The 25-Point AEO Checklist (Free, Based on Real Scorecard Checks)
What is this checklist?
This is the complete set of checks the AEO Presence scorecard runs on every page it audits, published as a free checklist. Every item is deterministic — you can verify each one against your live HTML right now. Work through it top to bottom within each category, starting with the heaviest-weighted categories.
Technical SEO (22% of overall score)
- Page served over HTTPS, resolving directly with no redirect chain
- HTML response fast (<1s), compressed (gzip/brotli), and lean
- Served over HTTP/2 or HTTP/3
- Mobile viewport meta tag present
- Page crawlable and indexable; robots.txt and XML sitemap present
- Self-referencing canonical tag
- lang attribute on the <html> element and declared character encoding
On-Page SEO (26% of overall score)
- Title tag 30–60 characters, describing the page
- Meta description 70–160 characters, selling the click
- Exactly one H1, sharing key terms with the title
- Sequential heading levels — no H2 → H4 jumps
- Descriptive alt text on every meaningful image
- Healthy internal linking with descriptive anchor text (no 'click here')
- Clean, readable URL structure
Content Quality (18% of overall score)
- Substantial body content (not thin)
- Readable prose — reasonable Flesch score, average sentences under ~20 words
- Lists and tables make the content scannable
- Short paragraphs; healthy text-to-HTML ratio
AEO / Answer Engine (26% of overall score)
- Valid JSON-LD structured data present
- Answer-focused schema: FAQPage, HowTo, or QAPage where content fits
- Question-style headings, each followed by an immediate direct answer
- Visible author and machine-readable date (E-E-A-T signals)
- Semantic HTML landmarks: <main>, <article>, <nav>
- TL;DR or key-takeaways block near the top
- llms.txt published at the site root
Social & Sharing (8% of overall score)
- Complete Open Graph tags (title, description, image)
- og:image share image set
- Twitter/X card set to summary_large_image
How do you turn the checklist into a score?
Manually: mark each item pass/fail, average per category, then weight the categories (22 / 26 / 18 / 26 / 8). Or let AEO Presence do it — a scan takes seconds per page, compares you against a competitor, and hands you the ranked fix list. The deep-dive guides cover the how: SEO fixes, AEO fixes, schema, and llms.txt.
Frequently asked questions
How is this checklist scored in AEO Presence?
Each item is a deterministic check with a pass/warn/fail result. Checks roll up into category scores, categories are weighted (Technical 22%, On-Page 26%, Content 18%, AEO 26%, Social 8%), and the weighted sum is your 0–100 overall score with a letter grade.
What order should I fix things in?
Worst problems first, weighted by impact. In practice: anything failing in On-Page SEO or AEO (the two 26% categories) first, then Technical SEO, then Content Quality, then Social & Sharing.
How often should I re-audit?
After every batch of fixes, and monthly as a baseline. Deterministic scoring means score changes reflect your work, not model randomness — if the number moved, something real changed.