---
title: SEO Playbook — On-Page, Off-Page, and GEO/AEO Ranking Factors
description: Comprehensive SEO reference covering on-page parameters, off-page signals, Core Web Vitals, and GEO/AEO for AI answer engines. Source: madebyaris/rankmyseo OSS toolkit.
status: active
category: technical
tags: [seo, web-vitals, geo, aeo, structured-data, content-strategy, rankmyseo]
draft: true
created: 2026-07-29
updated: 2026-07-29
origin: buzz://d8a718be-031f-4a6e-9f5c-a55466641654/efbe934206e056b0ada5fc080f0d64947c32d42999d08ded8e69a19b78969161
---

# SEO Playbook — On-Page, Off-Page, and GEO/AEO

## Summary

A practitioner reference for what makes a site rank, covering on-page SEO parameters, off-page authority signals, Core Web Vitals thresholds, and the emerging frontier of GEO/AEO (being cited by AI answer engines). Sourced from the RankMySEO open-source toolkit by Aris Setiawan (@madebyaris), an Indonesian developer from Sidoarjo.

## Research Question

What are the concrete, measurable SEO parameters that affect search ranking, and how do they map to an audit tool?

## Scope

- On-page SEO: metadata, content quality, HTML structure, media
- Off-page SEO: backlinks, brand signals, local SEO, digital PR
- Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, CLS thresholds (2026)
- GEO/AEO: optimization for AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity
- Not covered: PPC/paid search, social media marketing, content writing tips

## Key Findings

- **SEO has five pillars**: Technical SEO (foundation), On-Page (content & HTML), Off-Page (authority & trust), UX/Core Web Vitals, and GEO/AEO (AI answer engines)
- **On-page audit parameters are concrete**: title length (50-60 chars), meta description (70-160 chars), single H1, heading structure, Open Graph tags, JSON-LD structured data, image alt text, content depth (≥250 words), html lang, mobile viewport, HTTPS, indexability
- **Core Web Vitals (2026)**: LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms (replaced FID in March 2024), CLS < 0.1
- **Off-page is out of scope for the OSS audit engine** (no backlink crawling in v1) but documented as practitioner reference
- **GEO/AEO is the 2026 frontier**: being the cited source inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Gemini — the same fundamentals (clear, factual, well-structured, trustworthy content) win here
- **Meta-principle**: Google rewards demonstrable expertise, trust, and genuinely good UX — not tricks
- **RankMySEO maps each parameter to a check ID** (e.g. `title-length`, `meta-description`, `cwv-lcp`) enabling automated regression testing

## Sources

- [SEO Playbook (raw markdown)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/madebyaris/rankmyseo/refs/heads/main/docs/seo-playbook.md) — the primary document analyzed
- [RankMySEO GitHub repo](https://github.com/madebyaris/rankmyseo) — OSS toolkit, Apache-2.0, npm `@rankmyseo` scope, 5 stars
- [Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs) + Search Quality Rater Guidelines (E-E-A-T definition)
- [web.dev](https://web.dev/vitals/) — Core Web Vitals source of truth
- [Schema.org](https://schema.org/) — structured data vocabulary
- Author: Aris Setiawan (@madebyaris), Sidoarjo, Indonesia — [madebyaris.com](https://madebyaris.com)

## Detail Files

- [[seo-playbook/sources|Sources]] — full reference list with links

## Related Research

- (none yet)

## Discussion

User asked to fetch and research the SEO playbook from the RankMySEO repo. The document is the knowledge base behind the on-page checks in the RankMySEO audit engine. It covers both on-page and off-page SEO comprehensively, with mermaid diagrams and parameter tables that map directly to check IDs in the codebase.

Origin thread: buzz://d8a718be-031f-4a6e-9f5c-a55466641654/efbe934206e056b0ada5fc080f0d64947c32d42999d08ded8e69a19b78969161

## Next Steps

- [ ] Evaluate RankMySEO as a tool for our own projects (job aggregator, law retrieval, research site)
- [ ] Apply SEO parameters to research.rasyidanaf.com when publishing via Quartz
- [ ] Investigate GEO/AEO optimization for being cited in AI answer engines

## Conclusion

The SEO playbook is a solid practitioner reference covering the full spectrum of ranking factors. The RankMySEO toolkit itself is a mature OSS project (M0-M5 implemented, 20+ packages, multi-framework support) that could be useful for SEO auditing of our own sites. The GEO/AEO section is particularly relevant as AI search engines become more prominent.