This 30-point AEO audit checklist covers the six categories AI engines evaluate before citing a page: crawler access, search indexing, content structure, substance, schema, and authority/freshness. Work top to bottom - access issues make everything below irrelevant, so fix those first.
Score each item pass/fail. Any failure in Access or Indexing is blocking - an engine that can't reach or find you can't cite you no matter how good the content is. Then work down through structure, substance, schema, and authority, where the compounding gains live.
If you'd rather not track 30 items by hand, the full checklist lays out every item in order, and answer engine optimization explains the why behind each category.
Checks #16, #21, and #26 are where most sites leave the most citations on the table. If you want the engine's-eye view of which pages already get pulled, our AI citations breakdown shows what to look for.
Run all 30 checks automatically. SEO AEO Specialist by MrChief audits crawler access, indexing, structure, schema, freshness, and authority in one scan, then hands you a prioritized fix list. Run a free audit of up to 50 pages at €0. Full 30-point report €9. Continuous monitoring €19/mo per domain. SEO AEO Specialist by MrChief is built to diagnose AND fix, not just monitor.
Crawler access. If OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, or Claude-SearchBot are blocked - in robots.txt or at the CDN - nothing else matters. The engine simply can't read you, so structure, schema, and authority become irrelevant. Fix access before anything else on the list.
Quarterly at minimum, plus after any site migration, CDN change, or robots.txt edit. Freshness matters heavily to AI engines - 83% of AI citations come from pages updated in the last 12 months. Regular audits catch new blocks and stale pages before they cost you visibility.
No, but the more you pass the higher your citation odds. Access and indexing are non-negotiable; the rest compound on top. Early adopters see roughly 3.4x more AI visibility, so working steadily down the list pays off well before you reach 30 out of 30.
Not strictly, but FAQ schema correlates with roughly 40% higher citation weighting in ChatGPT and helps engines verify E-E-A-T. It's high-leverage for low effort. Add FAQPage, Article, and Organization schema to your priority pages first, then validate to confirm there are no errors.
An SEO audit optimizes for ranking; an AEO audit adds AI-crawler access, extractability, Bing indexing, and third-party consensus - the signals engines use to cite rather than rank. They overlap on fundamentals but diverge on what actually earns an AI citation.