Checklist

The Off-Site AEO Checklist: What to Fix Beyond Your Own Website

Schema markup and direct-answer content only control what happens on a business's own site. Since AI models weigh outside corroboration heavily when deciding what to cite, a meaningful share of AEO work has nothing to do with the website at all. This is the checklist for that other half.

1. Google Business Profile

Keep hours, categories, services, and photos accurate and complete. This single profile feeds several AI answer surfaces beyond Google's own products, and an incomplete or stale profile is one of the most common, most fixable gaps.

2. Review volume and recency

Review count functions as a trust proxy for AI models, similar to how it functions for people. Ask every satisfied customer for a review, right after the job, rather than occasionally. Recency matters too; a business with 200 reviews from three years ago and none since reads differently than one with steady, ongoing reviews.

3. Local directory listings

Beyond Google, industry-specific and local directories (chamber of commerce sites, trade associations, city guides) are exactly the kind of independent, structured sources AI retrieval systems trust. Accurate, consistent listings across these matter more than most businesses assume.

4. "Best of" and roundup coverage

Local news sites, bloggers, and community publications regularly write "best [service] in [city]" articles. These are high-value citation sources because they're independent, specific, and often well-structured. Reaching out to be considered for these, or simply being visible enough to get noticed, is worth active effort.

5. Community and forum presence

Community discussion sites are an increasingly cited source in AI answers; one recent estimate put community-discussion content in roughly 1 in 20 AI Overview results. Genuine, helpful participation in relevant local or industry communities, not promotional posting, builds exactly the kind of independent mention these systems weigh.

6. Consistency across every mention

Name, address, phone number, hours, and service area should match exactly everywhere a business is listed. Inconsistencies (a slightly different business name, an old phone number on one directory) create ambiguity that undermines trust signals, even when each individual listing looks fine on its own.

7. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Verifying a site in both confirms it's being crawled and indexed correctly, and surfaces crawl errors that would otherwise silently limit visibility across every downstream AI search surface that depends on a healthy, indexed site.