Technical Audit
Stop guessing what's wrong with your website. Performance, security, SEO infrastructure, AI-readiness, and a prioritized fix list you can execute with us or anyone else.
AI search readiness
Technical SEO & AI Search Readiness (AEO/GEO)
Visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews is built on verifiable technical foundations. We audit against documented crawler behavior, not agency folklore, and grade every recommendation by the evidence behind it.
readiness report · evidence-graded
Raw-HTML contentverified
JSON-LD schemaverified
llms.txtpartial
Guaranteed AI rankingsfolklore
every recommendation graded by the evidence behind it
TL;DR
An AI Search Readiness Audit checks whether AI systems can crawl, render, and cite your site: raw HTML versus client-side JavaScript, JSON-LD schema validity, semantic structure, and indexability. It costs $1,500 fixed ($2,500 for large or e-commerce sites), ends in an evidence-graded remediation list, and an optional implementation sprint executes it from $2,500.
What's the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?
SEO earns rankings in classic search results; AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) earns your content a place in direct answers, from AI Overviews to voice assistants; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) earns citations inside generated responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. They share a technical floor: crawlable HTML, valid structured data, and content written so a machine can lift an answer from it. That floor is what the audit measures.
How do I get my site cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity?
Make your content technically liftable and factually citable. AI crawlers mostly read raw HTML, so content rendered only by client-side JavaScript is often invisible to them. Cited pages tend to share traits: direct answers near the top, question-form headings, valid schema, and data that exists nowhere else. None of this is a hack; all of it is auditable.
Raw HTML
Read and citable by AI crawlers
Client-side JS only
Often invisible to AI crawlers
What does the AI Search Readiness Audit check?
Crawlability and rendering analysis (raw HTML vs client-side JS), JSON-LD schema validation, semantic HTML review, indexability report, an evidence-graded llms.txt recommendation, and a prioritized remediation list. Standard sites $1,500 fixed; large or e-commerce sites $2,500 fixed. The optional implementation sprint (quote, from $2,500) executes the list; the quote is driven by finding count, template count, and CMS constraints.
The relationship to the $795 Technical Audit: the audit's AI-readiness section is a screening pass; this product is the full evidence-graded version.
Does llms.txt actually work?
The honest answer is "partially, and it costs almost nothing to have." llms.txt is a proposed convention, not a standard; adoption by AI crawlers is uneven and evolving. We've run one in production on a client platform since the convention appeared, which is why our recommendation is evidence-graded rather than hyped: we tell you what it demonstrably does, what's speculative, and whether your site should bother.
markdown · llms.txt (anonymized)
# llms.txt - production excerpt
> [Company] provides travel protection plans for US travelers.
> This file summarizes the site for AI systems. Canonical
> information lives at the URLs below.
## Key pages
- /plans/ : coverage tiers and what each includes
- /claims/ : how to file a claim, processing timelines
- /faq/ : answers to the most common coverage questionsThe structure matters more than the file: short factual summary, canonical URLs, no marketing language. An AI system that reads it gets the same facts a human gets.
Are "AI ranking hacks" real?
No. There is no secret prompt, meta tag, or paid trick that makes generative engines prefer your brand. What's real and verifiable: technical crawlability, structured data, answer-shaped content, and original information worth citing. If someone sells you guaranteed ChatGPT rankings, they're selling folklore. This is the audit's whole reason for grading evidence.
Where to go next
Website Speed & Core Web Vitals Optimization Service
Manual engineering against real-user field data, not another caching plugin. Fixed-fee diagnostic and remediation sprints measured against 28-day CrUX data.
1-on-1 Technical Consulting & Website Audits
Senior engineering judgment on demand: fixed-fee technical audits, one-hour strategy sessions, fractional CTO engagements, and custom application development & support.
Going deeper
AI search readiness questions
What schema markup does a React site need for AI crawlers?
JSON-LD that exists in the raw HTML response, not injected after hydration. Organization, WebPage, and content-type nodes (Service, FAQPage, Article) matter most. If your schema only appears after JavaScript runs, several AI crawlers never see it, and the audit tests exactly this.
How do I appear in Google AI Overviews?
AI Overviews synthesize from pages that answer the question directly and rank reasonably well. Concise answer blocks under question headings, valid FAQ schema, and solid classic SEO are the working levers. Nobody can guarantee placement; anyone who says otherwise is guessing.
How do I know if AI crawlers can render my JavaScript site?
Fetch your page the way a crawler does: request the raw HTML and see what's in it. If your content isn't in that response, most AI crawlers can't read it. The audit does this per template and shows you the diff between what you see and what the machine sees.
What is llms.txt and should my site have one?
A markdown file at your site root summarizing your content for AI systems, similar in spirit to robots.txt. It's a convention with uneven adoption, cheap to implement and honestly graded "promising, unproven" by our audits. We recommend it where the cost is near zero, and we say what it won't do.
Does site speed affect AI-search visibility?
Indirectly but really. Slow sites get crawled less and rank worse in classic search, and classic rankings feed what AI systems retrieve and cite. Speed is part of the technical floor, which is why the audit reports on it and why the CWV sprint exists.
What does the implementation sprint actually do?
It executes the audit's remediation list: schema fixes, rendering changes, semantic HTML corrections, answer-block restructuring. Priced by quote from $2,500, driven by the number of findings, templates, and what your CMS allows.
What's evidence-backed versus agency folklore in AEO?
Evidence-backed: crawlability, raw-HTML content, valid structured data, answer-first formatting, original data. Folklore: guaranteed AI rankings, secret prompt tricks, keyword-stuffed "AI content", paying for citations. The audit grades every recommendation so you can see which bucket it's in.
Do you offer ongoing AEO retainers?
Not as a standing product yet. The audit plus implementation sprint covers most needs; ongoing monitoring can be scoped through consulting. Credible market retainers run $2,000 to $10,000 per month, which is worth knowing when you compare offers.
