What is Answer Engine Optimisation?
When someone opens ChatGPT and types "what's the best project management tool for a small agency" or "which email marketing platform should I use," an AI model generates an answer. That answer cites specific brands. Those brands get traffic, trust, and sales. The brands not mentioned get nothing.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making your brand one of the names AI models consistently cite when they answer questions relevant to your category. It is not about gaming a single algorithm. It is about becoming a well-documented, authoritative entity in the knowledge graph that AI models draw from, including web crawls, structured data, Wikipedia-adjacent sources, review platforms, and editorial publications.
The mechanics are different from traditional SEO, but the principle is the same: establish clear expertise, earn trusted citations, and make it easy for any system, human or AI, to understand what you do and why you are credible. The brands investing in this now are building a durable moat. The ones waiting are ceding ground they will struggle to recover.
How we do it
We start by establishing how AI models currently perceive your brand. We query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude with the questions your ideal customers are asking. We document where you appear, where competitors appear instead, and what knowledge gaps are causing AI models to overlook you. This gives us a precise starting baseline and a clear target.
AI models rely heavily on structured, consistent entity data to identify and trust a brand. We build and clean your entity footprint: Google Business Profile, Wikidata entries, schema markup across your site, consistent NAP data, and presence in trusted directories and databases. The goal is for every AI system to have an unambiguous, well-sourced understanding of who you are and what category you own.
AI models cite sources they have seen consistently covering a topic in depth. We map the full question landscape around your category and build a content architecture that establishes genuine topical authority. Every piece is written to answer real questions with real specificity. No filler, no padding. The content needs to be citable, so we make it worth citing.
The sources that AI models weight most heavily are editorial publications, industry databases, and high-authority review platforms. We earn placements and citations in these sources, not through link schemes, but through legitimate digital PR and expert positioning. When Perplexity or ChatGPT is deciding who to recommend in your category, the brand with the most credible external citations wins.
AI models parse structured data to extract fast, confident answers. We implement and audit schema markup across your site, including FAQPage, HowTo, Product, Review, and Organization schemas. We also optimise for the conversational answer format that LLMs prefer: direct, factual, well-attributed content that answers a specific question in the first two sentences.
AI models process hundreds of billions of queries per month. Perplexity alone serves over 100 million queries per month and that number is doubling year over year. ChatGPT's search feature is now active for hundreds of millions of users. This is not a future channel. It is a current one, and most brands are completely invisible in it.
What you get
- Full AEO audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude with documented baseline
- Entity optimisation: schema markup, knowledge graph, structured data implementation
- Topical authority content: 8-12 high-quality pieces per month mapped to AI query clusters
- Citation building: editorial placements, industry database entries, review platform presence
- Monthly AI citation tracking report across all major models
- Competitor citation monitoring and gap analysis
- FAQPage and HowTo schema implementation across key site pages
- Quarterly strategy review with updated query landscape mapping
Is AEO right for you?
AEO delivers the biggest return for brands where purchase decisions involve a research phase. If your customers are asking "what should I use" or "who is the best at X" before they buy, those questions are being answered by AI right now. B2B SaaS, professional services, e-commerce brands in considered-purchase categories, and local businesses competing for recommendation-style queries are all strong fits.
It also works best when paired with an existing content or SEO foundation. You do not need to be a content machine already, but brands with zero web presence will need to build one as part of the engagement. If you are serious about owning your category in AI-generated answers over the next 12-24 months, the time to start is now. The brands building AEO authority today are the ones AI models will default to citing in two years.
See where you stand in AI answers today.
We will run a free AEO snapshot for your brand, showing exactly how AI models describe you right now versus your top competitors. No pitch, just data.
Book a Free Strategy Call