When AI answers the question, make sure it answers with your name
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) makes your business the one AI assistants recommend. SEO & AEO Rank audits how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews talk about you today, then fixes your structured data, content, and citations so those engines name your company when customers ask who to hire.
Here's the shift most local businesses haven't noticed: a growing share of your customers never see a list of ten blue links. They ask a question, they get one answer, and that answer mentions two or three companies. If you're not one of them, you don't exist for that customer. That's the problem AEO solves.
How our AEO service works
1. AI Visibility Audit
We test the 50 highest-value questions your customers ask across five AI engines and map exactly who gets recommended, including the competitors taking your calls right now.
2. Entity foundation
Organization and LocalBusiness schema, consistent name-address- phone data everywhere, an llms.txt file, and profiles on the sources AI engines trust. This is how machines verify you're real.
3. Answer-first content
Every key page rewritten to lead with a direct answer, use question-form headings, and carry FAQ markup. Then kept fresh, because AI engines heavily prefer recently updated pages.
4. Citation building
Presence on the directories, review platforms, and community discussions AI engines actually pull from when they answer questions in your category.
5. Monthly citation tracking
Your citation share, competitor share, and AI sentiment tracked monthly across engines, alongside the AI referral traffic showing up in your analytics.
Works with your SEO
AEO isn't a replacement for SEO. The best-cited pages also rank well, so we run both as one program. See our local SEO services.
Frequently asked questions
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization is the practice of making your business visible and citable in AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. Where SEO targets a list of links, AEO targets the answer itself: when someone asks an AI who to hire or what something costs, AEO determines whether your business gets named.
How do AI engines decide which businesses to recommend?
AI engines pull from sources they trust: well-structured websites they can parse, review platforms, business directories, press coverage, and community discussions like Reddit. They favor businesses with consistent information everywhere, clear structured data, fresh content, and strong review signals. Our AEO service works on all of those levers at once.
Is AEO worth it for a local business?
Yes, and early movers benefit most. A large share of customers now start with an AI assistant instead of a search box, and AI answers name only two or three businesses instead of showing ten links. Very few local companies are optimizing for this yet, so the cost of winning a citation today is far lower than it will be in two years.
How do you measure AEO results?
We track a fixed panel of the 50 questions your customers most often ask, run them across the major AI engines every month, and report your citation share, your competitors' share, and the sentiment of what the AI says about you. We also track referral visits arriving from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI surfaces in your analytics.
See exactly where you rank on Google, and find out whether ChatGPT even knows you exist.
Get your AI Visibility AuditOr call (612) 555-0134