AI assistants and answer engines read the web differently from a search crawler. They want a short, clean summary of what a site is and where its important pages live, not a 40 KB theme wrapped around every paragraph. llms.txt is a proposed convention for exactly that: a plain Markdown file at the root of your site that introduces it to large language models.

Impex Rank SEO serves one for you at /llms.txt, generated from your own content, with no file uploads and no code. It is in the free plugin on WordPress.org.

Install Impex Rank SEO free from WordPress.org

What the generator builds

It is on as soon as the plugin is active. Visit yoursite.com/llms.txt. You get a Markdown manifest in the shape the llms.txt proposal describes:

  • an # H1 with your site name
  • a > blockquote with your site tagline
  • a one-line note saying what the file is for
  • Key Pages: up to 15 of your pages, in menu order, each as a Markdown link
  • Recent Posts: your 20 most recent published posts, with the excerpt next to each one where you have written one

A few details that matter more than they look:

  • Noindexed pages are skipped. If you have hidden a page from search engines, it is left out of Key Pages. (Recent Posts lists your latest published posts as they are, so if you noindex individual posts, write a custom file instead.)
  • It stays current by itself. The file is built when it is requested, so a post you publish today is in tomorrow's manifest without you touching anything.
  • It is served as plain text (text/plain; charset=UTF-8) with an X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow header, so the manifest itself does not show up as a thin page in search results.

Or write your own

The automatic file is a sensible start, but you know which pages actually matter. Paste your own Markdown into Custom llms.txt and it is served exactly as you wrote it. A hand-written file usually works better for a business site: lead with what you do and who for, link your service pages and pricing, link your best guides, and leave out the tag archives and the thank-you page.

Our guide how to create llms.txt in WordPress walks through the format section by section, including what to leave out.

Setting it up

  1. Install and activate Impex Rank SEO (Plugins → Add New → search "Impex Rank SEO").
  2. Go to Impex Rank SEO → Tools and find the llms.txt section.
  3. Check that Serve llms.txt is ticked (it is on by default after activation).
  4. Open yoursite.com/llms.txt in a new tab. If you see a 404, visit Settings → Permalinks and click Save once to refresh WordPress's rewrite rules.
  5. Optional: paste your own Markdown into Custom llms.txt.

If a page cache or CDN sits in front of your site, purge it after changing the file.

Being honest about what llms.txt does

llms.txt was proposed in September 2024. It is a convention, not a standard, and none of the big search engines has committed to using it for ranking. Some AI tools and developer documentation sites use it; many crawlers ignore it.

So why bother? Because the cost is close to zero. It is one setting, it cannot hurt your rankings, and if AI systems do lean on it more over time, your site already has a tidy, current one. That is the same reasoning behind the rest of our generative engine optimisation checklist for WordPress: do the cheap, sensible things that help machines understand your site, and do not pay anyone who promises "AI rankings".

llms.txt is one module of twenty

The generator sits alongside everything else in the free plugin:

  • robots.txt editor, in the same Tools screen, for deciding which crawlers may read what
  • JSON-LD schema graph (Organization, WebSite, Article, FAQPage, LocalBusiness and more), the structured data most AI and search systems already read; see schema markup for WordPress
  • IndexNow, which tells Bing, Yandex and other participating engines about new and updated content the moment you publish
  • XML sitemaps, redirects, a 404 monitor and a live content analyser

See the full list on the features page. Every SEO module is free on any number of sites. The only paid part is the optional Pro add-on, which is about the AI writer, not llms.txt.

Frequently asked questions

Is the llms.txt generator really free?

Yes. It is part of the free Impex Rank SEO plugin on WordPress.org. There is no account, licence key or usage limit for it.

Will llms.txt improve my Google rankings?

No one can promise that. llms.txt is a proposed convention, not an official standard, and Google has not said it uses it for ranking. Treat it as a cheap, low-risk way to give AI tools a clean map of your site.

Can I write my own llms.txt instead of the generated one?

Yes. Paste Markdown into the Custom llms.txt box under Impex Rank SEO, Tools. If the box has content it is served exactly as written; if it is empty the file is generated automatically.

Does the generated file include noindexed pages?

No. Pages you have set to noindex in the plugin are left out of the Key Pages list, so the manifest does not point AI tools at content you have hidden from search engines.

What if I already uploaded an llms.txt file by FTP?

A real file in your web root is usually served by the web server before WordPress loads, so it wins. Delete or rename it if you want the plugin to manage /llms.txt.

Add llms.txt to your site in under a minute. Install Impex Rank SEO free from WordPress.org, then open Tools → llms.txt.