Answer engine optimisation is not new SEO with a new name
Classic SEO competes for a position in a list. Answer engines compose a single response and cite a few sources. That changes what wins: not the longest page, but the most quotable and the most verifiable one.
Two things decide whether you are quoted. Can the model extract a clean, self-contained answer from your page? And can it verify that the entity behind the page is real and consistent with what it knows from elsewhere?
Write answer-first pages
Put the answer in the opening lines, before context or storytelling. A model extracting a claim will take the first passage that reads as a complete answer — if that passage is your introduction, you lose the citation to someone whose first paragraph was the answer.
- Lead with a 40 to 60 word answer that stands alone out of context.
- Make every heading a question a real person would type.
- Keep claims specific and attributable: numbers, dates, client names.
- Add an FAQ block with genuine follow-up questions.
- State units, currencies and timeframes explicitly — never assume context.
Make the entity verifiable
Assistants answer questions about people and companies, not pages. That means your identity must be machine-readable and consistent: the same name, job title, photograph and profile links everywhere they appear.
On this site that is Person schema with a stable identifier, ProfilePage on the homepage, Service schema per service page, and Article with the author linked back to the same Person entity. Every mention of my name, credentials and LinkedIn profile matches across pages — inconsistency is what makes a model hedge instead of cite.
Let the crawlers in
None of it matters if the crawlers are blocked. Most sites accidentally exclude AI user agents, either through a restrictive robots.txt or a bot-protection rule.
- Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for OpenAI surfaces.
- Allow ClaudeBot and Claude-User for Claude.
- Allow PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User for Perplexity.
- Allow Google-Extended for Gemini grounding, and Applebot for Apple surfaces.
- Publish a sitemap and make sure server-rendered HTML contains the real content, not an empty shell filled in by JavaScript.
Publish an llms.txt
An llms.txt at the root of your domain is a plain-text summary of who you are, what you offer, your key results and where to reach you. It is not a ranking factor, but it gives a model an unambiguous, low-effort description of your entity — which is exactly what it needs to cite you confidently.
Keep it short, factual and identical in substance to your pages. Contradictions between llms.txt and the site are worse than having no file at all.
How to tell whether it is working
Ask the assistants directly, in a fresh session, the questions you want to own — your name, your category, your service in your city — and record whether you appear and what is said. Repeat monthly.
Also watch referral traffic from the assistant domains in GA4. It arrives in small volumes but converts unusually well, because the visitor arrived with the recommendation already made.
Frequently asked questions
How long does AEO take to show results?
Faster than classic SEO for a narrow entity query — weeks, once crawlers have re-fetched the pages. Category-level questions take longer because they depend on the model trusting you against established competitors.
Does schema markup actually affect AI answers?
It is not a guaranteed ranking input, but it removes ambiguity about who and what a page is about, and assistants demonstrably favour sources they can resolve to a known entity.
Is AEO worth it if my traffic is mostly paid?
Yes, because it shapes what an AI assistant says about you when a buyer researches your brand mid-funnel. That conversation happens with or without your input.
Do I need a separate content strategy for AEO?
No. You need the same content written answer-first and marked up properly. One page can win a snippet, a ranking and a citation.
Want this applied to your account?
I run this playbook on live budgets. See the case studies or get in touch.
Start a conversation