The 10-Point AEO Checklist
This AEO checklist covers the 10 things I check before I expect a page to get quoted by AI Overviews, featured snippets, or ChatGPT: real questions, first-sentence answers, snippet-sized passages, proof, clean structure, crawl access, and tracking. Work it top to bottom to cover most of answer engine optimization.
Key Points
- Points 1 to 5 are about the writing: real questions, direct answers, snippet-sized passages, one page per question, question-shaped headings.
- Points 6 to 8 are about proof: numbers, tables, and first-hand experience an engine can quote.
- Points 9 and 10 are about the outside world: off-site mentions and tracking what actually gets cited.
- Nothing here needs a new tool. Google says its AI features require no special optimization.
1. Start With Questions People Actually Ask
Every AEO win starts with a question a real person actually asked, worded the way they asked it. Made-up questions produce pages nobody quotes.
My go-to sources, in order:
- Google autocomplete and the People Also Ask box
- Your Search Console queries with impressions and no clicks
- Customer emails, chats, and sales calls
That first source tops the list for a reason: Semrush found People Also Ask appears alongside 90% of AI Overviews, so the questions Google already surfaces are the ones its AI is answering.
2. Answer in the First Sentence
Answer in the first sentence under every AEO heading, because engines quote the sentence that answers and skip the one that warms up. Context, caveats, and story come after. This is the single highest-leverage habit on the whole list. It is the same structure I use when I rank pages in Google AI Overviews, and it costs nothing but discipline.
It feels blunt the first few times you write this way. Readers love it, and so do the engines built to serve them.
If the heading asks a question, the next sentence answers it.
3. Keep Every Answer Snippet-Sized
Snippet-sized means an AEO answer of two or three sentences an engine can quote whole. Google’s featured snippet documentation notes a snippet only shows if enough text can be lifted to make a useful one.
Anything longer buries the quotable part. Write the short version first, then elaborate below it for the readers who want depth.
A quick test: read your answer out loud. If you can’t finish it in one breath, it won’t fit in a box either. Trim until it stands alone.
4. Give Each Question One Page
Give each question one page, because when three of your pages half-answer the same question, engines pick none of them. It is the AEO version of keyword mapping. Google’s AI optimization guide goes further and warns against creating many pages for slight search variations, which can cross into spam territory. Consolidate instead, since one strong page beats five thin cousins.
The fix takes an afternoon. Search your own site for the question, pick the strongest page, fold the others into it, and redirect them.
5. Use Question-Shaped Subheadings
Question-shaped subheadings are how an AEO page mirrors the query. “How much does it cost?” as an H2 matches the question engines are trying to answer, and a label like “Pricing considerations” does not.
Pull that wording from People Also Ask when it exists. You are not being clever, you are being findable.
On a product or collection page, this often lands as a short FAQ block near the bottom: real questions in the customer’s words, short answers, no filler. I go deeper on the store side in AEO for ecommerce.
6. Put Numbers Where Claims Are
Numbers are what separate an AEO page an engine trusts from an opinion piece it skips. A claim with a stat, a price, or a test result gives the model something concrete to quote.
When numbers cluster, put them in a small table with clear headers. A specific number is an argument, a round guess is an opinion.
Show your receipts too. Link each stat to where it came from. Engines favor pages that cite their sources, and readers trust them more.
7. Keep the Site Crawlable
Crawlability is the AEO requirement people skip past because it is boring. Google states its generative AI features use publicly accessible, crawlable content, so a blocked or unindexable page is invisible to every answer engine that matters.
So check robots.txt, check the page is indexed, and skip the special files. Google says llms.txt files neither help nor hurt your visibility, so spend the hour on content instead. The other ways pages take themselves out of the running are in the 7 AEO mistakes that cost citations.
When in doubt, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console settles it fast: paste the page, see exactly what Google can see.
8. Show First-Hand Proof
First-hand proof is the part of AEO you cannot copy from a competitor: your test results, your customer data, your photos, your before and after. Google’s guide calls this non-commodity content and names it the thing worth creating.
This is also how smaller stores win seats in AI answers against bigger brands. I show real examples in can small brands beat big brands in AI answers.
9. Earn Mentions Off Your Site
Off-site mentions round out AEO because answer engines read more than your website. Reddit threads and forum posts influence AI answers about brands, often more than the brand’s own pages do.
You cannot fake this, and Google explicitly warns against inauthentic mention schemes. Show up where your customers already talk, answer questions there, and let the mentions accumulate.
One honest answer in a thread your buyers actually read is worth more than ten posts on a blog nobody has found yet.
10. Track What the Engines Quote
Tracking closes the AEO loop, because you cannot improve citations you never see. My GEO checklist ends on the same step for the same reason. My GA4 setup for this lives in how to track AI traffic in GA4, and the whole routine is three checks, once a month:
- Search Console’s generative AI performance data
- Referral sessions from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in GA4
- Ask the big chat tools your money questions and note who gets cited
Just know fewer clicks reach every site now, so track citations, not just sessions. Pew Research measured clicks falling from 15% to 8% of visits when an AI summary appears, so a flat sessions graph can hide growing visibility.
Want This Checklist Run on Your Store?
Ten points, no tools to buy: real questions, first-sentence answers, snippet-sized passages, one page per question, question headings, numbers, crawl access, first-hand proof, off-site mentions, and tracking. That is the whole game.
Book a call and I’ll run all ten points against your site live, then hand you the three fixes that would earn citations fastest.
