AEO audit for WordPress:
what gets checked, and why.
An answer engine optimization audit asks a different question than your SEO plugin: not "can this rank" but "can this be quoted." Here is what that means concretely on WordPress - 35 checks across extractability, machine-readability, and crawler access, runnable free from wp-admin.
Four kinds of checks, one report.
Direct-answer density in opening paragraphs, heading hierarchy, FAQ structure that survives rendering (page builders included), definition placement, and self-contained passages an engine can quote.
llms.txt and llms-full.txt presence and quality, schema.org coverage without duplicates, entity clarity (Organization, sameAs), and visible freshness signals that match the markup.
robots.txt rules for the current 13-agent AI crawler fleet, sitemap health, endpoint serving verified by real requests, and WAF or plugin rules silently blocking AI bots.
Every failed check ships its artifact: generated llms.txt, JSON-LD blocks, robots.txt rules, or a content rewrite - ordered in a 15-item plan with the Top 3 moves ranked by leverage.
Where WordPress sites typically fail an AEO audit.
The same handful of failures show up across WordPress audits, and most are configuration rather than content: plain permalinks quietly serving the homepage at /llms.txt, two SEO plugins both emitting Organization schema, FAQ blocks whose markup never reaches rendered HTML on certain page builders, robots.txt files written before the current AI crawler fleet existed, and caching or security layers challenging AI bots with pages they cannot pass. None of these are visible in your content editor, which is why the audit makes real requests instead of reading settings.
The content side matters just as much once configuration is clean. The AEO axis checks whether your posts open with a direct answer, whether headings form an extractable hierarchy, and whether key passages stand alone when quoted - the first-150-word rule and the anatomy of a cited post cover the patterns in depth.
Prefer to start by hand? Work through the 30-minute self-audit, then test the two outside-facing layers with the free llms.txt checker and AI crawler access checker. When you want the full 35 checks with generated fixes and both scores tracked over time, that is the WordPress AI visibility audit flow.
AEO audit FAQ
What is an AEO audit?
An answer engine optimization audit checks whether AI answer engines - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews - can find, read, extract, and cite your content. Where an SEO audit asks "can this rank," an AEO audit asks "can this be quoted": is the content structured for extraction, is the site machine-readable, and are AI crawlers allowed in.
How is an AEO audit different from an SEO audit on WordPress?
They overlap on fundamentals - crawlability, structure, freshness - but diverge on the checks that matter most. An AEO audit covers llms.txt, per-agent AI crawler rules, answer-first content structure, entity clarity, and schema types AI engines consume. Your Yoast or RankMath setup does not cover this layer, and Citevera detects those plugins and defers to them where they do overlap rather than duplicating schema.
What does the Citevera AEO audit check on a WordPress site?
The free local audit runs 10+ mechanical checks in wp-admin: llms.txt, robots.txt, and sitemap actually serving (verified by real loopback requests), AI-crawler access rules, and schema presence. The cloud audit runs 35 checks across three axes - AEO (answer extractability), GEO (generative-engine fit), and Crawlability - plus a 5-stage decision funnel and a 15-item prioritized plan.
Can I do an AEO audit myself without a tool?
A meaningful first pass, yes - our 30-minute self-audit guide walks through the checks you can run by hand, and the free llms.txt and AI crawler access checkers cover two layers from the outside. A tool earns its place on repeatability, coverage of all 35 checks at once, and generated fixes rather than a to-do list.
How often should I re-audit?
After every meaningful change (theme, permalink, SEO-plugin, or robots.txt change can each silently break an AEO signal), and on a schedule otherwise. Paid tiers run a scheduled monthly cloud audit with regression alerts that email you if your score drops 5+ points or a new high-severity issue appears.
What does it cost?
The local audit is free forever in the free plugin. The full cloud audit is $99 one-time with PDF export, or included in plans from $49/mo - which also bundle weekly citation monitoring across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to verify the audit work is landing.
The first audit is free and local.
Install the plugin, run the local audit in wp-admin, and see your setup-readiness score in seconds - zero external calls.