# Blog GEO: AI citation optimization audit Human Guide

## What This Is For
AI citation readiness audit as part of SEO, covering classic Google search and AI search surfaces together. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for search and SEO workflows: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Blog GEO: AI citation optimization audit agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for blog GEO: AI citation optimization audit.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Blog GEO: AI citation optimization audit guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Self-contained, evidence-backed explanations can aid reuse, but Google
- Comparison tables with semantic headers may improve extractability, but do not
- AI Overviews coverage is methodology-dependent: cite a dated range, not a
- Full content text and word count
- Heading structure (H1, H2, H3 hierarchy)
- Individual paragraphs and their word counts
- Schema markup (JSON-LD, microdata, RDFa)
- robots.txt mentions or meta robots directives
- Comparison tables and their HTML structure
- 4 pts: 80%+ sections have citable passages
- 3 pts: All three criteria met
- 3 pts: All four criteria met

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Cross-reference, Evidence Discipline, Audit Process, Step 1: Read Content, Step 2: Evidence-Backed Citability (4 pts), Step 3: Purpose Fit and Reader Utility (3 pts), Step 4: Entity Clarity (3 pts), Step 5: Content Structure for Extraction (3 pts), Step 6: AI Crawler Accessibility (2 pts), Step 7: Platform-Specific Analysis.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- special markup, llms.txt requirement, or separate GEO/AEO playbook is required
- Comparison tables with semantic headers may improve extractability, but do not
- **Scoring:** Count important sections meeting the evidence and completeness
- criteria. Do not score section length.
- | Useful section openings | Important sections state the point without throat-clearing |
- | Evidence-backed explanations | Important reusable claims carry enough context and source support |
- | Rendered content | Important content is present in the rendered DOM and accessible to the target crawler |
- | Google visibility | Normal crawlability and indexability for Googlebot. No special GEO/AEO file or markup is required for Google AI features |

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Blog GEO: AI citation optimization audit human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the agricidaniel/claude-blog skill entry for `blog-geo`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Blog GEO: AI Citation Optimization Audit

Scores blog posts for AI citation readiness across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude,
Gemini, Copilot, You.com, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode as one SEO
workflow, not a separate discipline. Generates a 0-100 internal AI Citation
Readiness heuristic with platform-specific recommendations. The score is not a
calibrated probability of citation.

Google's 2026-05-15 guidance frames generative-AI optimization as SEO: no
special markup, llms.txt requirement, or separate GEO/AEO playbook is required
for Google visibility. Use GEO/AEO as shorthand labels only.

## Cross-reference

This skill covers FLOW surface 3 (AI assistant citations: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, You.com) and contributes to surface 2 (SERP plus AI Overviews). Surface mapping: `skills/blog/references/flow-alignment.md`.

For directly relevant AI-citation prompts (AI-supporting-pages rewrite,
evidence-based quality follow-up, ChatGPT discovery, visibility prompts), see
`/blog flow optimize`.

## Evidence Discipline

Use numeric AI-citation benchmarks only when the report includes a source block
with URL, publisher, methodology, sample size, engine or version, query class,
retrieval date, and expiry date. If any field is missing, label the benchmark as
directional or remove the number. Default heuristics:

- Self-contained, evidence-backed explanations can aid reuse, but Google
  prescribes no passage-length or "chunking" requirement.
- Comparison tables with semantic headers may improve extractability, but do not
  cite an uplift without a dated source block.
- AI Overviews coverage is methodology-dependent: cite a dated range, not a
  fixed point.

## Audit Process

### Step 1: Read Content

Extract from the blog post:
- Full content text and word count
- Heading structure (H1, H2, H3 hierarchy)
- Individual paragraphs and their word counts
- FAQ sections (if present)
- Schema markup (JSON-LD, microdata, RDFa)
- robots.txt mentions or meta robots directives
- Any TL;DR or summary boxes
- Comparison tables and their HTML structure
- Numbered/ordered lists
- Definition-style formatting

### Step 2: Evidence-Backed Citability (4 pts)

Check each section between headings for AI-extractable passages:

| Check | Criteria |
|-------|----------|
| Context independence | Each passage makes sense extracted from surrounding context |
| Claim structure | Passages contain: specific claim + supporting evidence + source attribution |
| Completeness | Passage answers a question without requiring reader to read adjacent sections |

**Scoring:** Count important sections meeting the evidence and completeness
criteria. Do not score section length.
- 4 pts: 80%+ sections have citable passages
- 3 pts: 60-79%
- 2 pts: 40-59%
- 1 pt: 20-39%
- 0 pts: <20%

### Step 3: Purpose Fit and Reader Utility (3 pts)

Check heading format and answer structure:

| Check | Criteria |
|-------|----------|
| Clear purpose | The introduction identifies the page's topic, audience, and reader task |
| Useful section openings | Important sections state the point without throat-clearing |
| Intent-matched format | Declarative headings, questions, FAQs, tables, and lists are used only when they fit the material |

**Scoring:**
- 3 pts: All three criteria met