Checklist: AI readiness on public pages

"Are we AI ready?" is a bad checklist item until you define the observer. SlaySlop defines Answer-engine readiness as reviewing "signals that help AI crawlers access and understand public content." That sentence is the checklist. Chatbot demos are optional entertainment.

SEO and AEO on SlaySlop crawls public pages, inspects search signals, then checks whether public content gives answer engines enough context to cite you. Sibling checks, Page titles, Meta descriptions, Structured data, Robots rules, Sitemap, Social metadata, feed the same story.

Outcome

Key public routes can be crawled, expose usable titles and descriptions after render, provide machine-readable or otherwise clear context where you claim expertise, and do not contradict themselves with robots or sitemap mistakes.

Boundaries

Read-only. Permission required. Not a pentest. Readiness does not measure brand sentiment inside a chat UI. It does not bypass Disallow. It does not see private drafts. A green Social metadata row is not the same as readiness.

Checklist

1. List the URLs you want cited (product, pricing, docs, policy, flagship guides). If the list is empty, stop and write one.
2. Confirm robots.txt is reachable and does not disallow those routes. Robots rules checks whether robots.txt is reachable and how it guides crawlers.
3. Confirm sitemap discovery/reachability for the same host family. Sitemap checks sitemap discovery and reachability.
4. For each URL, verify descriptive titles and non-weak descriptions after render. Page titles checks for descriptive title metadata on crawled pages. Meta descriptions finds missing or weak description metadata.
5. Check structured data where you claim rich context. Structured data reviews machine-readable page context exposed to crawlers.
6. Skim social metadata if those URLs are shared in previews, but do not confuse previews with answer-engine understanding.
7. Run Answer-engine readiness and read findings with the evidence links.
8. Fix indexability and missing context before microcopy polish.
9. Rescan after deploy. Watch for noindex leftovers.

Use the browser-backed scan for JS-heavy templates. Curl is a smoke test.

Pitfalls

Publishing an llms.txt while blocking /docs in robots. Stuffing synonyms into titles until they stop being descriptive. Treating a single chatbot paraphrase as readiness. Skipping rescan after the SEO plugin helped.

Related next step

Run the checklist on the citeable URL list, fix blockers, rescan Answer-engine readiness. Soft start: slayslop.com/products/seo-aeo or a permissioned scan from the homepage.

Weekly maintenance without theater

After the first pass, keep a light cadence: when you ship a new docs section, re-run items 2-5 on those URLs only. When someone temporarily noindexes a launch page, put a calendar reminder to remove it. Answer-engine readiness fails in small, boring ways more often than in dramatic content gaps.

If you use fix prompts from SlaySlop, paste them with the URL still inside. Agents rewrite the wrong MDX file when you strip context. Rescan beats another strategy workshop.

Content depth without stuffing

When understanding fails because the page is a shell, write the missing explanations on the page users share. Do not append synonym loops to the title. Descriptive titles and clear body copy beat a pile of AI buzzphrases. Structured data should mirror what the page actually says. Invented FAQ schema on an empty marketing blurb is how you create the next cleanup ticket.

Editors should own the citeable URL list with SEO. Engineering owns robots and deploy-time noindex flags. If either side is missing from the checklist review, readiness will regress on the next weekly ship.