Answer engine optimization that gets you cited by AI
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring your website so AI systems - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews - cite your brand in their answers. I measure how visible you are today, fix the technical and content gaps that keep you out of AI answers, and track citations month over month.
- Citation tracking across 3 engines
- Schema & entity work
- Content optimisation for AI answers
What's the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO gets you ranked in a list of links. AEO gets you cited inside an answer. GEO - generative engine optimization - is the umbrella term for optimising toward AI-generated results generally; in practice, AEO and GEO describe the same work and I use them interchangeably with clients.
The mechanics overlap more than the buzzwords suggest. AI engines don't conjure answers from nowhere: they retrieve pages from search indexes and crawled content, then synthesise. If your site can't be crawled, rendered and understood, you lose both games at once. That's why my AEO engagements start with the same technical checks as a classic audit - then go further into how models select and quote sources.
What I actually do
An engagement has four parts, and each one builds on the previous.
Baseline: measure your AI visibility
Before changing anything, I run a fixed panel of your commercially important queries against ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and record who gets cited. Most clients see their real citation rate for the first time here - and it's usually lower than they assumed, with a competitor they didn't expect taking the mentions.
Access: make sure AI systems can read you
GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended each have their own crawling behaviour, and I regularly find sites blocking them by accident - a stale WAF rule, a robots.txt line someone copied from a blog post in 2023, client-side rendering that serves empty HTML to non-executing bots. I fix access first because nothing else works without it. This includes an llms.txt file and clean, semantic HTML on the pages that matter.
Substance: schema, entities and answer-ready content
Models cite pages that answer the question directly, name their entities clearly, and carry verifiable signals of expertise. Concretely: structured data that validates (run your site through my Schema Markup Checker to see where you stand), consistent organisation and person entities across the web, and key pages restructured so the first paragraph is a complete, quotable answer rather than a warm-up. E-E-A-T signals matter here too - my EEAT Checker scores the 59 signals I audit.
Measurement: citations, month over month
The same query panel from the baseline, re-run on a schedule. You see citation share move - or not move, in which case I say so and we change the approach. I don't report impressions of AI crawler hits as "AI visibility"; being crawled and being cited are different things.
Who this is for
The work pays off fastest where AI answers already influence buying decisions: SaaS and B2B services, e-commerce in considered categories, and anyone whose customers ask "what's the best X for Y" questions. If your market isn't there yet, I'll tell you in the audit - a technical SEO retainer is usually the better spend, and I'd rather point you at that service than sell you this one.
Questions clients ask about AEO
Can you guarantee that ChatGPT will cite my brand?
No - and you should be suspicious of anyone who guarantees it. What I can do is measure your citation rate honestly, fix every factor that's within your control, and show you the trend line. Sites that do this work consistently see citations climb within one to two quarters.
Should I block AI crawlers like GPTBot to protect my content?
If AI answers are becoming a discovery channel in your market, blocking GPTBot and PerplexityBot means competitors get cited in answers where you don't exist. For most commercial sites the trade is clear: being the cited source wins customers. Publishers with licensing leverage are the main exception.
Does AEO replace traditional SEO?
No - it sits on top of it. AI engines retrieve from search indexes and crawled content, so a site Google can't crawl won't get cited either. Roughly 70% of AEO work is technical SEO done properly; the rest is answer-structured content, entity building and measurement.
How do you track AI citations?
A fixed panel of your target queries runs against ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, recording whether your domain is cited, which page, and who is cited instead of you. The panel stays constant so the month-over-month trend is real, not noise.
How long until AI engines pick up changes?
Faster than classic SEO in some places, slower in others. Perplexity retrieves live search results, so improvements can surface within weeks; ChatGPT's citations shift more slowly. I set expectations at one quarter for the first measurable movement.
Start with your baseline.
The free audit includes the AI-visibility panel - you'll know your citation rate before you spend anything.