The 7-stage AEO audit
Definition
An AEO audit is a comprehensive assessment of your website's visibility to AI search engines. It evaluates how well platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can find, understand, and cite your content, then produces a prioritized roadmap to close every gap.
The free score checker scans publicly visible signals. The full 7-stage audit goes deeper: GA4 traffic patterns, Search Console performance data, competitor keyword gaps, AI citation tracking, and a per-page content extractability assessment.
What does the audit include?
Seven stages, each producing specific deliverables and actionable findings.
Discovery & Crawl Analysis
Full crawl of the site to assess render behavior, page speed, JavaScript dependency, and how AI bots experience each page.
AI Bot Access Review
Evaluate robots.txt directives for AI crawlers, llms.txt presence and completeness, and sitemap structure for AI discoverability.
Structured Data Assessment
Audit all JSON-LD schemas across the site. Check for Organization, FAQ, Product, Service, Person, and BreadcrumbList coverage.
AEO Visibility Scoring
Score the site across all 4 dimensions (AI Crawlability, Structured Data, Content Clarity, Entity Definition) with per-page breakdowns.
Content Architecture Analysis
Evaluate heading hierarchy, question-based content patterns, answer extractability, meta descriptions, and content depth across key pages.
Competitor Benchmarking
Score 2-3 competitors using the same framework. Map keyword gaps, identify AI citation opportunities, and benchmark entity definition.
Implementation Roadmap
Prioritized task list with estimated score uplift per task, difficulty rating, and recommended execution order. Ready to deploy.
Free score check vs full audit
The free checker is a starting point. The full audit is the complete picture.
| Free Score Check | Full 7-Stage Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Scan depth | Homepage + publicly visible signals | All pages, GA4, Search Console |
| Competitor analysis | Score comparison (up to 2) | Full keyword gap + citation tracking |
| Structured data | Homepage schema check | Site-wide schema inventory |
| Content analysis | Heading hierarchy + meta | Deep extractability + Q&A patterns |
| AI citation tracking | Not included | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini monitoring |
| Implementation plan | Top 3 quick wins | Full prioritized roadmap with score uplift |
| Delivery time | 60 seconds | 5-7 business days |
| Cost | Free | Included with Growth or Select tier |
How is an AEO audit different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit focuses on Google rankings: keywords, backlinks, page speed, and Core Web Vitals. An AEO audit evaluates AI-specific signals that traditional SEO audits miss entirely:
Many websites with strong SEO rankings score below 40 on AEO assessments. The two audits measure fundamentally different things.Learn more about AEO vs SEO
What happens after the audit?
The audit produces a prioritized implementation roadmap. With our Growth and Select tiers, it transitions directly into the automated weekly optimization cycle:
Prioritized task list
Every finding ranked by score uplift and implementation difficulty. Clear execution order.
Foundation deploys
Schema markup, llms.txt, AI bot access rules, and high-impact content fixes deploy directly to your platform.
Weekly optimization cycle
Analyze, Recommend, Curate, Execute, Validate, Report. The automated loop runs every week, compounding improvements.