Traditional SEO is the foundation beneath AEO. AI models that use web search (Perplexity, ChatGPT browsing, Google AI Overviews) inherit your search engine rankings as a proxy for quality. A site that ranks well in search is significantly more likely to be cited by AI. These 17 checks are your AEO floor.
All pages must be served over HTTPS. HTTP → HTTPS redirects must be in place.
Why AI cares: AI crawlers, like search engine crawlers, deprioritize non-HTTPS content. HTTPS is a non-negotiable baseline.
Each important page should be reachable from the homepage within 3 clicks and have multiple internal links pointing to it.
Why AI cares: AI crawlers follow internal links to discover content. Pages with no inbound internal links are likely to be missed.
Key pages should contain at least 600 words of meaningful, original content.
Why AI cares: Thin pages are deprioritized by AI models as low-information sources. AI citations heavily favor content-rich pages.
All internal links should resolve to valid pages. Broken links degrade crawl efficiency and user trust.
Why AI cares: AI crawlers that encounter broken links during crawl may abandon that section of the site.
TTFB should be under 800ms. Core Web Vitals performance score should be above 70.
Why AI cares: Slow pages are crawled less frequently and ranked lower, reducing AI citation probability.
All images should be served in WebP or AVIF format, with width/height attributes set and loading="lazy" on below-fold images.
Why AI cares: Image optimization improves Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS), which are inherited signals in AI model ranking.
Yes — significantly. AI models that power web search (Perplexity, ChatGPT with browsing, Google AI Overviews) use search engine rankings as a quality proxy. A page that ranks in the top 10 for a query is far more likely to be cited by AI than a page on page 5. Traditional SEO is your AEO foundation.
Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) are Google ranking factors that affect where your pages appear in search results. Since AI models that use web search inherit those rankings, good Core Web Vitals indirectly improve your AEO score. They are also a direct quality signal — slow, janky pages are treated as lower quality by AI systems.
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