The most reliable way to keep your website visible in both Google and AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity is to run structured weekly audits across four layers:
- SEO – Technical & on-page search optimisation
- AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation (how AI reads and cites you)
- GEO – Both Generative Engine Optimisation and Geographic (Local) Optimisation
- SXO – Search Experience Optimisation (UX + engagement from a search/AI perspective)
Tools like SiteSignal automate this, but the underlying framework matters even if you audit manually. Weekly audits aren’t vanity—they’re how you stay aligned with constantly shifting search and AI behaviour instead of reacting after traffic drops.
Why Weekly Audits Matter Now
Your website is not static:
- Content gets added or edited
- Plugins, themes, or apps are updated
- Servers, CDNs, and caching rules change
- Schema, meta tags, and internal links get tweaked or break
Search engines and AI models re-evaluate those signals continuously. A “one-and-done” audit gives you a snapshot. A weekly audit gives you a timeline:
- You spot issues early instead of discovering them after a ranking or visibility crash
- You see how changes actually impact crawling, rankings, and AI mentions
- You keep technical debt small instead of letting problems stack up for months
Think of it as a health check for how humans and machines understand and trust your website.
The Four Pillars of Modern Visibility
1. SEO – Technical & Structural Foundation
This is the baseline. If your SEO fundamentals are broken, everything else is weaker.
A weekly SEO audit should review:
- Indexation & crawlability
- Are key pages indexable?
- Any accidental
noindex, blocked paths, or robots.txt issues?
- Title tags, meta descriptions, canonical links
- Clear, unique, and mapped to correct URLs
- No conflicting canonicals or duplicates
- Schema markup health
- Valid JSON-LD (no broken types, IDs, or fields)
- Organisation, Article, Product, FAQ, LocalBusiness where relevant
- Performance & Core Web Vitals
- Load speed, responsiveness, layout stability
- Any regressions after design or plugin changes
- Internal linking & page architecture
- Key pages not orphaned
- Logical pathways from high-authority pages to important money pages
Strong SEO doesn’t guarantee AI visibility—but weak SEO absolutely limits it.
2. AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation
AEO looks at your site the way answer engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, etc.) do:
“Can I understand this page, extract a clean answer, and trust it enough to reuse?”
A weekly AEO audit should focus on:
- Question–answer structure
- Do your pages clearly answer real user questions?
- Are FAQs, how-tos, and definitions easy to lift into an answer?
- Heading hierarchy & clarity
- H1/H2/H3 used to structure topics logically
- Sections that map to specific intents (“What is…”, “How to…”, “Best tools for…”)
- Entity clarity
- Your brand, products, locations, and people clearly defined
- Consistent naming across pages and properties
- Structured data for answers
- FAQPage, HowTo, Product, Article schemas implemented cleanly
- Content that matches the structured data (no fake markup)
- Evidence & trust signals
- Statistics, examples, and references where appropriate
- Content that reads factual, not fluffy
AEO is what makes your content eligible to be chosen as an answer when AI systems respond to prompts in your niche.
3. GEO – Generative & Geographic Optimisation
We use GEO deliberately in a dual sense:
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO-A) – How well AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) can understand, recall, and cite your brand when answering prompts.
- Geographic / Local Optimisation (GEO-L) – How clearly you signal location, service area, and local relevance.
Together, these decide where and in what context you show up.
GEO-A – Generative Engine Optimisation
A weekly GEO-A pass should look at:
- Brand mention readiness
- Clear “About” content that defines who you are and what you do
- Consistent brand + domain references across your site and profiles
- Topical authority in your category
- In-depth guides and resources on key topics
- Content that aligns with how users actually phrase prompts
- Clean entity relationships
- Organisation ↔ Products ↔ Locations ↔ People clearly connected
- Schema linking these entities where possible
- Off-site signals that AI may see
- Mentions in relevant articles, directories, or communities
- Consistent descriptions across platforms
GEO-L – Geographic / Local Optimisation
For any business with geographic relevance, a weekly GEO-L check should cover:
- NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone)
- Same formatting across website, Google Business Profile, directories, and social
- Local schema & business profiles
- LocalBusiness schema in place and valid
- Google Business Profile updated (hours, services, photos, posts)
- Location and service-area clarity
- Pages that clearly state where you operate
- Region-specific content where meaningful
- Map and directory presence
- Key listings claimed and corrected
- No duplicate or outdated entries
GEO makes sure that when AI or search engines decide who to recommend, your brand is understood both as an entity and in the right region.
4. SXO – Search Experience Optimisation (UX from a Visibility Lens)
SXO is essentially UX + engagement, viewed through the lens of search and AI:
“If we send users here, will they stay, understand, and act?”
A weekly SXO audit should cover:
- Speed & responsiveness on real devices
- Mobile and desktop experiences tested
- Any regressions after design/content changes
- Readability & layout
- Clear typography and spacing
- Obvious hierarchy (what matters most on the page)
- Calls-to-action and next steps
- Does every important page have a clear next action?
- Does the layout guide users or confuse them?
- Engagement & behaviour metrics
- Pages with high bounce + low dwell time flagged
- Navigation depth and task completion monitored
Good SXO doesn’t just “make users happy”. It sends strong signals back to algorithms:
“This site is useful, understandable, and worth recommending again.”
How These Four Layers Reinforce Each Other
These aren’t four random acronyms—they form a stack:
- SEO gives you a clean, crawlable, structurally sound base.
- AEO makes your content easy to quote in answers.
- GEO makes you visible in the right context—by topic and by location.
- SXO proves users actually get value when they arrive.
When you run weekly audits across all four:
- You catch technical issues before they turn into traffic loss
- You keep content aligned with how humans and AI currently ask questions
- You stay consistent across locations, entities, and profiles
- You protect both rankings and AI mentions from silent decay
That’s the difference between “we ranked once” and “we’re stable and discoverable all year”.
Why Weekly (Not Quarterly) Audits Are the New Default
Quarterly audits worked when:
- Algorithms changed slowly
- Most traffic was classic organic search
- Sites were simpler and updated less often
Now:
- AI models and search experiments roll out continuously
- Plugins, apps, and third-party scripts change your site without warning
- Small technical issues can quietly hurt both rankings and AI visibility
A weekly cadence gives you:
- Early detection – misconfigured caching, broken schema, blocked pages
- Trend visibility – minor dips you’d miss on quarterly views
- Tighter feedback loops – you can see if a fix actually worked in days, not months
You’re not doing a full technical teardown every week. You’re running a repeatable, focused checklist that catches drift early.
Tools like SiteSignal simply automate those recurring checks and surface what changed. You can run similar logic manually with separate tools—it just costs more time and discipline.
How SiteSignal Fits Into This Framework (Without the Hype)
Whether you use SiteSignal or not, this is the core model:
- SEO – Technical & structural health
- AEO – AI answer readiness
- GEO (A + L) – Generative + Geographic optimisation
- SXO – Experience and engagement from a search/AI perspective
SiteSignal’s weekly audits are built to:
- Run this four-layer checklist automatically
- Track changes and regressions over time
- Flag issues before they impact visibility
- Combine site health and AI visibility in the same view
If you’re tired of doing ten separate checks across five tools every time something feels “off”, that’s where an integrated audit platform actually earns its keep.
Final Thoughts
In 2025, visibility is no longer just “Where do we rank on Google for this keyword?”
It’s:
- Can search engines crawl and understand us? (SEO)
- Can AI tools quote us confidently in their answers? (AEO & GEO-A)
- Do we appear in the right locations and markets? (GEO-L)
- Do users stay, understand, and act when they land? (SXO)
Weekly audits across SEO, AEO, GEO, and SXO turn that from a guess into a system.
Whether you manage one website or a portfolio of client sites, the question isn’t:
“Should we do weekly audits?”
It’s:
“Do we want to find out about problems when traffic drops, or a week before it happens?”
