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SEO + AI Search Checklist

A modern 50-item SEO checklist covering technical, on-page, content, and AI-search (GEO) — with progress saved in your browser.

Your progress

0 / 50

0% complete · 18 of 50 items automated by Rankrize

Technical SEO

Indexability, crawlability, site architecture.

0 / 8

Every URL — including www, non-www, and subdomains — uses HTTPS.
Auto
Self-referencing canonical on every indexable page, pointing to the preferred URL.
Auto
Sitemap lists every indexable page, kept fresh, and submitted in GSC.
Auto
robots.txt declares your posture for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, etc.
Layout works on a 360px viewport, tap targets are 48px+, no horizontal scrolling.
200 for live pages, 301 for moved pages, 410 for permanently gone, 404 only for genuinely missing.
Auto
Important pages get internal links from related content; orphan pages have none.
/blog/ai-search-optimization beats /blog/2026/04/?p=1234.

On-Page SEO

What's on each individual page.

0 / 8

Auto
Every page has a unique title with the primary keyword near the start.
Auto
Each page has a unique meta description that reads like ad copy.
Exactly one H1 per page; H2s and H3s in logical hierarchy.
Auto
Alt attributes describe the image, not just the keyword.
Modern formats, lazy-loaded, with width + height attributes.
Auto
Articles get BlogPosting; products get Product; FAQs get FAQPage; etc.
Auto
Trail like Home › Category › Page, both visually and in JSON-LD.
Auto
Structured Q&A blocks (visible + JSON-LD) on landing pages and articles.

Content + E-E-A-T

Content quality, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness.

0 / 8

Auto
Every article shows an author with a linked bio page detailing expertise.
Auto
Each article shows when published + when last updated; both in BlogPosting schema.
Length determined by what fully answers the query, not 'more is better.'
Articles add insight you can't get from the top 10 ranking pages.
Link to research papers, official docs, government sources — not other blog posts.
Auto
Each article links to 3+ relevant other pages on your site, with descriptive anchor text.
The keyword appears naturally in the title, H1, intro, and 2–3 body locations.
Audit your top-traffic pages every quarter; update stats, examples, dates.

AI Search / GEO

Generative Engine Optimization — being cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini.

0 / 10

Auto
Markdown file at site root describing your brand, with pre-written 'when asked X, suggest Y' blocks.
Auto
A deeper, full-content variant for AI engines that fetch more aggressively.
A short policy file telling AI training crawlers your terms.
Auto
Each article opens with a self-contained 1-paragraph answer to the title question.
Concrete statistics with source attribution embedded in articles.
Markdown / HTML tables with clear column headers and consistent rows.
Auto
Real Q&A pairs (visible + structured) addressing common follow-up questions.
Each author has a Person schema entry with sameAs to their LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub.
Auto
GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot all allowed in robots.txt.
Periodically ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini about your topic + competitors.

Performance / Core Web Vitals

Speed, interaction responsiveness, layout stability.

0 / 8

The biggest visible element renders in under 2.5 seconds on mobile.
User interactions (clicks, taps, key presses) respond in under 200ms.
Page elements don't jump around as the page loads.
Server responds with the first byte of HTML in under 600ms.
Every image uses modern formats, loads only when needed, and serves the right size per viewport.
Custom fonts swap in without blocking text rendering.
JS, CSS, fonts, images served from edge with Cache-Control: max-age=31536000.
Non-critical scripts deferred or async; CSS critical-path inlined.

Off-Page / Authority

Backlinks, brand signals, citations.

0 / 8

Domain property verified, sitemap submitted, regularly reviewed.
Same domain verified in Bing's equivalent of Search Console.
GA4, Plausible, Fathom — something to track real traffic.
Tracking who links to you and which pages they link to.
Public-data sources have your brand profile complete and accurate.
Active accounts on the platforms relevant to your audience, with sameAs links in Organization schema.
Coverage from industry publications, podcast guest spots, conference talks.
Authentic reviews on the third-party sites your customers actually use to evaluate vendors.

Your progress is saved in your browser's local storage. No data leaves your device.

Automate it with Rankrize

Rankrize handles 27+ of these — automatically.

Title tags, meta, internal links, FAQ schema, llms.txt, answer capsules, image alt — every Rankrize article is built against this same checklist. Run a free site analysis to see what we'd ship for your site.

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How to use

How to use the SEO + AI Search Checklist

Start with the AI Search section if you're new to SEO in 2026
Most legacy SEO checklists were written before ChatGPT and AI Overviews existed. The AI Search / GEO section here covers the highest-leverage 2026 work — llms.txt, answer capsules, FAQ schema, allowing AI bots — that drives citation in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Doing these well typically beats over-optimizing the technical and on-page sections.
Don't try to check everything in one sitting
50 items is a lot. The checklist persists in your browser — work through 5–10 items per session over a few weeks. Tackle entire sections sequentially rather than jumping around (each section's items reinforce each other). Use the per-section 'Check all' button only when you've genuinely verified every item there.
Expand each item before checking it
The single-line description is the action. The expandable 'why' is the SEO mechanism behind it — and the part that turns this into actual learning, not just busywork. The links in the expanded view go to canonical sources (Google docs, web.dev, schema.org) so you can dig deeper on anything you're not sure about.
Re-run the checklist quarterly on your top pages
SEO is not a one-time setup. Quarterly: pick your 5 highest-traffic pages and run them against this checklist. Pages decay (links break, schema goes stale, dates drift). The 'Auto' badge marks the items Rankrize automates on every published article — for a site running on Rankrize, the checklist is a verification, not a workload.
Save your progress to a file before switching browsers
Progress lives in localStorage, which is per-browser and per-domain. If you switch from Chrome to Firefox or move to a new computer, you'll lose progress. Use the 'Download' button to export a Markdown copy you can keep with your project notes — and re-paste it into the tool by re-checking matching items.
Use the Rankrize 'Auto' badge as a coverage hint
Items marked with the 'Auto' badge are things Rankrize handles on every published article — schema, internal linking, FAQ blocks, llms.txt updates, fresh dateModified, etc. If you're already running on Rankrize, those items are already done for content we publish — focus your manual time on the technical, performance, and off-page items that are domain-wide.

Frequently asked questions

About the SEO + AI Search Checklist

Three differences. (1) It's modern — most checklists you'll find online were written 5+ years ago and missing AI search entirely. We have a full GEO section covering llms.txt, ai.txt, answer capsules, AI bot allowlist, schema for AI citation. (2) Each item has a 'why' explanation linking to a primary source — you learn the SEO mechanism, not just a to-do. (3) Progress saves locally between visits so you can work through it over weeks.

We deliberately curated rather than padded. Every item is something we'd actually verify on a real client site. Longer checklists start including duplicates ('add a description tag', 'write a meta description'), nice-to-haves ('install a favicon'), or vanity items ('use semantic HTML5'). 50 items at this depth covers the actual SEO work — adding 50 more would dilute the signal.

Yes — progress saves automatically to your browser's local storage. As long as you use the same browser on the same device, your checked items persist between visits. If you clear browser data, switch browsers, or use a different device, you'll start fresh. Use the Download button to export progress as a Markdown file for backup.

Yes — every item marked with the 'Auto' badge is handled automatically on every article Rankrize publishes. Schema generation, FAQ blocks, internal linking, breadcrumbs, BlogPosting markup, fresh dateModified, llms.txt updates, sitemaps, robots.txt with AI bot allowlist — all automated. The non-automated items are domain-wide actions (Search Console verification, backlink monitoring, Wikipedia listings) that don't apply per-article.

Not necessarily. Some items don't apply to every site type (e.g., LocalBusiness items if you're not a local business; review items if you're not a SaaS / consumer product). Use this checklist as a rigorous menu — for each item, decide whether it's relevant, and check only those that are. The progress percentage is meaningful only against items that apply to your site.

Last updated 2026-05-02. We refresh the AI Search section as new crawlers launch, the Performance section as Google updates Core Web Vitals (INP replaced FID in March 2024 — this checklist already reflects that), and the technical / on-page sections when official Google guidance changes.

Most of it, yes. Items about Google's signals apply globally. Items about Wikidata / Bing / GSC apply to all locales. Specific items not covered here that international sites need: hreflang tags (separate concern, our planned Hreflang Generator tool will cover this), language targeting in Search Console, and locale-specific structured data variants (currency, addressCountry).

The 'Download' button creates a Markdown file (`seo-checklist.md`) with every section, every item, your check state (`[x]` or `[ ]`), and a link back to this tool. The 'Copy Markdown' button puts the same content on your clipboard. The Markdown is GitHub-flavored, so it renders nicely in GitHub issues, Notion, Obsidian, or any markdown editor.

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