Question 1

What are the 22 AEO criteria?

Accepted Answer

The 22 criteria are organized into 4 dimensions. CONTENT (7 criteria) - is your content worth citing? Q&A Content Format, FAQ Sections, Original Data, Content Freshness, Definition Patterns, Direct Answer Paragraphs, Fact Density. STRUCTURE (5) - can machines parse it? Schema.org Structured Data, Clean Crawlable HTML, Semantic HTML5, Sitemap Completeness, Schema Coverage. DISCOVERY (5) - can AI engines find you? llms.txt, robots.txt for AI Crawlers, Internal Linking, Sitemap Completeness, RSS Feed. TRUST SIGNALS (5) - can AI verify your credibility? Entity Authority, Content Licensing, Author Schema, Canonical URL, Content Velocity. Each is scored 0–10, weighted, and rolled up to a total out of 100.

Question 2

What does the RSS feed audit check?

Accepted Answer

The audit verifies your site has a discoverable RSS or Atom feed with proper metadata. It checks feed existence at common paths, a link tag in the HTML head, adequate item count, and pubDate per item. RSS feeds let AI indexing systems detect new content automatically without waiting for a full crawl.

Question 3

How is AEO different from SEO?

Accepted Answer

SEO optimizes for page rankings. AEO optimizes for AI citations - being the source AI systems reference when answering questions. SEO runs on keywords and backlinks. AEO runs on structured data, clean HTML, entity authority, and Q&A content format. They're complementary, but AEO addresses the growing share of searches that never reach traditional results.

Question 4

Can AEO help with voice search and smart assistants?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant increasingly pull AI-generated answers from web content. The same structured data, Q&A formatting, and entity authority that drive AEO also make your content the go-to source for voice search answers.

Question 5

What does the free AEO audit include?

Accepted Answer

The free audit analyzes your website across 22 criteria that determine AI visibility, including llms.txt, Schema.org structured data, Q&A content format, clean crawlable HTML, entity authority, robots.txt AI policy, FAQ sections, original data, content freshness, fact density, canonical URLs, and more. You get a score out of 100 with specific findings and actionable recommendations.

Key Findings

Recommended Reading

Related Questions

Want us to improve your score?