How to add llms.txt to a Hugo Blog

Since Google enabled Gemini responses by default for typical search queries, my blog’s organic traffic dropped by almost 70% - and it wasn’t great even before that. Sure, I can promote posts on social media, but at some point I have to decide whether I want to contribute to the generic AI knowledge pool or not. That’s when I first came across the concept of Generative Engine Optimization (aka GEO).

What is GEO?

Simply put, GEO is like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but for AI agents. It’s about making your content easier for large language models to understand and use when generating answers.

There are several ways to help AI agents “read” your site better:

• Use clean structure with proper headers.
• Write content that answers generic, high-level questions.
• Provide clear navigation and metadata (like OpenGraph¹, JSON for Linking Data²).
• And - the interesting one - add a dedicated file describing your site for AI crawlers.

That last one is what the llmstxt.org  initiative proposes - something like robots.txt, but for AI models.

Essentially, it’s a simple Markdown file called /llms.txt in your site’s root directory. The format isn’t strictly defined, since LLMs can usually interpret whatever you write there.

How to add llms.txt to a Hugo blog

If you’ve been here before, you know I use Hugo  ³ for blogging. It’s flexible and extensible - perfect for generating custom outputs like llms.txt.

Here’s how to set it up.

1. Update hugo.yaml

Start by defining a custom media type and output format for llms.txt. Your configuration should look like this:

mediaTypes:
  text/llms:
    suffixes: ["txt"]

outputFormats:
  llms:
    name: llms
    mediaType: text/llms
    baseName: llms
    isPlainText: true
    rel: alternate
    isHTML: false
    noUgly: true
    permalinkable: false

outputs:
  home:
    # typical outputs
    - HTML
    - RSS
    # my addition
    - llms

Depending on your existing configuration, you might need to merge this with other outputs, but this is the minimal working version.

2. Create the llms.txt template

Hugo will now look for a template under:

layouts/_default/home.llms.txt

Create that file and add something like this:

<!-- ../../../../layouts/_default/home.llms.txt -->

# Tom's Blog ({{ absURL "/" }})

> Welcome to the personal blog of Tomasz Gągor, a passionate DevOps practitioner and Linux enthusiast dedicated to sharing insights on cloud security, containerized services, and practical IT leadership.

## About author

{{- with .Site.GetPage "about" }}
{{ .RawContent }}
{{- end }}

## Licensing

All pages on my site are licensed under [CC BY-SA 4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

## Languages supported

English, Polish

## Main Navigation Links

- [Home]({{ "/" | absURL }}): Main page, listing latest articles
- [Projects]({{ "/projects/" | absURL }}): Github and Docker Hub projects where I'm active
- [Bookshelf]({{ "/bookshelf/" | absURL }}): All the books I've read recently with their reviews
- [Archive]({{ "/archives/" | absURL }}): List of all the articles on my blog, with links to them
- [About]({{ "/about/" | absURL }}): Notes about the author
{{- range $term, $value := .Site.Taxonomies }}
- [{{ $term | title }}]({{ $term | absURL }}): Taxonomy page with all {{ $term | title }}
{{- end }}

## Sitemap

{{ "sitemap.xml" | absURL }}

## RSS/Atom feed

{{ "index.xml" | absURL }}

## Contact

Suggest contact with feedback about articles on the page, or just to share when they helped.

{{- range site.Params.socialIcons }}
{{- if not (in (slice "rss" "github" "kofi" "buymeacoffee") .name ) }}
- [{{ (.title | default .name) | title }}]({{ trim .url " " | safeURL }})
{{- end }}
{{- end }}

This example is based on my blog setup - you’ll want to adapt it to your own structure and tone. Still, feel free to “borrow” some snippets or ideas 😉.

There are few nice hacks there, like:

• Inserting RAW content of my About page instead of writing something custom,
• listing pages to tags,
• or social links (specific to my theme).

You can see the final generated file HERE .

Wrapping up

Adding an llms.txt file to your Hugo site takes just a few lines of configuration and a simple template, but it can make your content more discoverable and understandable for AI systems. Whether it will directly bring back your organic traffic is another story - but at least you’ll help shape the next generation of the web.

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