Audit Your Site for AEO

1. Technical & Crawlability

AI crawlers and LLM data pipelines need to access your content reliably. Check that your key pages are not blocked by robots.txt, that you have a clear sitemap (XML and, where useful, HTML), and that responses are fast and return clean HTML. Avoid heavy JavaScript-only rendering for critical content if you want it used by answer engines.

2. Structured Data (Schema)

Implement and validate Schema.org markup (JSON-LD) for your main entity types: Organization, WebPage, Article, FAQPage, and product or service schemas where relevant. Rich, accurate structured data helps AI systems understand and cite your content correctly. For the big picture, see our guide on What is AEO and Optimize for LLMs.

3. Content Clarity & Answer-First Structure

Pages that perform well for AEO tend to state the core answer or definition early, use clear headings (H1, H2, H3), and break information into scannable sections. Audit whether your key pages have a concise, quotable summary and whether facts are easy for a model to extract.

4. Authority & Trust Signals

LLMs favor sources that are cited elsewhere, have a clear author and publisher, and link to reputable references. Review your About and Contact pages, author attribution, and whether you link out to quality sources. A dedicated llms.txt or machine-readable policy can reinforce transparency. Learn how models pick sources in How LLMs Choose Their Sources.

5. Coverage & Gaps

Map your most important topics and queries. For each, ask: “If an AI had to answer this in one paragraph, would it choose my page?” Identify content gaps, thin pages, and opportunities to consolidate or deepen coverage so you become the obvious citation.