To get cited by Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude, a page needs five things on top of normal SEO: a direct answer in the opening lines, an FAQ block, valid schema, real outbound citations, and internal links from siblings in the same topic cluster. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the operational discipline of working that checklist URL by URL. Dock is where the agent's per-URL audit progress, gap rows, and editor sign-off live, so the next agent picking up the queue starts from where the last one stopped.
What Dock holds vs what the platforms hold
Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, Screaming Frog, and Clearscope stay the system of record for the raw SEO data: rankings, backlinks, crawl results, the keyword corpus. Dock is the system of record for what the agent interprets from that data: the prioritized AEO fix list, the schema gap row, the FAQ that still needs writing, the citation the editor approved. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record (gsc_query_id, ahrefs_backlink_id, the URL it audits), plus the agent identity, the decision, the reviewer, and the timestamp. When the agent needs current rankings or crawl state, it re-fetches via fresh API reads. Dock is the persistent interpretive layer that survives across sessions, so the AEO program does not restart from zero every Monday.
The AEO audit workspace
| url | gsc_query_id | direct_answer | faqpage_schema | citations | internal_links_in | gap | agent | reviewer | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /blog/agent-identity | q_44912 | pass | missing | 0 | 7 | add FAQ block + 2 citations | mei | govind | approved |
| /blog/agents-render-html | q_44918 | pass | pass | 2 | 3 | raise internal-link density to 6 | mei | govind | in review |
| /blog/seo-content-audit | q_44731 | weak | missing | 1 | 5 | rewrite opener to <100 word direct answer | mei | govind | in progress |
The table is the queue. Each row is one URL, one round of remediation, one named reviewer. The gsc_query_id is the pointer back to Search Console, so the agent can re-pull current impressions before deciding whether the round is worth shipping.
A worked round
The agent picks up /blog/seo-content-audit. It re-fetches the page HTML, runs the AEO checklist, and posts three gap rows in Dock: the opener is 180 words (target under 100), the FAQPage schema is missing, and the page is cited by only one sibling. The agent drafts the remediation in a Dock doc, links the doc back to the row, and tags govind for review. Govind approves the opener rewrite, asks for one more citation, and clicks the consent gate. The agent ships the patch, re-pulls the URL, and marks the row shipped. The next agent on the queue reads the row history and knows not to re-audit this URL until the next monthly sweep.
The same pattern runs across the Clearscope content workflow and the content audit queue. The rows interlock because they all point back to the same URL identifier.
Why this matters
Attribution. When a page starts getting cited by Perplexity or ChatGPT, the editor can scroll the Dock row history and see exactly which AEO change unlocked the citation: the FAQ block, the schema fix, the new internal link. Without the row history, the team is guessing.
Audit. Every remediation carries the agent identity and the reviewer name. Six months later, when a page regresses, the audit log shows who shipped what and when, and the identity record ties the change back to a named agent rather than a service account.
Daily driver. The SEO editor opens one workspace in the morning, sees the queue, approves the rounds that are ready, and ships. The agent does the audit work overnight against the rendered HTML. The editor never opens five tabs to reconstruct what changed.
Start your AEO program inside the Dock-for-SEO pillar workspace.
FAQ
What is AEO and how is it different from SEO? SEO optimizes for ranking in search results. AEO optimizes for being the cited source inside an AI-generated answer on Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's AI Overviews. The checklist overlaps with SEO on technical fundamentals and diverges on direct-answer structure, FAQ schema, and citation density.
Does AEO require a separate workspace from regular SEO? No. The same Dock workspace holds both. AEO runs as an additional column set on the per-URL row: direct-answer pass/fail, FAQPage schema pass/fail, citation count, internal-link-in count. The agent audits both layers in one pass.
How does Dock know which page the agent is auditing? Each row carries the URL plus the platform pointer (Search Console query id, Ahrefs URL id). The agent re-fetches platform data on every round, so the row reflects current state rather than a stale snapshot.
Can a human override an agent's AEO call? Yes. The reviewer column is mandatory. The agent proposes the fix, the editor approves or rejects it, and the consent gate logs the decision before the patch ships.