Weak AI visibility with 21 of 53 criteria passing. Biggest gap: llms.txt file.
Verdict
Critical AEO gaps at 43/100 - southalabama.edu is largely invisible to AI engines. Key strengths include Fact & Data Density, Cross-Page Duplicate Content, and Entity Density. Priority gaps: llms.txt File, Schema.org Structured Data, and Comprehensive FAQ Section. Topic coherence is 4/10, which caps the overall score at 55. 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.
Update robots.txt to explicitly allow AI crawlers and include sitemap directive.
Add rel="canonical" tags to all pages to prevent duplicate content confusion.
Minimize blocking scripts and stylesheets in <head> to improve content availability for AI crawlers.
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.
117/133 images lack explicit width/height - the most common cause of layout shift (CLS)
Optimize compression, cache headers, redirect chains, and HTML payload size for faster AI crawler access.
Ensure clean, well-structured HTML with proper meta tags, HTTPS, and parseable content for AI crawlers.
Trim oversized HTML, excessive DOM nodes, and large inline payloads that slow AI crawlers.
Top Opportunities10
View allPublish original research, statistics, case studies, or proprietary data that AI engines can cite. Unique data points make your content a primary source rather than a derivative one.
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.
Ensure every question-format heading (H2/H3) is followed by a direct answer paragraph. This pattern is ideal for AI engine snippet extraction.
Add question-based headings (H2/H3) throughout your content. Use "What is...", "How does...", "Why should..." patterns that match how users query AI assistants.
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.
Place a concise 40-80 word answer block in the first 300 words of each page. Avoid throat-clearing openers like "In this article..." and lead with the answer.
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.
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 concise, standalone answer paragraphs (2-3 sentences) immediately after question headings. These "snippet-ready" paragraphs are ideal for AI engine citations.
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.