The SEO and AI Search Checklist: 57 Checks, in Order

This is the working checklist we run against a site, in the order we run it. Every item links to the guide that explains how to do it, so you can work through it yourself rather than take our word for anything.

The order matters more than the list. Access before content, content before authority, and measurement before any of it, so you can tell what actually changed. Items marked with a note are the ones most people get wrong.

Foundations: can search engines and AI reach you at all

Speed and technical health

Queries: know what people actually ask

Content: write it so it can be ranked and quoted

Authority: signals from outside your own site

AI search: the second surface

If you operate in Arabic or the Gulf

Measure, then decide what to do next

Go deeper on any of it

Want us to run it for you

Frequently asked questions

What order should I work through this in?

Top to bottom. Access and indexation first, because nothing else matters if crawlers cannot reach the page. Then technical health, then query research, then content, then authority, then AI search. Measurement runs alongside all of it, not at the end.

How long does a full pass take?

A first pass on a mid-sized site takes 20 to 40 hours of actual work, spread over a few weeks. The technical stages are fast and produce immediate movement. The content and authority stages compound over three to six months.

Do I need to do the AI search section?

Only if being mentioned in AI answers matters to your business. It is a real surface, but AI referrals are still around 0.14% of all web visits, so the case for it is mostly brand and defensive rather than traffic acquisition. Do the foundations first regardless, because they feed both.

Is this checklist different for Arabic sites?

The foundations are identical. What differs is that Arabic AI answers draw on a much smaller pool of quality sources, so a single well-built Arabic page can become a defining source quickly, and query language accounts for a large share of the variance in AI answers, which means Arabic needs its own tracked prompt set rather than a translation of the English one.

Related guides

• The SEO Guide: How Search Works and What Actually Moves Rankings
• The GEO Guide: Generative Engine Optimization, End to End
• The Technical SEO Guide: Crawling, Rendering, Indexing and Speed
• The Growth Guide: Traffic, Conversion and Demand