Search is splitting in two
For years, being found meant ranking on Google. That is still true, but a growing share of your customers now ask an assistant instead. They open ChatGPT or Perplexity, type a question and read one answer rather than clicking through ten links.
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work of making sure that answer mentions your company.
How AEO differs from SEO
SEO and AEO share a foundation: useful content, clear structure, real expertise. They diverge on the target.
- SEO aims at a ranked list of links. Success is a high position for a keyword.
- AEO aims at the generated answer itself. Success is being quoted, with your name attached, inside the response.
The two reinforce each other. A page structured for AEO tends to earn featured snippets in Google too, because both reward the same thing: a direct answer a machine can lift.
What assistants actually cite
Assistants do not quote marketing copy. They pull from pages that answer a specific question directly and back it up. In practice that means:
- A clear question as a heading, answered in the first two sentences.
- Short, factual passages instead of long persuasive ones.
- Structured data, so the page states plainly what it contains.
- Sources and numbers a model can trust.
If a human skimming your page cannot find the answer in five seconds, an assistant will not find it either.
A simple way to start
Pick the ten questions your customers ask most often before they buy. Write a clear, honest answer to each one, mark it up as an FAQ and publish it. That single move often earns both AI citations and featured snippets, because you are finally answering the question the way both machines read.
This is the core of how we format every article we publish. If you want a plan built around the questions your buyers actually ask, we map the first month for free.