The answer-engine optimization checklist: 12 things that decide whether AI recommends your business

We argued in the pillar piece that the new front door to your business is being the answer an AI assistant gives, and that getting there rewards the same fundamentals as a well-built website. This is the working checklist version: twelve concrete things to fix, why each one moves the needle, and how to check it yourself.

Print it, run it against your site, and fix the ones you fail. None of it is exotic; all of it compounds.

Structure: can a machine understand what you are?

1. Add Organization / LocalBusiness JSON-LD. Why: It states your name, address, hours, phone, and category in a format assistants read without guessing. Check: paste your URL into Google’s Rich Results Test. If nothing shows, you have none.

2. Add FAQPage structured data to your FAQ. Why: It hands assistants pre-formatted question-and-answer pairs they can lift directly into a response. Check: same Rich Results Test; look for FAQ items.

3. Use one real <h1> and a logical heading order. Why: Headings are how a parser maps your page. A wall of styled <div>s tells it nothing. Check: view the page outline; it should read like a table of contents.

4. Give every meaningful image descriptive alt text. Why: It’s content a machine can read, and it’s an accessibility requirement either way. Check: no empty alt="" on anything informative.

Content: do you answer the questions people ask?

5. Have a page (or section) per real customer question. Why: Assistants extract answers to specific questions. “How much does X cost,” “do you serve Y area,” “how long does Z take” should each have a plain answer somewhere. Check: list the five questions a customer asks before hiring you. Can you point to where each is answered?

6. Answer concisely before you elaborate. Why: A clear one-or-two-sentence answer up top is what gets quoted; the supporting detail can follow. Check: could someone copy your first two sentences as the answer?

7. Be specific and honest about pricing and scope. Why: Vague “contact us for pricing” gives an assistant nothing, and “starts at $X” is far more likely to be surfaced. Check: is there a real number or range anywhere?

8. Keep your facts current. Why: Stale hours, old services, or last year’s team erode the trust these systems place in your site. Check: when did you last update the about and services pages?

Performance & accessibility: can it be read at all?

9. Render content on the server (or pre-render it). Why: If the real content only appears after JavaScript runs, crawlers and agents often get a blank page. Check: disable JavaScript and reload. Is your content still there?

10. Pass Core Web Vitals, especially INP. Why: Slow, janky pages get crawled less and rank worse, in classic search and AI answers alike. Check: run PageSpeed Insights; aim for green.

11. Meet basic accessibility (WCAG). Why: Semantic, accessible markup is, almost by definition, machine-readable markup, and in places like Ontario it’s a legal requirement too. Check: run a free axe or Lighthouse accessibility scan.

Trust & consistency: do the signals agree?

12. Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere. Why: If your site, Google Business Profile, and old directory listings disagree, an assistant can’t tell which is right, so it may pick wrong or leave you out. Check: search your business name and compare the details across the top results. (This overlaps heavily with classic local SEO.)

The five-minute audit

Once you’ve worked the list, test it the way a customer would:

1. Ask Google’s AI Mode and ChatGPT: “best [your service] in [your city]” and “is [your business] any good.”
2. Ask an assistant to summarize your homepage.
3. If you’re missing, misdescribed, or it can’t parse your site, go back to the item above that explains why.

That’s the whole game: there’s no trick, just a well-structured, fast, honest site that a machine can confidently read and recommend. If you’d rather we run this audit on your site and fix what’s failing, send us the URL. It’s the kind of thing we do every week.