AI SEO checklist: what to check and fix first

This worksheet shows you what to check so that customers and AI tools can find clear, correct information about your business, then helps you pick which fix to do first. Picture a clipboard on a workshop bench where each row is one check with a tick or a cross, a note of what you saw and a fix for when it fails.

Here’s an example. Say you run an electrical business and a customer asks an AI tool such as ChatGPT for an electrician near them. The answer names you but gives an old phone number. The worksheet helps you find that mistake, trace where the wrong number came from and fix it before you spend time on anything fancier.

AI SEO is the work of making it easy for search tools and AI answer tools to find your business, understand it and describe it correctly. Google says that, from its side, optimising for its AI-written search answers is still SEO.² Our AI SEO agency runs this work for clients but you can run the worksheet yourself.

Improving a business’s presence in AI-written answers is called generative engine optimisation (GEO). Our guide on what is GEO explains the wider work. This worksheet helps you record checks and choose repairs but finishing it can’t promise a place in an AI answer.

What should an AI SEO checklist put first?

Save the current AI answers before you change the site or its profiles. Then fix access problems and wrong business details before you improve the copy. The worksheet keeps those checks apart so you can pick the first repair from evidence and not work through every row blindly.

Mark each row pass, fail or unknown and, if you can’t tell, write down who can check it and move on.

Complete row 10 before you apply any fix. Use rows 1 to 5 to look into access and business facts, then rows 6 to 9 to review the pages. Repeat the saved questions after the work and keep the enquiry record separate.

The picture below shows that order in five steps. You save your baseline first, then check access and facts, review pages and proof, give each error an owner and choose three repairs before you measure and repeat.

Use the checklist in this order

1

Save the baseline

Row 10 · Before any fixes

↓

2

Check access and facts

Rows 1–5 · Pages and business details

↓

3

Review pages and proof

Rows 6–9 · Answers, proof and accuracy

↓

4

Own and choose repairs

Row 11 · Assign errors; choose three repairs

↓

5

Measure and repeat

Row 12 · Same questions and conditions

Keep three records apart: mentions/citations · identified visits · reported enquiries

Can search tools reach your key pages?

Search tools are like people walking past your shopfront who can’t see what’s inside if the roller door is down by mistake. These checks make sure the door is up.

What does Google need to see?

For Google’s AI search features, check that Google has stored the page for Search and that the page may show a short text excerpt.¹ Also look at the site’s Search generative AI setting in Search Console. Taking part through that setting is part of Google’s current rules for eligibility.²

Search Console’s URL Inspection tool shows whether Google has stored a page for Search. The message “URL is on Google” means the page is eligible to appear and not that it is guaranteed to.³ Ask your developer to look for any instruction that limits a text excerpt or keeps the page out. Check whether the restriction is intentional before you change it, because a limit on one passage is different from excluding the whole page.¹

What do ChatGPT and Perplexity need?

Ask your developer to check the automated visitors that read your site, which are called crawlers. Their public access rules sit in a file called robots.txt. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot, its search visitor. Your hosting security must also let in requests from its published network addresses.⁶ If you opt out of OAI-SearchBot, your site is left out of ChatGPT search answers, although navigational links may still appear.⁶

Perplexity similarly recommends allowing PerplexityBot and its published network addresses so it can discover your site for search. It says this visitor isn’t used to collect content for training AI foundation models.⁹

OpenAI treats permission for its search visitor separately from permission for GPTBot, which collects content for training its models.⁶ It says changes to the access-rules file can take about 24 hours to apply.⁶ Our guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt explains each choice.

What about Microsoft?

For Microsoft, add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools. Its AI Performance report shows citations in Copilot and Bing summaries, which are the links those answers show as their sources. It is a preview that reports citation counts and not ranking.¹⁰

Do your website and profiles describe the same real business?

Your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places listing and Apple Business location should all state the same name, phone, hours and service area. Your Google Business Profile is the listing Google shows for your business in Search and Maps. Write the facts once in a single note, then compare each profile against it.

Google says a verified owner can edit address, hours, contact details and service area. It adds that you can hide your address if you do not meet customers there.⁵ Google also says it reviews changes before they go live, so read the public profile again after an edit.⁵ Google notes that products and services can become more visible in its AI search features through Business Profiles.²

For each mismatch, write down the affected page or profile, the correct detail, the person responsible and the date to recheck it. Keep the row open until the public information matches. Our get your business on ChatGPT walkthrough shows how to claim your profiles and correct them.

Do your service pages answer what customers ask?

Each service should have one page that answers the question a customer asks before they ring. Put the answer near the top, say what is and isn’t included and give a clear way to enquire.

Improve the page that already owns the service before you add a new one. Google says to create content yourself based on what you know. It adds that you don’t need to write in a special way for AI search.² It also says there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces.² A new page for every acronym adds little for a customer.

Write your question list from real sources: calls, quote requests and the questions your team answers every week. Match each question to one page and merge any two pages that answer the same question. If no page answers it, that is your next page.

Can readers check your proof and the facts labelled in your code?

Proof means named facts that anyone can check: real projects, dates, who did the work and what was built. A reader and a search system can both judge a page that shows these. A page that only claims quality gives neither of them anything to check.

Say you build decks. “We do quality work” gives nobody anything to check but a named project with its suburb, the date it finished and photos does.

Code that labels visible facts such as a business name or address so software can interpret them is called structured data. Google says it isn’t a special requirement for AI search.² Compare each labelled fact with the page a customer sees and correct any mismatch.⁴ Our guide to schema for AI search covers that review.

A proposed file for pointing AI tools to useful website content is called llms.txt. Google says Search doesn’t use that file or similar files.² Our llms.txt guide explains the proposal and other tools that use it. Check access and business facts before you spend time on it.

What does a GEO audit add to the checklist?

A GEO audit adds the evidence the first nine rows can’t give you, which is what AI products actually say about your business. It reviews saved answers, wrong claims, missing citations and the sources that answers rely on.

When you look at a saved answer, first note whether it finished, failed or wasn’t shown. For a finished answer, record four things separately: whether it named your business, whether the details were right, whether it linked to your website and which place the answer was about. Some of these outcomes can overlap, so an answer about the wrong place must not quietly count as proof that a local business was missing.

We kept these outcomes separate in our own Sydney study and the counts are in the fine print below.

If you want a specialist to run this for you, our GEO audit covers it. Our generative engine optimisation services cover the work that follows.

How do you record a baseline and choose your next three fixes?

Save a baseline before you change anything, because without one you can’t tell whether a fix helped. It works like the “before” photo on a renovation. Choose a short list of real customer questions and ask each one in the same products. Record the date, your location, whether you were signed in, the full answer and every source link.

Our 50-question AI visibility method shows the full approach and the fine print below shows how we ran ours. Measure AI visibility explains how to run a smaller version.

Then rank your fails by two things: the harm to customers and the effort to fix. A wrong phone number is high harm and low effort, so it goes first. A missing project page is medium harm and medium effort. Pick three, fix them and repeat the baseline. We don’t promise a timetable for results.

How do you know the checklist is helping?

Check that the fix is live, repeat the same questions under the same conditions and compare. Keep three records apart: whether your business is named or cited, visits you can identify and enquiries customers tell you came from AI products.

Google’s Generative AI performance report separately records link impressions (each time a link was shown) from AI Overviews and AI Mode.⁸ Overall search traffic also appears in Web performance.¹ Keep those figures separate from recorded visits and enquiries. Our guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4 covers visit records. Bing’s AI report measures citations across supported products and not position inside an answer.¹⁰

OpenAI also notes that placement in ChatGPT search is not guaranteed.⁷ Treat a missing mention as a prompt to look at the sources and not as a verdict. We suggest repeating the worksheet after each significant change and at least once a quarter.

The fine print on our Sydney study

These notes explain how our Sydney study was run, where a completed answer is one the tool finished.

Kavera note: Our Sydney study produced 197 completed answers from 200 planned checks. One Google AI Mode capture failed. Two Google searches showed no AI Overview. We kept those outcomes separate from completed answers that did not name a business.

Kavera note: Our Sydney trades study fixed its 50 questions before collecting any answers. Each prompt started a fresh conversation or search. The study notes that account state was not reset between prompts. Logging the conditions is what makes a later comparison fair. A small business doesn’t need 50 questions. A short, fixed list is enough to start.

How much does an AI SEO audit cost?

Our SEO audit is free. It includes a technical, keyword, competitor and Google Business Profile review with a prioritised roadmap. Implementation is separate unless retained. Talk to our AI SEO agency about the website and business details you want reviewed.

Monthly plans start at Suburb SEO, $890/month + GST. Compare the SEO packages for scope and terms. No SEO package guarantees rankings, leads or revenue.