How to Run an AEO Audit: 12 Checks Before Hiring an Agency

An AEO audit should help you identify verifiable obstacles to discoverability, not produce a mysterious percentage that promises ChatGPT rankings. Start with your most commercially important pages, then record what the site actually exposes to search engines and customers.

How to Choose Buyer Questions for an AEO Audit

List five real questions a prospect might ask when choosing a provider. For an ecommerce brand, those could be product comparisons, suitability questions, returns, delivery and aftercare. For a professional-services firm, they may involve specialisms, locations, eligibility or evidence of experience.

Choose one relevant URL for each question. If the best answer is buried in a PDF, inaccessible interaction or vague services page, make that gap visible in the audit. An AEO score without a map to real buying decisions is difficult to act on.

12 Technical and Content Checks for an AEO Audit

Use this order to separate technical blockers from editorial improvements. Keep screenshots or page URLs alongside findings so every recommendation can be checked.

1. Indexability: confirm the canonical page is indexable in Google Search Console, not blocked or excluded.
2. HTTP response: verify the important URL responds correctly and does not redirect in a loop.
3. Canonical URL: check that it points to the preferred, genuinely equivalent page.
4. Page title: name the service, topic or product and the business clearly.
5. Main heading: make the topic understandable without relying on graphics alone.
6. Direct answer: answer the buyer's key question in visible text.
7. Supporting detail: explain limits, specifications, suitability and alternatives.
8. Business identity: make organisation, contact, market and credentials consistent.
9. Evidence: link to authentic projects, original research or credible sources where applicable.
10. Internal links: connect the guide to the matching service, product and proof pages.
11. Structured data: use valid markup that agrees with what visitors can see.
12. Conversion: provide a clear, accessible route to an enquiry or booked call.

How to Use the Working Weekends AEO Audit Tool

Our free AEO Audit Tool examines page evidence such as metadata, canonical links, headings, JSON-LD and visible contacts. It can analyse supplied HTML; live URL retrieval depends on the site's configured fetching service.

Treat any readiness score as a diagnostic summary of those checks, not as Google's assessment or a prediction of how often an LLM will recommend the business. If the page is not fetched, the audit cannot verify server-side blocks, all robots rules or Search Console indexing.

How to Prioritise AEO Audit Findings

Group findings into three tiers: blockers that stop pages being discovered; clarity improvements that help buyers and search systems understand the offer; and trust/conversion improvements that make a recommendation commercially valuable.

Fix canonical, noindex and broken navigation issues before creating dozens of new articles. Then rewrite the highest-intent pages around concrete questions and supporting evidence. Finally, measure actual impressions, qualified leads and observed citations instead of promising a fixed ranking.

What an AEO Audit Cannot Prove

One crawl cannot show what every ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI user will see. Results vary by query, date, location and model. An audit also cannot establish that a prospect is ready to buy.

Google's guidance for AI features emphasises the same fundamentals that matter for search generally: indexable content, a good experience, useful text and accurate structured data. That makes technical SEO the foundation, not a separate optional task.

AEO Audit Tools and Services to Explore

Run the AEO Audit Tool · Explore AEO & GEO services · See UK-focused AEO support

If you need help turning a diagnostic into an implementation plan, book a 30-minute strategy conversation. We can review the evidence, explain the options and scope the work before recommending a retainer.

Editorial team: Working Weekends. Examples are illustrative unless a source is identified.