Checklist · June 2, 2026 · 5 min read

The AEO checklist: how to make any page citable by AI

To make a page citable by AI, it needs to be crawlable, answer the question first, be cleanly structured, carry strong entity and schema signals, and make specific, verifiable claims. Run this checklist on your highest-intent pages and you'll meaningfully improve your odds of being cited.

Access, can the AI read you?

• Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt (e.g. GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended).
• Server-render important content, don't hide the answer behind heavy client-side JavaScript.
• Fast load, clean HTML, no intrusive interstitials over the content.

Answer, is the answer obvious?

• State the answer in the first 1–2 sentences, then expand.
• Use question-shaped headings (H2/H3) that match how buyers actually ask.
• Keep answers self-contained, each section should make sense if quoted alone.

Structure, can it be extracted cleanly?

• Use lists, short paragraphs, and clear sub-sections.
• Add an FAQ section for common sub-questions.
• Put key facts in scannable form, not buried in long prose.

Entity, does the AI know who you are?

• Describe your brand and product consistently across pages and platforms.
• Add structured data: Organization, Product, FAQPage, and Article schema as relevant.
• Maintain accurate profiles on the review sites and directories in your category.

Trust, will the AI believe the claim?

• Make claims specific and verifiable, numbers, dates, named comparisons.
• Cite your own sources; link out to credible references.
• Seek corroboration, the same fact echoed across multiple credible sources is far stronger than a single self-published claim.

Freshness, is it current?

• Show a visible "last updated" date and keep top pages current.
• Use current-year data and examples; refresh stale stats.

Coverage, do you own the topic?

• Build a cluster of related pages (definitions, comparisons, how-tos) so the engine sees topical depth, not a single thin page. (This blog is an example, see AEO for SaaS startups.)

How to use this

Run the checklist on your top 5 buyer-intent pages first. Fix access and answer-first formatting before anything else, they move the needle fastest. Then measure before and after so you know what worked.

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Want us to run this across your site and ship the fixes? That's what our AEO services do. Book an AI Visibility Audit.