An AEO Checklist to Review Your Site Today

Answer engine optimization (AEO) sounds like a brand new discipline, but much of it rests on things you should already do well. The difference is the goal: you are not after a click from a listing, you want a model to pick you up and name you inside an answer. This list is meant to be reviewed in one sitting so you walk away with clear tasks.

Make sure you can be read

If bots cannot get in, nothing else matters. Start here.

• Review your robots.txt and check you are not blocking AI crawlers out of habit. Blocking everything that is not Googlebot is a common mistake.
• Make sure important content lives in the HTML, not hidden behind JavaScript that many crawlers do not run.
• Check load times and that no cookie wall covers the text before it can be read.

Structure and data

Models understand what is well organized.

• Use schema where it fits: Organization, Product, FAQPage, Article. It helps content be interpreted without ambiguity.
• Put the direct answer at the top. If someone asks how much something costs or how it is done, answer it in the first paragraph and expand afterwards.
• Clear, descriptive headings. An H2 that says exactly what the section answers is easier to retrieve.

FAQs and natural language

People ask AI in full sentences, not loose keywords. Your content should sound like that.

• Add a frequently asked questions section with real customer doubts, written the way they would phrase them.
• Answer each question on its own, in two or three sentences, without forcing a read of the whole page.
• Cover the variants: price, comparisons, alternatives, use cases. These are the questions people take to chatbots.

Authority and freshness

A model recommends what looks reliable and current with more confidence. Two fronts:

• Authority. Mentions in external sources, author details, signs that a real person with judgement stands behind it. AI cites those whom others cite.
• Freshness. Dated, updated content weighs more on topics that change. A visible date and periodic reviews help.

Presence in cited sources

Answer engines do not invent from nothing, they retrieve from pages they consider good and often cite them. Look at which sources show up when your sector is queried (directories, media, comparisons) and try to be present there. Appearing on the pages the model already uses multiplies your odds of landing in the answer.

Measure, do not guess

After applying the list, it pays to check whether anything changed. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity about your category and see if they name you. To track it over time, some tools do it daily; Bee LLM, for instance, tracks five leading AI engines from 19.90 euros a month and offers a Free plan. The point is not the tool, it is to avoid optimizing blind: review, change and measure again.

Keep reading: AI search visibility metrics and KPIs · tools comparison.