The AI Visibility System
What the 6-Month Engagement Actually Looks Like
Every AI Visibility System engagement follows the same structure: six months, four phases, one deliverable at the end that outlasts the engagement. Here’s exactly what happens in each phase.
Why Six Months
AI Visibility Is Infrastructure, Not a Campaign
A social media campaign can be turned on and off. A PPC campaign produces results proportional to spend and stops when the budget does. AI visibility works differently. The schema markup you implement, the content architecture you build, the entity signals you establish: these compound over time. A site that has been properly optimized for AI visibility for six months is meaningfully harder to displace than one optimized for six weeks.
The six-month structure reflects the realistic timeline for building the full foundation: technical setup, content development, authority signals, measurement calibration, and the ongoing optimization loop that turns early results into compounding visibility. It also reflects the time required to train AI systems’ evaluation of your brand, as credibility signals accumulate rather than spike.
Month by Month
The Four Phases
Months 1-2
Foundation
The foundation phase covers everything AI systems need to find, crawl, and evaluate your site correctly. It begins with a baseline AI visibility analysis, running structured queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini to document where you currently appear, where you’re absent, and where competitors are being cited instead.
Technical work in this phase: Bing Webmaster Tools verification, XML sitemap submission, schema markup implementation (Article, Organization, Service, FAQ types), llms.txt configuration, and site speed optimization if benchmarks indicate issues. Entity mapping work begins here, documenting the specific entities (business, services, people, locations) that define your brand and ensuring they’re consistently and clearly represented across all pages.
Month 1-2 Deliverables
Baseline AI visibility analysis, technical setup checklist, schema implementation across priority pages, entity map, Bing verification confirmed, measurement baseline established in Otterly
Months 3-4
Content and Authority
With the technical foundation in place, phase two focuses on content architecture and authority signals. The content work centers on ensuring your most important pages are structured for extraction, with proper heading hierarchy, FAQ content with schema, comparison tables, and clear topic clusters that signal topical authority. New content is developed where significant gaps exist between your current coverage and the queries your target audience asks AI systems.
Authority work in this phase covers off-site signals: brand mention building, targeted link acquisition, structured business listings across directories AI systems reference, and for Expansion tier clients, the beginning of RAD (Reddit Answers and Discussions) work in relevant subreddits. Authorship signals are established or strengthened: author bios, credentials, and the E-E-A-T infrastructure that influences AI systems’ evaluation of source credibility.
Month 3-4 Deliverables
Content gap analysis and implementation, FAQ expansion across priority pages, internal linking architecture update, authority signal report, first measurement comparison against baseline
Months 5-6
Optimization and Compounding
The final phase uses the measurement data accumulated in months one through four to identify the highest-value optimization targets. By this point, AI citation patterns are visible in Otterly, showing which queries are producing citations, which are still going to competitors, and which pages are performing better or worse than expected. This data drives targeted optimization work rather than general improvements.
RAD activity is in full operation for Expansion clients. Content is being refreshed on a defined cycle. The internal linking architecture is reviewed against citation data to identify gaps between important pages and their current internal authority. The authority signal work from phase two is producing measurable results that feed into the phase three optimization decisions.
Month 5-6 Deliverables
Optimization report based on citation data, targeted content and schema updates, final measurement comparison, AI Visibility Playbook
Month 6 Deliverable
The AI Visibility Playbook
At the end of the engagement, every client receives the AI Visibility Playbook: 20 to 30 prioritized, specific actions organized by impact and effort. It’s not a report about what was done, it’s a forward-looking document that identifies the highest-value next steps for maintaining and extending AI visibility beyond the engagement.
The Playbook reflects the specific citation data, competitive gaps, and content opportunities identified over six months of measurement. It’s the document that allows an internal team, or a future engagement, to keep the system running effectively without starting from scratch.
Foundation vs Expansion
What Changes Between the Tiers
| What’s Included | Foundation $2,000/mo |
Expansion $4,000/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline AI visibility analysis | ✓ | ✓ |
| Technical setup (Bing, schema, llms.txt) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content architecture and FAQ expansion | ✓ | ✓ |
| Entity mapping and optimization | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly Otterly measurement | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI Visibility Playbook at Month 6 | ✓ | ✓ |
| RAD (Reddit Answers and Discussions) | – | ✓ |
| Off-site authority signal building | Basic | Full program |
| Content development volume | Priority gaps only | Comprehensive coverage |
Common Questions
What People Ask Before Starting
Do I need to be on a specific CMS?
No. Rivetline builds AI Visibility Systems for WordPress, Shopify, and Wix. The technical implementation differs by platform, as schema implementation, llms.txt generation, and site speed optimization all have platform-specific methods, but the underlying strategy and deliverables are the same across all three.
What do I need to provide to get started?
Access to your website’s CMS and Google Search Console. A brief on your business, who you serve, what problems you solve, how you’re positioned against competitors. Any existing brand guidelines or content assets. For clients adding AI Lead Response, CRM access is also required. Most clients are operational within one to two weeks of signing.
How much of my time does the engagement require?
Minimal ongoing involvement beyond the initial onboarding. The discovery call and onboarding process typically takes 2 to 3 hours of your time. Monthly check-ins run 30 minutes. There’s typically one review cycle for major content pieces and one approval step for significant technical changes. Most clients spend less than 2 hours per month on the engagement after month one.
When will I see results?
Technical improvements like Bing verification and schema implementation can show measurable impact within 30 to 60 days as AI indexes re-crawl your site. The full citation impact of content architecture and authority signal work typically becomes measurable at months 3 to 4, which is why the measurement baseline established in month one is important, as it makes the improvement visible against a documented starting point.
What happens after the 6 months?
The AI Visibility Playbook delivered at month six gives you a documented set of ongoing priorities. Many clients choose to continue with a maintenance engagement; others manage the ongoing work in-house using the Playbook as a roadmap. Either path works, as the foundation built during the engagement is yours, fully documented and transferable.
See Where You Stand Before We Talk
The AI Visibility Report is free and takes 10 seconds. It shows how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity currently see your brand, and gives you a clear picture of the gap we’d be working to close.