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

What Schema.org markup helps with AI visibility?

Accepted Answer

The most impactful types: Organization (business identity), FAQPage (Q&A pairs), Article (author and publication info), BreadcrumbList (site hierarchy), and WebSite (site-level info). JSON-LD is the way to go. These help AI systems understand the structured meaning behind your text — not just the text itself.

Question 4

How do I test if my structured data is valid?

Accepted Answer

Use Google's Rich Results Test or Schema Markup Validator to check syntax and required fields. Our audit also validates structured data as part of the Schema.org criterion. Common errors include missing required properties, wrong @type values, and orphaned schema blocks that reference entities not defined on the page.

Question 5

What does the Growth plan add beyond Starter?

Accepted Answer

The Growth plan adds multi-engine audit coverage, content restructuring for Q&A extraction, expanded schema markup (Article, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage across all key pages), internal linking architecture improvements, and monthly re-audits to measure progress. It addresses the mid-weight criteria that separate average scores from strong ones.

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