AEO Quick Wins Checklist: 20 Changes to Make This Week

If your page already has Q&A content, wrapping it in FAQPage JSON-LD is one of the fastest citation improvements available. The content already exists — you're just making it machine-readable.

Generate a basic Article schema with datePublished, dateModified, author name, and publisher organization. Apply to all blog posts and guides.

A complete Organization schema with legalName, description, founding date, and sameAs links is a sitewide authority signal. One implementation covers all pages.

BreadcrumbList schema signals site structure and content hierarchy to AI models. Can often be added via template-level change rather than page by page.

Check that your current schema is error-free. Invalid schema is counted as no schema — fixing errors recovers citation value that was lost to silent implementation bugs.

Multiple H1s are one of the most common and easily fixable structural errors. Every page should have exactly one H1. Find all instances and consolidate.

Find paragraphs listing 3+ items separated by commas or semicolons and convert them to proper bullet lists. AI models extract lists much more reliably than embedded lists in prose.

For informational pages, convert section headings from labels ('Schema Types') to questions ('What schema types drive AI citations?'). This directly matches user query patterns.

A 5-7 bullet summary at the top or bottom of long articles gives AI models a high-density extraction target. These sections are frequently cited as direct answer fragments.

Check for heading level skips (H1 to H3 without H2) and fix the nesting. Consistent heading hierarchy is a basic structural quality signal.

Articles published without a named author should have one added — even if it means creating a general editorial team author. Anonymous content signals lower authority.

Every named author should have a bio page with credentials, experience, and links to professional profiles. Thin or missing bio pages undermine the author attribution signal.

Add LinkedIn, Google Scholar, or other professional profile URLs to each author's Person schema sameAs field. These verification links significantly strengthen authority signals.

Find specific statistics and data claims in your content that aren't sourced and add links to primary sources. Unsourced statistics are less citeable than attributed ones.

Ensure all articles display both publication date and 'last updated' date visibly in the page HTML. Hidden or schema-only dates are less reliable freshness signals.

Restructure sections so the first sentence directly answers the question implied by the heading. Move context and caveats after the direct answer. This is the most common content structural improvement for AI citation.

Rewrite meta descriptions from 'this article covers...' format to answer format: 'AEO is the practice of...' A meta description that answers a question serves as a mini-citation preview.

Long paragraphs reduce extractability and readability scores. Find and split any paragraph over 150 words — add a transitional sentence and create two focused paragraphs.

For technical or jargon-heavy content, add a 'Key Terms' section that defines the main concepts used in the article. AI models frequently cite definition sections for terminology queries.

Verify that GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot are allowed in your robots.txt. A surprising number of sites inadvertently block AI crawlers with overly broad Disallow rules.