Answer engine optimization
Being the source the answer was built from.
More searches now end in an answer rather than a list of links. AEO is the work of making your business the thing those answers are assembled from, in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and the assistants your customers are starting to ask instead of searching.
Why this is a different job from SEO.
Classic SEO competes for a position in a list. An answer engine does not give you a position. It reads a set of sources, synthesises them, and cites some of them. You are either in the set or you are invisible, and there is no page two to be on.
The practical consequence is that the things that make a page quotable matter more than the things that make it rank. Clear claims, direct answers, specific numbers, a structure a machine can parse, and enough corroboration elsewhere that the model trusts you on the subject.
What we actually do.
Answer-first structure
The direct answer in the first two sentences under a heading that matches the question. Models extract the answer near the question, not the answer buried in paragraph nine.
Question-shaped headings
Headings written as the questions people actually ask, so the page maps onto real prompts rather than onto marketing language.
Structured data
Schema that tells a machine what the entity is, what it sells, where it operates and what it has been asked. It does not guarantee citation, but it removes ambiguity.
Entity consistency
The same facts about your business everywhere a model might look. Contradictory details across your site, your profile and directories make you a less reliable source.
Specificity
Real prices, real process, real constraints. Vague marketing copy gives a model nothing to quote. Published numbers get cited.
Corroboration
Being described the same way on sites other than your own. Models weigh independent agreement, which makes off-page work part of AEO whether you planned it that way or not.
The honest state of measurement.
AEO is early and the reporting is genuinely worse than search reporting. Google does not give you a clean report of AI Overview citations. ChatGPT does not send you a rank tracker. Anyone selling you a precise AEO ranking dashboard is selling you an estimate dressed as a measurement.
What can be tracked honestly: whether your pages get cited when we ask the assistants the questions your customers ask, whether referral traffic from AI tools appears in analytics, and whether the branded searches that follow an AI recommendation go up. We report those and we label the estimates as estimates.
Why we publish our prices. Partly for customers, and partly because a page that states a number is quotable and a page that says contact us for a quote is not. Our pricing page is an AEO asset as much as a sales page.
What it costs.
AEO sits inside the SEO discipline. It is not a separate product, because in practice the work overlaps heavily with on-page structure, schema and off-page corroboration.
- SEO Hyper$399 / month
- SEO Starter$699 / month
- SEO Advanced$1,249 / month
Related disciplines.
Questions people actually ask.
Is AEO different from SEO or just a new name for it?
It overlaps heavily and it is not identical. A well-optimised page is a good starting point, but ranking first does not guarantee being cited, and pages that get cited tend to be more direct, more specific and more structured than pages that merely rank. Treat AEO as a discipline inside search rather than a replacement for it.
Will AI answers kill my organic traffic?
It is already reducing clicks on questions that can be answered in a sentence. It affects commercial and comparison queries much less, because people still want to see the business before they buy. The sensible response is to stop relying on traffic from questions a machine can answer outright, and to compete harder where the click still matters.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No, and nobody can. There is no submission process and no ranking to buy. What we can do is make your business the clearest, most corroborated, most quotable source on the subjects you want to be known for, which is what the models are drawing from.
Does schema markup make me appear in AI answers?
It helps a machine understand the page without guessing, which makes you easier to use as a source. It is not a switch that turns citation on, and schema describing things that are not on the page is worse than none at all.
Should I block AI crawlers?
If you want to be cited, no. Blocking them removes you from the answer set. Some publishers block for licensing reasons, but for a local business trying to be recommended it is self-defeating.
Want to know if you get cited today?
We will ask the assistants the questions your customers ask and show you what comes back, including when it is a competitor.