The Technical GEO Audit

Is your content machine-readable? This checklist defines the 2026 baseline for getting cited in AI Overviews and SearchGPT responses. Unlike a traditional SEO audit, we focus on RAG Extraction Velocity.

Pillar 1: Infrastructure (The Retrieval Layer)

• [ ] Time to First Byte (TTFB): Is the HTML payload served in under 200ms globally? (Required for LLM crawler timeout safety).
• [ ] DOM Depth: Is your average DOM depth under 10 levels? (Reduces token noise in context windows).
• [ ] Text-to-HTML Ratio: Is your content-to-code ratio above 50% for AI user-agents?
• [ ] Edge SEO: Are your top 100 pages served via Edge caching (Vercel/Cloudflare)?

Pillar 2: Content (The Extraction Layer)

• [ ] Inverted Pyramid Logic: Does the page start with a direct, quotable answer?
• [ ] Statistic Monopoly: Does every page contain at least 2 unique data points or survey results?
• [ ] Vector Optimization: Have you reformatted paragraph comparisons into HTML elements?

  [ ] Information Gain: Does the page provide content not found in top 5 traditional SERP results?

  Pillar 3: Schema (The Grounding Layer)

  • [ ] Nested FAQPage: Are critical questions nested in valid FAQ schema?
  • [ ] Entity Mentions: Does the JSON-LD link to at least 3 authoritative entities via the mentions property?
  • [ ] Authorship Verification: Is the Person schema linked to verified third-party profiles (LinkedIn/ResearchGate)?

  Technical Benchmark Reference

  Audit Point	Acceptable SEO	Mandatory GEO (LLM)
  TTFB	<800ms	<200ms
  Tables	CSS Grid/Flex	Native HTML Answers End of Article First Paragraph Schema Basic Article FAQ + Mentions Pillar 4: Off-Page (The Authority Layer) [ ] Sentiment Audit: Ask Perplexity/Claude to summarize your brand reputation. Are there negative vectors? [ ] Co-occurrence: Is your brand name appearing in forum discussions (Reddit/Quora) alongside your head terms? Frequently Asked Questions How often should I perform a GEO audit?+ Perform a technical audit quarterly and a sentiment/citation audit monthly. LLM model weights and citation algorithms evolve faster than traditional search indices. Which tool is best for checking GEO latency?+ Standard PageSpeed Insights is a start, but you should use Alpue's GEO Radar to specifically simulate LLM crawler performance and extraction confidence. What if my site fails the DOM depth check?+ Implement dynamic rendering. Serve a stripped-down, high-density HTML version specifically to AI user-agents (GPT-User, Google-Extended) while keeping the rich UI for human users. Recommended Resources Technical GEO Strategy Read Article→ What IS GEO Read Article→ HOW TO Track AI Mentions Read Article→