Verdict
Critical AEO gaps at 36/100 - extern.com is largely invisible to AI engines. Key strengths include Q&A Content Format, Table & List Extractability, and Entity Density. Priority gaps: llms.txt File, RSS/Atom Feed, and Content Licensing & AI Permissions. Topic coherence is 0/10, which caps the overall score at 35. Focusing content on core expertise areas is the single highest-impact improvement.
How to Improve
Add a machine-readable llms.txt file at your domain root that describes your site, services, and key pages for AI engines.
Create a comprehensive llms-full.txt with detailed page descriptions, content summaries, and topic taxonomy.
Ensure clean, well-structured HTML with proper meta tags, HTTPS, and parseable content for AI crawlers.
Update robots.txt to explicitly allow AI crawlers and include sitemap directive.
Add rel="canonical" tags to all pages to prevent duplicate content confusion.
Generate a comprehensive sitemap with lastmod dates for all important pages.
Implement hreflang tags and lang attributes so AI engines serve the correct language version when answering queries.
Optimize compression, cache headers, redirect chains, and HTML payload size for faster AI crawler access.
Trim oversized HTML, excessive DOM nodes, and large inline payloads that slow AI crawlers.
Minimize blocking scripts and stylesheets in <head> to improve content availability for AI crawlers.
Top Opportunities10
Ensure blog content consistently covers your core expertise areas rather than scattering across unrelated topics. AI engines build authority models - a site about "Medicare coverage" that also publishes about humidifiers and groceries dilutes its topical authority.
Sections within pages contain identical or near-identical text. LLMs may flag this as low-quality or thin content, reducing citation authority. Rewrite duplicate blocks with unique angles.
Include "our analysis", "our data", "our testing" phrases backed by original research or proprietary data. 52.2% of AI-cited posts contain owned data signals.
Write 20-25 word self-contained answer sentences immediately after each H2 heading. 72.4% of AI-cited posts use this pattern - it gives engines a ready-made snippet to quote.
Add specific numbers, percentages, statistics, and data points throughout your content. Fact-dense content gives AI engines concrete data to cite rather than vague claims.
Expand articles to 1000+ words with structured H2/H3 sections, comparison tables, and expert analysis. Thin content (under 300 words) is rarely cited by AI engines. Deep, well-structured articles demonstrate expertise.
Add inline citations to external sources, "According to [Source]..." attribution phrases, and a Sources section at the end of key articles.
Add Organization schema with consistent name, address, phone (NAP). Include sameAs links to social profiles and authoritative directories to strengthen entity recognition.
The same paragraphs appear on multiple pages. AI engines may only index one version and ignore the rest. Rewrite shared content so each page offers a unique perspective.
Create a dedicated FAQ page with FAQPage schema markup. Cover common questions about your products, services, and industry to become a direct answer source for AI engines.
Fix It With AI45
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