GEO is not an abstract concept — it is a concrete checklist. Either your website meets the conditions under which AI models cite content, or it doesn't. This audit guide shows the five decisive factors, with concrete checklists for a self-check.
Factor 1: Schema.org markup (JSON-LD)
What: Structured data in JSON-LD format that describes, in a machine-readable way, what your page is, who wrote it, and what it is about.
Why: AI crawlers process HTML documents. Schema.org makes meaning explicit — instead of guessing whether a text is an article, the AI reads "@type": "Article". That significantly increases the likelihood of correct categorization and citation.
Minimal implementation for blog posts:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Article title",
"datePublished": "2026-06-16T08:00:00+02:00",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Thomas Leonhardt",
"url": "https://forgeproject.eu/about/"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "FORGE",
"url": "https://forgeproject.eu"
},
"wordCount": 1200,
"inLanguage": "en-US"
}Checklist for Factor 1:
- Article schema present on every blog post (
<script type="application/ld+json">) - Person schema implemented on the About page
- Organization schema present on the homepage
wordCount,datePublished,inLanguagefilled in- Valid JSON syntax (no linting errors)
Factor 2: Author identification
What: Who writes the content on this website? Name, role, credentials — visible on every page, not just the About page.
Why: AI models trust experts more than anonymous sources. When a person asks "How do I optimize my website for ChatGPT?", the AI wants to cite a person with demonstrable expertise — not a nameless domain.
Authorship has to be machine-readable on two levels: in the HTML (byline with rel="author") and in the JSON-LD (Article schema with an author property).
Checklist for Factor 2:
- Author name visible on every article post (not just in the footer)
- Author byline contains a
rel="author"link to the About page - About page contains a full biography with specialization
- LinkedIn URL entered as
sameAsin the Person schema - Author photo present (optional but recommended)
Factor 3: E-E-A-T signals
What: E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's quality criteria, which also serve as a reference framework for AI models.
Why: AI models were trained on billions of texts and have implicitly learned what quality signals are. A text that radiates expertise (concrete experience, specific figures, verifiable claims) is more likely to be cited than a generic overview.
Experience: make concrete experience visible
Write in the first person when reporting on your own experience. "In my work across 40+ AI projects I've observed..." is more citable than "Experts recommend...".
Expertise: communicate specialization clearly
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Don't write about everything. A blog that writes exclusively about GEO and AI search engines will be classified by AI models as an expert in that area — unlike a blog that covers SEO, social media, web design, and AI all at once.
Authoritativeness: show external validation
Backlinks from other websites, mentions in trade articles, quotes in other blogs — all of it shows an AI that other sources trust your expertise. For GEO this matters less than for classic SEO, but it is not irrelevant.
Trustworthiness: transparency and reliability
Legal notice, privacy policy, a way to make contact, a clear source for claims — those are trust signals that AI models likewise weigh.
Checklist for Factor 3:
- Author writes consistently about 1-2 topic areas (not a general store)
- Concrete figures and experiences in the content (not just general statements)
- Source citations for statistics (source + year)
- Legal notice, privacy policy, contact present and current
- External mentions, where they exist: document them on the About page
Factor 4: Content depth and citation-worthiness
What: Every article should contain at least one "citable core statement" — a sentence or paragraph that an AI can use as a direct answer to a specific question.
Why: AI search engines don't cite whole pages, they cite precise passages. A text without citable statements may be crawled, but is rarely referenced directly.
A good test: read your article and ask yourself — which sentence here could an AI use as a direct answer to "What is X?" or "How does Y work?" If you can't find one, citation-worthiness is missing.
Checklist for Factor 4:
- Every article contains at least one clear, citable definition or core statement
- Fresh content: at least 1 article per week or month (recency counts)
- Statistics and metrics are concrete (with source + year, not "studies show")
- Complete answers — no teaser articles that lure readers to the next page
- Readable paragraphs — max. 3-4 sentences, line-height ≥ 1.6
Factor 5: Internal linking for AI
What: Topic clusters through internal links — every post links to related posts, to the About page, and to relevant service pages.
Why: AI crawlers follow links and build a semantic picture of your website. A website whose posts link to one another and form a consistent topic is recognized as an expert resource — not as a collection of individual articles.
Checklist for Factor 5:
- Every article links to at least 2 thematically related articles
- Every article links to the About page (author context)
- Anchor text with keywords (not "click here", but "run a GEO audit")
- Breadcrumb navigation present on all subpages
- Blog index links to all articles, articles link back to the index