Rekto DigitalInsightsAEO and GEO checklist
AEO and GEO: how we made our website readable for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI
Updated October 16, 2026 · By the Rekto Digital team
AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are about one thing: making your pages easy for AI assistants to find, understand and quote. We audited every page of rektodigital.com against this checklist and went from 41 issues to 5.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO helps a page rank in a list of search results. AEO helps a page give the direct answer that a search engine or voice assistant shows on its own. GEO helps a page get read and cited by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI answers. The same page can do all three.
Can AI crawlers reach your site?
- Check robots.txt and any firewall or bot protection: we fetched our pages as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and OAI-SearchBot and all could read them, and checked that robots.txt does not block Google-Extended (a robots.txt setting, not a crawler of its own).
- Publish llms.txt, a short Markdown index of your important pages, at the root of your domain. Treat it as a cheap bet, not a ranking signal: Google says it does not use it, and no major AI company has confirmed reading it.
- Add llms-full.txt, the readable text of every public page in one file, and link it from llms.txt.
How do you write content that AI can quote?
- Answer first. Put a one or two sentence answer right under the main heading, then the details.
- Use questions as headings where people really ask them, for example "What is the difference between markup and margin?"
- Make every FAQ answer stand alone. Name the subject in the answer: "Plonk is free on Google Play", not "Yes, it's free". We rewrote 8 answers that were too short to quote.
- Use lists and tables for steps, comparisons and numbers.
How do you show who you are and how fresh the page is?
- Structured data on every page: the page, its publisher (your organization) and a dateModified.
- A visible "Updated" date that matches the sitemap's lastmod.
- One clear entity: an Organization with your legal name, address, contact and sameAs links to your official profiles (YouTube, TikTok, Google Play, and so on).
- A homepage FAQ that answers the basic questions about your company, so an assistant has a sentence to quote when someone asks what you do.
How do you check your site?
We run our own script over the built pages that flags missing FAQ data, short answers, missing dates, missing publishers, pages without lists or tables, and pages missing from llms.txt. Rerun it after every content change, the same way you rerun your tests.
Quick answers
What is AEO?
AEO, answer engine optimization, means structuring a page so search engines and assistants can lift a direct answer from it: an answer-first opening, question headings, self-contained FAQ answers and FAQ structured data.
What is GEO?
GEO, generative engine optimization, means making a site easy for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers to crawl, understand and cite: open access for AI crawlers, llms.txt, clear publisher information and fresh, quotable content.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a Markdown file at the root of a website that lists its most important pages with a one-line summary each, so AI assistants can find the right content quickly. Ours is at rektodigital.com/llms.txt.
Can Rekto Digital audit our website for AEO and GEO?
Yes. We audit and fix websites for SEO, AEO and GEO: crawler access, llms.txt, structured data, FAQs, freshness signals and page structure. Tell us about your site on our Work with us page.
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