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ANI checklist

ANI/Measuring and Improving ANI

ANI Checklist — Everything Your Site Needs for AI Crawlers to Read, Index, and Attribute Your Content

This checklist covers every ANI signal that determines whether AI crawlers can access your site, correctly parse your content, and accurately attribute it to you as the author or publisher. A site that completes every item has eliminated the primary technical barriers to AI indexing and established the foundational signals that make AEO and GEO optimization fully effective.

AEOGEOSEOANIASI

The direct answer

This checklist covers every ANI signal that determines whether AI crawlers can access your site, correctly parse your content, and accurately attribute it to you as the author or publisher. A site that completes every item has eliminated the primary technical barriers to AI indexing and established the foundational signals that make AEO and GEO optimization fully effective.

Part 1: Crawler Access

1
GPTBot allowed in robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot with Allow: / present in Rank Math > General Settings > robots.txt editor.
2
PerplexityBot allowed in robots.txt
User-agent: PerplexityBot with Allow: / present.
3
ClaudeBot and Google-Extended allowed
Both user agents present with Allow: / in robots.txt.
4
Security plugin not blocking AI crawlers
Wordfence, Sucuri, or iThemes Security settings checked — no bot blocking rules affecting AI crawler user agents.
5
llms.txt live and complete
Accessible at yoursite.com/llms.txt with site description, core page links, and About page link.
6
AI crawler visits confirmed in server logs
Raw access logs checked — GPTBot and/or PerplexityBot entries present in recent log files.

Part 2: HTML Structure

7
Exactly one H1 per page
Verified via page source search for <h1 on all pillar pages and key content pages.
8
Correct heading hierarchy — no skipped levels
H1 > H2 > H3 sequence verified in Gutenberg Document Overview on all content pages.
9
No Word paste artifacts on key pages
Page source checked for MsoNormal and excessive inline style= attributes on all pillar pages.
10
Semantic HTML structure present
Page source contains <main>, <article>, and <nav> elements from theme output.

Part 3: Attribution

11
WordPress user profile fully completed
First name, last name, biographical info with expertise statement, website URL, and profile photo all present.
12
Organization schema on homepage — verified green
Rich Results Test shows Organization or Person schema with green checkmark on homepage.
13
Person schema on /about with social profiles
Rich Results Test shows Person schema on About page with name, description, and Same As social profile URLs.
14
Article schema with named author on all posts
Rich Results Test on a blog post shows Article schema with author name (not admin) and both datePublished and dateModified.
15
Simple Author Box visible on all articles and pages
Author bio card displaying with name, photo, bio text, and social links on all content pages.
16
Canonical tags present and correct on all pages
Page source for key pages shows rel=canonical pointing to the correct HTTPS URL. Rank Math adds these automatically when correctly configured.
Scoring your checklist

1 to 5 complete: ANI foundation not yet established — start with crawler access (items 1 through 6). 6 to 10 complete: Crawler access resolved, HTML structure work needed. 11 to 14 complete: Strong ANI foundation — attribution work will compound your existing signals. 15 to 16 complete: Complete ANI implementation — your content is maximally accessible, readable, and attributable by AI systems.

Implementation tip

Use the free TeachMeOptimization scanner to check your site’s ANI signals before and after implementing the techniques in this guide. The scanner evaluates all six optimization disciplines simultaneously and gives you a trackable score to monitor improvement over time.

How ANI, AEO, GEO, SEO, and ASI work together here

ANI is the technical foundation that makes every other optimization discipline effective. Every improvement you make to your crawler access, HTML structure, or author attribution directly benefits your AEO citation rates, your GEO topical authority recognition, and your SEO technical health simultaneously. ANI work is not siloed — it compounds across all five disciplines at once.

Related ANI guides

ANI audit process · ANI checklist · What happens when AI crawlers can’t read your site

The complete ANI guide library at teachmeoptimization.com/ani covers all 24 topics across five categories — from fundamental concepts to step-by-step implementation and quarterly audit processes.

Common mistakes to avoid

The most important advice about this checklist is to work through it in order. Crawler access items 1 through 6 must be resolved first — if AI crawlers cannot access your site, fixing HTML structure and attribution is wasted effort. Attribution items 11 through 16 are largely one-time setup that pay ongoing dividends. HTML structure items 7 through 10 require ongoing attention as new content is published.

Quick implementation checklist

  • Work through the checklist in numbered order — do not skip to later sections
  • Fix every crawler access item before moving to HTML structure items
  • Complete all attribution items in one focused 2-hour session
  • Bookmark this checklist for quarterly review use
  • Share checklist completion progress with any team members who edit content
  • Run the TeachMeOptimization scanner before and after to track score improvement

How this connects to the full ANI system

This checklist represents the complete ANI signal foundation. A site with all 16 items checked has eliminated the primary technical barriers to AI indexing and established the attribution framework that makes citations confident and consistent. For the complete ANI implementation guide covering all 24 topics in sequence, see the full ANI guide at teachmeoptimization.com/ani.

Measuring improvement

After implementing the steps in this guide, revisit your server access logs in 2 to 4 weeks to confirm AI crawler visits. Run your site through the free TeachMeOptimization scanner to check your ANI score before and after. Track your AI citation rate monthly using the manual Perplexity and ChatGPT audit process described in the ANI audit guide — citation rate improvement is the ultimate measure of whether your ANI implementation is working.

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