Audit a Ghost blog for AI answer engines
Want Ghost pages that AI answer engines cite? Lead every page with the answer, ship the JSON-LD schema types AI engines read, and keep the on-page structure tight. A Ghost SEO audit for AI answer engines is post-oriented: confirm each post carries Article JSON-LD, a hand-written meta description, and an answer-first opening paragraph so Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google AI Overviews can extract and cite the post as a source.
Overview
What this audit covers on Ghost
| Category | Publishing platform |
|---|---|
| Sample search intents | audit ghost blog for ai search; ghost cms seo checklist ai overviews; ghost blog perplexity citations |
| Rank tracking guidance | Ghost is post-heavy; track the head term plus five to ten long-tail questions per post. Weekly compare Perplexity + ChatGPT citation share against organic Google rank — AI citations often lead the rank by a week or two. |
On-page
On-page checks
- Hand-written meta description per post. Ghost auto-generates a meta description from the first paragraph. Rewrite it as the answer so AI Overviews extract the intended sentence.
- Excerpt used as the search snippet. Ghost’s custom excerpt is what most AI engines display. Write it as an answer under 155 characters, not a teaser.
- Feature image with descriptive alt text. Feature images ship into OpenGraph and Twitter cards. Alt text without a description leaves the image unindexable.
Structured data
Structured data checks
- Article schema emitted per post. Ghost emits Article JSON-LD via Casper and most modern themes. Confirm author, image, datePublished, and dateModified are all present.
- FAQPage schema on posts with FAQ headings. Ghost themes rarely emit FAQPage schema. Add it via a code injection on the post template when the post opts in via a tag or custom field.
- BreadcrumbList schema on tag / author pages. Add BreadcrumbList JSON-LD via code injection so AI answers cite the site hierarchy.
AI answer engines
AI-answer-engine readiness
- First paragraph is the answer, not the intro. AI answer engines cite the paragraph closest to the H1. Lead with the direct answer, then expand.
- Author page carries real credentials. AI answer engines weigh named authors with real bios. Populate the author page with bio, links, and credentials.
- RSS feed reachable and complete. Perplexity and other AI engines discover new posts via RSS. Confirm /rss/ is reachable and includes the full post body.
Watch out for
Gotchas
- Ghost’s auto meta description grabs the first sentence — hand-write the top 20 posts.
- Custom themes without Article JSON-LD hide E-E-A-T signals from AI answer engines.
- Newsletter-only posts (private posts) are excluded from RSS by design — don’t rely on them for AI discovery.
Run this audit with Skrybo
Skrybo runs every check above against a live URL and reports plain-language findings mapped to Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google AI Overview signals — plus rank tracking on the head + long-tail terms.
Last updated: July 2026