A step-by-step playbook. Exactly what to do this week, this month, and this quarter to get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini.
Run a baseline audit. Unblock AI crawlers. Add schema. Restructure your top pages as direct answers. Fix NAP consistency. Build third-party citations. Six actions, three time horizons — and the businesses that do them in order out-cite the ones that skip steps.
Most "AEO advice" online is a soup of acronyms and vague principles. This page is the opposite — a sequenced playbook of concrete tasks, each with an estimated effort and impact, organized by what you should actually do first.
The order matters. The early tasks are foundation work that unlocks everything else. Skip them and the later tasks are dead investment. Do them in sequence and you'll see citation lift in 1–2 weeks.
Before you fix anything, you need to know what's broken. The free Nugentive audit scans 50 signals across 9 categories in a few minutes and returns a prioritized list. Take a screenshot — this is your benchmark.
Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser. Make sure none of these are disallowed: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot. Many sites accidentally block them via a default CMS setting or a "block all bots" security plugin.
User-agent: GPTBot + Disallow: /The single highest-ROI AEO fix. Generate JSON-LD schema for your business and embed it in your homepage <head>. Include name, address, phone, hours, founders, services, and social profile URLs in the sameAs array — that's how AI engines confidently match your business across the web.
For each top-traffic page, move the direct answer to the query into the first paragraph. Follow with scannable supporting context — short paragraphs, lists, tables. Add an FAQ block at the bottom with FAQPage schema. AI engines pull citations from the first 30% of content far more often than the rest.
List every place your business appears online — Google Business Profile, Yelp, BBB, industry directories, social profiles, your own site. Make business Name, Address, and Phone identical everywhere. AI engines treat NAP mismatch as entity uncertainty — and uncertain businesses don't get recommended.
If you're a local business, this is non-negotiable. Verify ownership. Fill in every field — hours, services, attributes, products, photos. Add weekly posts. Respond to reviews. Google AI Overviews pull heavily from GBP data for local queries, and an incomplete profile signals an inactive business.
Identify the 8–15 directories that matter for your industry — general (BBB, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places), industry-specific (Houzz for home services, Avvo for legal, Healthgrades for medical, etc.), and local chambers of commerce. Claim, verify, and complete each one with the same NAP you cleaned up in Task 05.
Reddit is the most-cited third-party domain by Perplexity and a major source for ChatGPT. Identify 2–3 subreddits where your customers actually post. Spend 30 minutes/week answering questions helpfully and without spam — no link drops, no thinly-veiled ads. Build credibility and let your username carry your business.
Once your foundation is in place, you need to measure. Track how often AI engines name your business by query category, by engine, and against your top competitors. Re-audit monthly to catch regressions and platform shifts. This is what turns AEO from a one-time project into a competitive advantage.
Each AI engine has its own discovery pipeline. Optimize for all four primary engines — what works for ChatGPT doesn't automatically work for Google AI Overviews.
| Engine | Index source | What it weights most | Crawler to allow |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Bing | Bing indexability · Schema · Reddit citations | GPTBot |
| Google AI Overviews | Google ranking signals · GBP · Structured data | Google-Extended | |
| Perplexity | Own crawler + open web | Reddit · Quora · Recent content · Schema | PerplexityBot |
| Gemini | Google + own signals | Entity authority · Knowledge Graph · GBP | Google-Extended |
| Claude | Web search · own indexing | Authoritative sources · Schema · Recency | ClaudeBot |
| Bing Copilot | Bing | Bing Places · Schema · Backlinks | bingbot |
Schema markup is the single highest-ROI technical fix. Add the four required types first, then layer the others as your content supports them.
Defines your business as a named entity. Includes name, URL, logo, founders, contact, and social profile URLs (sameAs).
Local-business subtype with address, hours, geo, price range, payments accepted. Powers Google AI Overviews for local queries.
Tells engines this is the canonical entity website. Include search action if you have site search.
Most-quoted schema by AI engines. Add to every page that has a Q&A block — including service and product pages.
Define every service you offer, with prices where possible. Lets AI engines quote your offerings directly.
For e-commerce. Include offers, pricing, reviews, availability. Powers price-comparison answers.
Surfaces star ratings directly in AI answers. Pair with verified third-party review platforms.
Helps AI understand your site hierarchy and topical clustering. Cheap to add and helps every page.
Run your free AEO audit in a few minutes. We scan all 50 signals, give you a 0–100 score, and tell you exactly which of the 9 tasks above to tackle first. No credit card.