AEO Guide: Technical Foundations
5 Technical Must-Haves for an AEO-Ready Site
Is your brand missing from AI-generated answers? Check for these technical blockers that prevent AI bots from accessing and parsing your pages.
In This Article
Additional Resources
AI systems can only cite what they can access, understand, and trust. That means your website’s technical foundation directly impacts whether your content is retrieved and cited in AI-powered search results.
The good news is that most technical AEO foundations build on existing SEO practices you’ve likely already implemented.
Building the Foundation for Retrievability
The following five foundational elements work together to ensure AI systems can access and process your content reliably, to increase citation opportunities in AI-powered search results.
1. Verify AI Bot Access
Before AI systems can cite your content, they need to be able to access it.
This is the most important technical requirement because no amount of optimization matters if bots are blocked from reaching your pages.
Many siteowners unknowingly hinder AI citations through hosting or security configurations. CloudFlare’s default website setup started blocking AI bots in mid-2025, potentially affecting thousands of sites. Some hosting providers may also throttle or block lesser-known AI bots to limit server load. Unfortunately, these impediments might not always be obvious in analytics.
How To Check if AI Bots Can Access Your Website
- Check your robots.txt file: Go to yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for lines that say “Disallow:” followed by “/” or important page paths. Make sure you don’t see entries blocking AI crawlers like “User-agent: GPTBot” or “User-agent: ChatGPT-User” with “Disallow: /”.
- If you use CloudFlare: Have your web developer log into your dashboard → Security → Bots → Configure. They should look for AI bot settings and ensure they’re set to “Allow” rather than “Block”.
- Check if security plugins or CDN settings are blocking legitimate crawlers.
- Contact your hosting provider if you suspect access is blocked, but you haven’t configured any blocking yourself.
What To Do if Bots Can't Access Your Site
- Robots.txt blocking: Your web developer can edit this file through your CMS or hosting control panel.
- CloudFlare settings: Adjust bot management settings in your CloudFlare dashboard.
- Security plugin conflicts: Work with your web team to adjust security settings without compromising site protection.
- Hosting provider blocks: Contact your hosting support to whitelist AI crawlers.
2. Improve Page Speed
AI systems need to process content quickly and efficiently to include it in their search results. Fast-loading pages are more reliably processed and have a better chance of citation, while slow pages risk being skipped entirely regardless of their content quality. Unlike human users who might wait for slow pages, AI crawlers typically enforce strict timeout limits (often a few seconds), which means they might not fully process slow-loading content.
How To Check Your Website's Performance
- Go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter your website URL, and click “Analyze”.
- Ensure Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) shows green or under 2.5 seconds.
- Verify Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is under 200 ms.
- Check that Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is less than 0.1.
What To Do if Your Site Is Slow
Follow PageSpeed Insights recommendations, which typically include image optimization, JavaScript reduction, and caching improvements.
Most performance fixes will require developer assistance or technical implementation, so share the results and your concerns with your web dev.
3. Optimize Mobile Accessibility
Your mobile experience directly determines whether AI systems can access and cite your content because, just like Google, AI systems increasingly use mobile user agents to crawl and evaluate content. Poor mobile rendering can prevent content retrieval completely and reduce citation opportunities.
How To Check for Mobile Accessibility
- Visit the pages you want AI to retrieve on your phone.
- Verify all important content is visible without:
- Tapping “read more” buttons.
- Opening collapsed menu sections.
- Horizontal scrolling to see text.
- Ensure the mobile version shows the same key information as the desktop version.
What To Do if Your Site Isn't Mobile-Friendly
- Content hidden behind interactions: Work with your web team to make critical content visible by default on mobile.
- Responsive design problems: Collaborate with your developer to fix CSS and layout issues.
- Mobile-specific content gaps: Coordinate with content and development teams to ensure parity between mobile and desktop.
4. Avoid JavaScript-Dependent Content Rendering
AI crawlers have limited JavaScript execution capabilities compared to most browsers. While they can process some basic JavaScript, they can’t reliably execute complex scripts, wait for dynamic content to load, or interact with single-page applications the way human users do.
If your content requires complex JavaScript to display, it may be invisible to AI crawlers, reducing your chances of being cited.
To ensure AI access, key content should load without JavaScript. Put page text and headings in the HTML, and make sure core features still work if client-side scripts are off.
How To Check if JavaScript Is Limiting Content Visibility
- Right-click anywhere on your page and select “View Page Source.”
- Use Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) to search for key text from your article content.
- If you can find your main headings and paragraphs in this HTML code, you’re good.
- If you only see code and no readable content, your site relies too heavily on JavaScript.
- Alternatively, test your pages with JavaScript disabled in browser settings to see what AI systems might experience.
What To Do if Important Content Is Shared Within JavaScript
Talk to your web developer about implementing server-side rendering or adjusting how your site loads content. Prioritize the content you want to be sure AI bots can access.
5. Implement Structured Data
Structured data is code you add to your pages to help search crawlers and AI systems understand what your content is about. Think of it as providing a summary card that clearly identifies the content type (article, FAQ, how-to guide), key details (author, publish date, main topics), and organizational structure.
Common schema types include Article schema for blog posts, FAQ schema for question-answer content, HowTo schema for step-by-step guides, Organization schema for company pages, and author markup within articles to identify content creators.
While your content might be perfectly clear to human readers, AI systems process thousands of pages and may use structured data to quickly identify the content most relevant to user queries.
Google recommends JSON-LD as the preferred structured data format because it’s easier to implement and doesn’t interfere with your page’s HTML structure.
How To Check if Your Site Uses Structured Data
- Go to search.google.com/test/rich-results and enter your page URL.
- Click “Test URL” and wait for results.
- Look for green checkmarks indicating valid structured data.
- If you see errors or “No structured data found,” you’ll need to add JSON-LD markup.
What To Do if You Find Schema Issues
- Missing structured data: Talk to your web developer about which types of schema to add to your pages.
- Schema errors: Share the specific error messages from Rich Results Tool with your developer to fix syntax or missing properties.
Maintain Technical Health for Durable AI Visibility
AI retrieval fails quietly. Pages don’t error out, they just stop showing up. Use these technical principles as a baseline for site health as your domain evolves, new tooling gets added, or infrastructure changes roll out. When AI visibility drops, rule out technical blockers first.
Director of Technology
Andy Sawyer owns Victorious’ strategic use of technology, overseeing Web Development, Technical SEO, and Technology teams to maximize efficiency and drive value across services.
Follow him on LinkedIn for more technical SEO and web dev insights.
Updated Jan 12, 2026
Continue Your AEO Journey
Show up everywhere
your
audience searches.
Increase brand awareness and engagement with a custom SEO and AEO strategy that puts you in front of prospects wherever they seek information.