AI Search Optimization Audit: A Checklist for Google + Answer Engines
If you want more organic traffic from Google and more citations in AI answers, you need pages that are both crawlable and citation-friendly. Use this audit to find the gaps fast.
Crawl and index fundamentals
Confirm one canonical domain, valid `robots.txt`, a working `sitemap.xml`, and consistent canonical URLs across pages.
Make sure your key pages render clean HTML with stable headings. If content only appears after heavy client-side rendering, citation and indexing often suffer.
Page clarity and intent targeting
Create pages that answer one intent: definitions, comparisons, templates, workflows, and category hubs (like a Skills hub).
Use an answer-first opening paragraph, descriptive H2s, and explicit “who this is for” sections so AI systems can extract clean passages.
Schema and entity signals
Add schema where it helps: Organization, WebSite, WebPage, Article, FAQPage, HowTo, and BreadcrumbList on relevant pages.
Strengthen entity clarity with consistent naming, logos, contact info, and links to authoritative profiles (like LinkedIn).
AI-facing discovery signals (llms.txt)
Keep `llms.txt` current and aligned with your real content hubs. Link to the pages you want systems to trust and cite most often.
Treat it as a discovery and policy layer — not a substitute for a clean site architecture.