Introduction
At Ripenn, we assess your content based on four metrics: Readability, Structure, Standard SEO, and In-house GEO scores. These metrics ensure your content is optimized for both human readers and large language models (LLMs), improving visibility in traditional and emerging generative searches.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is becoming critical as engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity solve more and more of a person’s searching needs. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses primarily on ranking well in search engine results, GEO ensures your content is clearly understood, trusted, and easily referenced by generative models. For a deeper understanding, you can explore our introductory blog, “Hello GEO”.
This blog explains the metrics we track, how we use them in our evaluations, and guides you on how to apply the recommendations our tools give. To get an analysis of your content right now, check out our Content Analysis page, which offers LLM-based subjective grading for individual articles. You can also use our Web Analytics page which gives deterministic, rule-based evaluations and overall quality scores for entire websites.
Readability
Ultimately, your content needs to be valuable for people. It must be easily digestible, whether readers access it directly or via AI tools.
Ripenn.ai uses the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) test or LLM assessments to evaluate readability, depending on the specific analysis required. The FRE test calculates readability by analyzing sentence length, word count, and syllable complexity, offering a quantitative readability score. LLM assessments provide qualitative insights into readability and user engagement. We use this dual approach to give you the best possible suggestions for improving your content’s readability, helping you write in a way that’s compelling, and easy to understand!
Note: Ripenn also features an in-app live suggestion tool that helps optimize your content drafts in real-time before publishing. You can explore this interactive feature by signing up!
Structure
Today, structure affects more than just human readability. It’s vital for LLM parsing too.
Every website is built using HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML provides structure to webpages, ensuring proper formatting and presentation of content, including text, images, and interactive elements. Generative AI models, must parse through this HTML code to understand and summarize the content effectively. Minimizing unnecessary HTML and ensuring it adheres to GEO standards helps LLMs identify the meaningful content within your pages.
With that in mind, we score content structure based on:
- HTML-to-content ratio: A high ratio of HTML code to actual content can dilute your message, making it difficult for AI models to access essential information.
- Paragraph length and consistency: Short, consistent paragraphs are nice for readers and make it easier for LLMs to segment and analyze your content.
- Valid heading hierarchy (e.g., H1 → H2 → H3): The organizational flow of your content, asists readers and AI alike in navigating through your information.
- Avoiding hierarchy skips (e.g., H1 → H3 or H2 → H4): Skipped heading levels disrupt the clarity of content structure. Harmful to LLMs and jarring to read.
- Presence of heading IDs: Heading IDs allow direct reference to specific sections of your content. Check this link out → it’ll send you straight to the heading ID for this section of the blog!
Clear and concise structural formatting helps ensure your content is accessible, engaging, and effectively leveraged by generative AI tools.
Standard SEO Checks
Good SEO remains crucial and complements GEO practices. We evaluate:
- Metadata: Information like the page title and description which helps search engines and LLMs understand what your page is about.
- Image alt text: Descriptive tags for images that give search engines additional context for indexing.
- Internal link health: Ensures your links between pages work correctly to give you a network of crawlable paths.
- Title and header lengths: Too long and you might get cut off in search results, too short and you lack clarity.
- Structured data implementation: Code that clearly tells search engines what type of content is on the page (articles, FAQs, products, etc.), increasing chances of enhanced search display.
Here’s a brief structured data snippet example:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@graph": [
{
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Why I Love Maple Syrup",
"author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Anonymous" },
"datePublished": "2025-06-16",
"image": "https://example.com/img/maple.jpg"
}
]
}
</script>These snippets are useful for showing up in Google and they can be guides for LLMs too.
Good SEO is still really important in today’s AI search landscape. Don’t skip it!
In-House GEO Score
We score your site on multiple aspects that influence how well generative engines can interpret and feature your content.
One major factor is how (and whether) you configure access for these engines. A robots.txt file is a standard part of any website that tells search engines and LLMs what they’re allowed to crawl. Alongside it, the emerging llms.txt standard gives even more precise control over how large language models interact with your site. We are tracking this standard and we configure these files for our users!
Another important element is authority. Generative engines favor content that demonstrates credibility. This can be shown through question-answer pairs, claims with citations, authoritative tone, and vocabulary that’s distinct to your niche. These signals help models decide whether your content is worth trusting.
Big, important note:
Generative engines are evolving continuously so we update our in-house scoring procedures in accordance with how the landscape changes. We highly suggest you read the “Ripenn’s GEO Engine” blog to learn more about how to tackle GEO despite the rules changing with every new model update.
Maximizing Your Content Quality
Here’s what you can do right now.
Start by running a Ripenn Content Analysis scan on any piece of text you would like. You’ll get a breakdown of readability, SEO, and GEO performance tailored to a single piece of content.
From there, pinpoint where your content is weakest. Is the structure messy? Are your headers unclear? Is your tone too casual for your industry? Our scores will show you what needs fixing first.
If you’re managing a larger site or multiple pages, try our Web Analytics tool. It gives you a high-level overview with weighted scores and targeted suggestions across your entire domain.
If you want more of our insights, Sign-Up! Ripenn can automate content improvements and take away some of the stress of getting this right.
Conclusion
A page can rise or fall on four pillars: Readability, Structure, SEO, and GEO. Get them right and both people and generative engines will find, trust, and share your work. If you forget about one… you might unfortunately disappear.
Ripenn pinpoints where you’re strong and where you’re not, so improvements are targeted, not guesswork. Curious where you stand? Run one of our scans!