Conducting a website content audit can mean many things, such as assessing performance, brand and audience relevance, writing quality, and age/timeliness of assets, but for most companies, the essential (and often confusing) piece is SEO (search engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization).
It’s hard to determine success in search if you don’t know how to do AEO or are unsure about AEO vs. SEO differences. In this blog, you’ll learn why it’s important to run a website content audit, the differences between each major search discipline, which to start with, and how to audit your website against each. We’ve also included a benchmark scorecard for reference.
The pace at which search behavior is changing and what’s effective for ranking on Google, increasing AI visibility, and meeting your audience’s needs is swift. Consider these factors:
It’s crucial not to think of an audit as a one-time occurrence. AI engines also prioritize recency, so regular audits every six months to a year are essential to keep pace.
Here’s a closer look at SEO and AEO, and where to start.
First, some quick definitions:
In some circles, these two disciplines also get confused with GEO, or generative engine optimization. The simplest way to tell them apart: AEO helps you become the answer; GEO helps you become the source. AEO focuses narrowly on answer-ready formats (e.g., FAQs, direct definitions, structured Q&As) built to get extracted and cited for a specific question. GEO is broader: Its aim is the creation of comprehensive, trustworthy content that AI engines cite repeatedly, not just for one query but across a topic. In practice, the two overlap heavily, as strong AEO work tends to feed GEO; but AEO is the tactic, while GEO is the reputation it builds toward.
Here’s how to check each, and which to tackle first.
If you’re going to focus on one discipline first, start with SEO. AI answer engines still lean heavily on the same infrastructure that traditional search engines have relied on for decades, including clean sitemaps, technical health, and well-structured content. That foundation is often the raw material AEO models pull from when deciding what to cite, so shaky SEO makes strong AEO performance harder to sustain.
That said, this isn’t a hard rule. If your industry has already been reshaped by AI search, where buyers turn to ChatGPT or Gemini for recommendations before even opening Google, leading with AEO makes more sense.
How to decide: If you’re not sure where your buyers are searching first, start with SEO. It’s the more established discipline, and the improvements you make often support AEO as well. If you already know AI search is what your industry’s turning to, start there instead. Just don’t skip the SEO audit for long, because AEO performance can erode without it.
Either way, a complete website content audit means running both. Here’s how to audit each, starting with SEO.
SEO is the path most companies follow. When measuring SEO, the tools are more mature and the metrics well-documented. Break this audit into three parts: technical health, on-page upkeep and content quality, and organic performance over time.
Website technical health ensures search engines can actually find and read your site. It includes:
Action to take: Check Google Search Console’s Coverage/Indexing report for pages marked “excluded” that shouldn’t be. A strong “noindex” tag or a misconfigured robots.txt file can quietly keep important pages out of search entirely.
Action to take: Run a crawl, with Screaming Frog or a similar tool, to find broken links, redirect chains, and orphaned pages with no internal links pointing to them.
Action to take: Check Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console or PageSpeed Insights, and prioritize fixes on any pages that fail.
Action to take: Test your key pages using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or the mobile view in PageSpeed Insights, and fix any layout, button sizing, or loading issues that get flagged.
Auditing and optimizing content for search engines and shifting buyer needs means regularly tending to:
Basic maintenance that shows both audiences you’re invested in content and not abandoning important resources.
Action to take: Add or update a visible “last updated” date, and check that all links still point to live, relevant pages.
The right signals that show your content is credible and worth surfacing (the same E-E-A-T [experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness] signals that search engines use to judge whether your content deserves to rank).
Action to take: Add author bylines, bios, and points of view to key pages. This is also an AEO best practice – one of the few places in this SEO vs. AEO audit where a single fix moves the needle on both. The same byline that strengthens E-E-A-T is often what AI engines search for when deciding whose take to cite.
Content quality and depth, from building out vague messaging to supporting key points with real-world examples of success, as well as confirming your target keywords still reflect how buyers actually search today.
Action to take: Identify pages that skim the surface or point elsewhere for details, and expand them into more robust resources.
When your technical and content foundations are in place, check whether that work is actually paying off. This is also where your website content audit starts to show results: Are more people finding your site through search than before, and is it the right people landing on the right pages? Look at:
Keyword rankings, or where your content shows up on search engine results pages (SERP) for the terms most crucial to your business.
Action to take: Use rank-tracking software like Semrush or Ahrefs to check your current positions, identify any keywords that are in “striking distance” (ranking between positions 11 and 30 and just off the first page), and flag any content that’s dropped out of top positions. Use these insights to prioritize which content needs updating and/or optimizing first.
Now for the AEO half of your audit. This part of the process is newer and less standardized than SEO. How to do AEO in practice often comes down to testing your visibility directly, then tracking it over time.
Before you start, it helps to know what exactly you’re looking for. AI engines can reference your brand in three different ways, and they’re not equally valuable:
With that vocabulary in place, break the audit into two parts: testing where you stand today, and monitoring how that changes.
Before you can improve anything, you need a read on where you actually stand. Knowing how to do AEO well starts with testing two things: how you’re showing up, and how accurately:
Action to take: Prompt ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity with category-relevant questions specific to your business.
Ex: “best [category] for [use case]”
Action to take: For each response, note whether you got a mention, citation, or nothing at all, and if you were cited, what page it linked to. Also check whether the description of your brand is accurate and current.
Action to take: In the same set of responses, note which competitors show up alongside or instead of you. A pattern of losing prompts to the same one or two competitors is worth investigating separately.
A single check tells you where you stand today, but tracking over time tells you whether you’re gaining or losing ground. That’s where AI citation tracking comes in: checking not just whether you show up, but whether it’s happening more often, less often, or through different pages than before. Here’s how to track it:
Action to take: Repeat your Step 1 prompts on a regular cadence, and log the results so you can compare over time. Monthly is a reasonable starting point. Then use:
Action to take: Manual prompting works for a lightweight monthly check, but platforms like HubSpot’s AEO tool (currently in beta) go further, tracking your visibility score, prompt-level results, and citation data across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity in one dashboard, so you’re not repeating Step 1 by hand every time.
A website content audit must be a habit, not a one-time report card. Search behavior keeps shifting, AI engines keep changing how they source and cite information, and a page that passed every green flag six months ago can quietly slip without you noticing. Regularly running through both halves of this audit, SEO and AEO, is what keeps you ahead of that shift instead of catching up to it after traffic or visibility has already dropped.
Whatever you find, the results are useful on their own: a clear, current picture of where your site stands, and a prioritized list of what to fix first. Whether you tackle that in-house or bring in outside help, from an SEO specialist to a growth-focused AEO agency, you’ll be doing it with real data instead of a guess.
SpotOn has extensive experience in conducting content audits that lead to improved search results. Reach out today to discuss how SpotOn’s team can help your company.
Yes, especially as more buyers research through AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini before ever running a traditional search. A brand that’s invisible in those answers risks getting left off the shortlist before a prospect reaches its website, so AEO is less about chasing a trend and more about staying discoverable where research already happens.
What is SEO vs. AEO?SEO optimizes content to rank in traditional search engines like Google and Bing. AEO optimizes content to be mentioned and cited in AI-generated answers. The simplest way to understand the AEO vs. SEO differences: SEO helps you get found, while AEO helps you become the answer. Most companies now need both.
Do I need SEO for my website?Almost certainly, yes. Even as AI search grows, traditional search still drives significant traffic for most businesses, and strong technical and content SEO is often the foundation AEO performance depends on. The real question usually isn’t whether you need SEO, but whether your current SEO is actually working, which is exactly what an audit is for.
How do I see if AI mentions my brand?Prompt ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini with the real questions your buyers would ask, and note whether you show up, how you’re described, and whether that description is accurate. This is the same method covered in Step 1 of the AEO audit above.
How do I track brand mentions in AI search?Repeat that same prompting exercise on a regular cadence, ideally monthly, and log the results so you can see whether your visibility is improving or slipping. For teams that want this automated, platforms like HubSpot’s AEO tool track your visibility score, prompt-level results, and citation data in one dashboard, so you’re not repeating the process manually every time.