LLM SEO Checklist: 10 Things to Audit Before You Optimize

Most LLM SEO advice tells you what to do in the abstract. This checklist is different. It gives you concrete things to check on your actual site, with clear pass/fail criteria, so you know exactly where to focus your effort.

Run through this before starting any LLM SEO campaign. The audit takes about two hours and will tell you more than most consultants' initial recommendations.

1. Are You Tracking Your Current AI Visibility?

Check: Query your five most important commercial keywords in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Does your brand appear in any responses?

Pass: You appear in at least two models for at least two of your target queries.

Fail: You do not appear, or you have never checked.

Why it matters: You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. Your current AI citation rate is your baseline. Without it, you have no way to tell whether your LLM SEO efforts are working.

Action: Set up automated tracking in a GEO tool. The AI Visibility feature in Bingly tracks your citation rate across all four major models with trend data built in.

2. Is Your Brand a Clear Entity on Your Own Site?

Check: Read your homepage as if you are encountering your brand for the first time. Can you answer these questions in under 30 seconds? Who is this company? What do they make? Who is it for? What makes it different?

Pass: All four questions have clear, specific answers visible above the fold.

Fail: Your homepage leads with vague value propositions, industry buzzwords, or feature lists without clear context.

Why it matters: AI models build entity representations from your content. If your site does not clearly define your entity, models cannot reliably associate your brand with the right queries.

Action: Rewrite your first paragraph to lead with a clear, factual description of your product, your use case, and your customer profile.

3. Do You Have Schema Markup on Key Pages?

Check: Use Google's Rich Results Test on your homepage, product pages, and key blog posts. Look for Organization, Product, Article, and FAQ schema types.

Pass: You have Organization schema with name, description, and URL on your homepage. Key content pages have relevant schema types.

Fail: No schema markup, or only basic types without meaningful content.

Why it matters: Schema markup makes your content more parseable by AI systems. It explicitly labels entities, relationships, and content types in a format models and retrieval systems can reliably extract. See Schema Markup for AI Search for specifics.

Action: Implement Organization schema on your homepage immediately. Add FAQ schema to your most important commercial pages.

4. Do You Have an llms.txt File?

Check: Visit yourdomain.com/llms.txt in a browser. Does it exist? Does it accurately describe your brand, product, and use cases?

Pass: The file exists and contains a clear, accurate description of what your site is about and what you want to be cited for.

Fail: File does not exist, or exists but contains outdated or vague information.

Why it matters: An emerging convention that some models and retrieval systems check. It signals your intent to AI systems explicitly rather than leaving them to infer it from your content.

Action: Create /llms.txt with a clear description of your company, products, use cases, and target customer. Keep it under 500 words and factually specific.

5. Is Your Content Specific Enough to Be Cited?

Check: Read your three most important pieces of content. Count the specific claims: data points, named use cases, concrete examples, percentages, named customer types. Is there at least one specific, citable claim per major section?

Pass: Multiple specific, factual claims throughout each piece. Content answers a defined question with depth.

Fail: Mostly vague value propositions, "our customers love us" language, or generic descriptions without specifics.

Why it matters: AI models cite specific information. "Reduces deployment time by 35%" is something a model can extract and attribute. "Helps teams work faster" is not. Specificity is what makes content extractable.

Action: Audit your top five pages and add at least three specific, factual claims per piece. Data, named examples, and concrete scenarios all count.

6. Is Your Content Topically Deep or Just Broad?

Check: Look at your content by topic cluster. For your most important topic, how many pieces do you have? Are they specific, in-depth treatments of subtopics, or general overviews covering everything shallowly?

Pass: You have five or more pieces covering different specific aspects of your core topic with genuine depth.

Fail: You have one or two broad overview pieces and little else, or many pieces but all covering the same ground at the same surface level.

Why it matters: AI models evaluate topical authority. A site that has written extensively and specifically about a topic is seen as more authoritative than one with shallow coverage. Depth beats breadth.

Action: Identify the three to five sub-questions within your most important topic and create or significantly upgrade one piece for each.

7. Are You Tracking Competitor AI Visibility?

Check: For your target queries, note which competitors appear in AI answers. Do this across at least two models.

Pass: You know which competitors appear for your most important queries and have a rough sense of their citation frequency.

Fail: You have never checked what competitors appear in AI answers for your target queries.

Why it matters: Competitive context is essential for prioritization. Knowing which competitors are consistently cited tells you which content strategies are working in your category. This is competitive intelligence you cannot get from traditional SEO tools.

Action: Use Bingly to track your top three competitors alongside your own brand for the same query set.

8. Are You Appearing on Third-Party Sources?

Check: Search for your brand on G2, Capterra, Product Hunt, industry blogs, and relevant press outlets. How much authoritative third-party coverage do you have?

Pass: You appear meaningfully on at least five credible third-party sources with accurate, current information.

Fail: Your brand is primarily visible on your own website with minimal third-party presence.

Why it matters: AI models do not only cite your own domain. Third-party validation, review sites, analyst coverage, and press mentions all contribute to your AI visibility. A strong entity footprint across the web is a core LLM SEO factor.

Action: Claim your profiles on major review sites, respond to reviews, and pitch relevant industry publications for coverage.

9. Is Your Content Structure Machine-Readable?

Check: Scan your most important pages. Are they using proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3)? Are long answers broken into clear sections? Is the page structure logical for someone who has never visited before?

Pass: Clear heading hierarchy, logical section flow, content that can be understood without reading every word.

Fail: Dense blocks of text, inconsistent heading use, or pages that require full linear reading to extract any value.

Why it matters: AI models extract information from structured content more reliably than from dense prose. A clearly structured page is more likely to have its specific sections cited.

Action: Add or improve heading structure on your five most important pages. Ensure every major claim or recommendation has a heading that names what it is about.

10. Do You Have a Feedback Loop Between Content and Citations?

Check: After publishing important content, do you check whether it is being cited by AI models three to four weeks later?

Pass: You have a regular process for checking whether new content is earning AI citations.

Fail: You publish content and only measure traditional SEO metrics like rankings and traffic, with no AI citation check.

Why it matters: LLM SEO is iterative. Without a feedback loop, you cannot improve. Knowing which content earns citations and which does not is what drives continuous improvement.

Action: Add AI citation review to your content review calendar. Every significant new piece should be checked in AI models three to four weeks after publication.

Your Audit Score

Count your passes. A score of 8-10 means you have a strong LLM SEO foundation. 5-7 means there is meaningful work to do. Under 5 means LLM SEO should be a top priority for your content team this quarter.

See where your brand appears in AI answers today with Bingly.