What you will leave with
A sprint report showing shipped changes, before/after metrics and the next decision for every experiment.
AEO becomes useful when it is an operating loop, not a launch project. Every sprint starts with observed gaps, ships a small number of controlled changes, and ends with a decision.
Prioritize with the opportunity score
Opportunity scoreBusiness value × prompt frequency × gap confidence ÷ implementation effortUse 1–5 ratings. The score organizes judgment; it does not replace it.
Week 1 · DiagnoseBaseline promptsVerify crawlersMap winning sources
Week 2 · BuildRewrite 3 answer blocksPublish 1 data assetFix access errors
Week 3 · DistributeTarget 10 cited pagesUpdate internal linksRequest re-crawls naturally
Week 4 · MeasureRun same promptsCompare answer sourcesScale / revise / stop
Example experiment ledger
ChangeTargetResultDecision
Rewrite pricing FAQ3 prompts0 → 2 citationsScale pattern
Publish llms.txtAccessNo measurable changeMaintain only
Original benchmark5 source gaps2 third-party mentionsPromote again
Generic guest post1 domainNo tracked impactStop
Read the result correctly
What happened after the sprint?
Citations rose and revenue followedScale the content/source pattern to adjacent prompt clusters.
Citations rose, no traffic yetCheck position, answer intent and whether the citation invites a click.
Mentions rose, citations did notYour entity is recognized; strengthen first-party evidence and link-worthy sources.
Nothing movedVerify crawl/freshness, inspect newly winning sources, then revise the hypothesis—not the metric.
The executive report
- Prompt set and engines stayed constant.
- Every shipped change has a date and owner.
- Cited, mentioned and absent are reported separately.
- Share of voice includes named competitors.
- Referral sessions, conversions and revenue are shown where available.
- Next sprint decisions are tied to evidence.
Field assignment
Scenario
Your baseline is 20% share of voice. You have access issues on two pages, five “mentioned” prompts and one strong dataset ready to publish.
Prioritize fixes by blocked opportunity, not ease alone.
Assign one owner and measurement date to every change.
Re-run the unchanged prompt set and compare citations, sources and revenue.
Definition of done
A sprint report showing shipped changes, before/after metrics and the next decision for every experiment.