistake we see.
Slow on mobile
Sites that fail Core Web Vitals get reduced crawl budget, rank lower, and lose visitors who bounce before they read. Speed is an AEO signal, not just a UX nicety.
AEO · ANSWER ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Every SmartSite is AEO-native from day one.
Not an add-on. Not a checklist you apply after launch. AEO is baked into the architecture — structured data, crawler allowlist, canonical hygiene, and server-rendered content are defaults, not options.
AI-crawler allowlist
robots.txt explicitly allows ClaudeBot, GPTBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, and Google-Extended. Blocking these is the single fastest way to go invisible to AI search — and the single fastest fix.
JSON-LD structured data
Organization, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, and Article schema — server-rendered, never client-side. One canonical @id entity so every AI tool builds the same knowledge graph for your business.
Crawlable content surface
Server-rendered HTML (Next.js App Router). Every sentence your customer needs to hear is in the DOM before JavaScript runs — no content locked behind a spinner.
FAQPage schema
Answer-first FAQs with FAQPage JSON-LD on every relevant page. This is the primary proven AEO signal: AI answer engines pull directly from FAQPage entities when forming responses.
/llms.txt + /llms-full.txt
A machine-readable sitemap of your prose content. Added when your site has enough text volume (500+ words) to warrant it — combined with JSON-LD and your robots allowlist, not instead of them.
Canonical + per-route metadata
Every route emits its own self-referential canonical URL. The root canonical never inherits to child pages — the most common self-inflicted SEO mistake that silently de-indexes entire site architectures.
PERFORMANCE GATES · HARD REQUIREMENTS
Fast enough for humans. Fast enough for AI crawlers.
Core Web Vitals aren't a vanity metric. They determine crawl budget, organic ranking position, and whether the AI answer engines that pull from Google's index ever encounter your page. SmartSites ship against hard gates — no exceptions.
These are the thresholds every SmartSite is built and measured against via Lighthouse CI on each deploy — not a claim about your current site. Run the scanner to see where yours stands.
AI SEARCHABILITY SCANNER · FREE TOOL
See exactly how visible your site is to AI — in under 60 seconds.
10 dimensions. Live citation probe across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. A 0–100 score with band and the top three problems to fix. Free, no account required.
- Score + bandFree
- Top 3 problemsFree
- Shareable OG cardFree
- Full fix listEmail
- Perplexity transcriptEmail
- Re-scan in 30 daysEmail
AI SEARCHABILITY SCANNER · LIVE TOOL
Illustrative example. Run a live scan below for your actual score.
THE FOUNDRY DESIGN LANGUAGE
Premium craft that converts — and holds up on every device.
SmartSites are built on a strict design system: Geist display and body, locked motion tokens, and a dark-premium aesthetic that reads authoritative before a word is processed. Not a template. Not a theme.
Typography
Geist display + body · JetBrains Mono numerics. Hard cap: 1 display + 1 body + 4–5 sizes. Never Inter, Roboto, or Arial.
Motion
80/20 stillness. Premium ease cubic-bezier(0.22,1,0.36,1). Reduced-motion fallbacks mandatory on every animated element.
Color
Dark canvas #07090d · cool gradient cyan→pink→purple · heat gradient for forge moments only · emerald for live/working states only.
Performance
Server components first. Client islands only where interactivity is needed. Optimized next/image for every photograph. text-wrap: balance on all headings.
SELECTED WORK · FOUNDER COHORT
Real builds, in progress with real southern Utah businesses.
We're in the build phase with our first lighthouse clients across roofing, title & escrow, and solar. We publish named logos and signed metrics here only once each client approves them — no stock photos, no testimonials we can't attribute.
Founder pricing is open while we instrument the first cohort's numbers. Signed case studies land as each 30-day window closes. See all work →
FAQ
Common questions about SmartSites.
A SmartSite is built for two audiences at once: the human visitor and the AI search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Mode) that increasingly answer purchase-intent questions. That means server-rendered copy, structured data (JSON-LD), a verified AI-crawler allowlist in robots.txt, FAQPage schema, proper canonical tags, and Core Web Vitals that pass hard gates — LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1. A standard brochure site typically has none of these.
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your website so AI tools and answer engines can read, understand, and cite your business accurately. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity all pull answers from the open web. If your site blocks AI crawlers, has no JSON-LD schema, or hides content in JavaScript, you are invisible to these sources — even if you rank on page one. For local service businesses, being cited by AI search is quickly becoming as important as a Google Business Profile.
The AI Searchability Scanner is a free tool built by HAESTUS that audits your website across ten dimensions — AI-crawler access, structured data, crawlable surface, entity/NAP consistency, on-page hygiene, freshness, llms.txt, and a live citation probe across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. You get a 0–100 score and band (Invisible to AI / At Risk / Developing / Strong / AI-Optimized). The grade and top three problems are always free; the full fix list is email-gated. Run your scan at haestus.dev/scanner.
Every SmartSite ships with Organization and WebSite schema on the root, Service schema on service pages, FAQPage schema on any page with questions, BreadcrumbList on every inner page, and Article schema on blog/resource posts. The Organization entity uses a stable @id (https://haestus.dev/#org) reused across every page so search engines build a consistent knowledge graph for your business. LocalBusiness schema is added only when a verified NAP (name, address, phone) exists — fake or partial addresses are worse than none.
An /llms.txt file is recommended but not a hard gate — it matters once you have more than roughly 500 words of substantive prose (blog posts, case studies, how-to guides). The higher-priority gates are: your robots.txt allowlisting ClaudeBot, GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended; at least one JSON-LD block on every page; and correct canonical tags so AI crawlers index the right URL. HAESTUS ships all of these by default and adds /llms.txt when your content volume warrants it.
Google's AI Overviews use the same crawl and index that powers regular search results — and Core Web Vitals are a ranking signal. A slow site that fails LCP, INP, or CLS thresholds gets deprioritized in crawl budget, ranks lower in organic search, and therefore surfaces less often in AI-generated answers. Beyond ranking, a fast site converts the human visitor who arrives from an AI citation. SmartSites target LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1, and Lighthouse mobile performance of 85 or higher.
Yes — our development is remote-capable for any US business. However, St. George, Washington County, and Iron County are our operating beachhead where we can meet in person, photograph your team and facilities, and build the kind of local proof that no remote agency can replicate. Every SmartSite includes geo-targeted schema and content strategy appropriate to your service area.
START WITH THE SCAN
Know exactly where you stand with AI search.
The free AI Searchability Scanner tells you what's broken and why — no email required for the score. Or book a free 20-minute call and we'll walk your site together.