Skip to content
AEO Canon · the reference for answer-engine optimization
AEOCanon
Intermediate6 lessons · ~4h · Practitioner tier

Technical AEO

Make your site technically eligible to be cited — crawlable, renderable, fast, and verifiable. A Practitioner-tier course that turns the Technical cluster into a working checklist and earns a stackable Tier 2 badge.

By Burke Atkerson, Founder & Principal AEO Strategist
Start the course — Lesson 1 →

What you'll learn

  • ✓Allow the right AI crawlers in robots.txt.
  • ✓Confirm crawlers can read your rendered content.
  • ✓Fix client-rendering that breaks citation eligibility.
  • ✓Read server logs for AI crawler activity.
  • ✓Improve page speed as a citation factor.

Syllabus

  1. Allow AI Crawlers in robots.txtAI engines can only cite pages their crawlers may fetch. This lesson deploys a verified, permissive robots.txt.Reuses: How to Allow AI Crawlers in robots.txt
  2. Which Crawlers to AllowCrawlers do different jobs — search, user-fetch, and training. This lesson decides which to allow for citations.Reuses: Which AI Crawlers Should You Allow?
  3. Test What Crawlers SeeMost AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so test the raw HTML, not the rendered DOM. This lesson runs the JS-disabled and curl tests.Reuses: How to Check if AI Crawlers Can Read Your Site
  4. Why JavaScript Breaks CitationsVercel and MERJ found AI crawlers execute essentially no JavaScript. This lesson fixes client-rendering with SSR or SSG.Reuses: Why JavaScript Breaks Your AI Citation Eligibility
  5. Read Server Logs for Crawler ActivityServer logs are the ground truth for crawler activity that analytics misses. This lesson greps for AI crawlers and reads status codes.Reuses: How to Read Server Logs for AI Crawler Activity
  6. Page Speed and CitationsSE Ranking found fast pages earn far more AI citations. This lesson measures and improves server response time.Reuses: Does Page Speed Affect AI Citations?

Practitioner tier · Tier 2 Certificate

Finish all 6 lessons to earn your Tier 2 Certificate.

Complete every lesson and pass the knowledge checks to claim a shareable Tier 2 Certificate — proof you've mastered Technical AEO. Practitioner certificates stack toward full AEO mastery.

Begin Lesson 1 →