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Being found
What is AEO, and does my business need it?
Answer-engine optimization is making your expertise quotable: when a buyer asks an AI assistant a question your business can answer, AEO is what decides whether the assistant cites you or a competitor.
How answer engines pick their answers.
AI assistants answer questions by retrieving a small number of sources and synthesizing them. They favor pages that are question-shaped (the heading asks what the buyer asked), answer-first (a complete answer in the first paragraph, extractable without reading the whole page), machine-readable (structured data that says exactly what the page claims), and credible (specific facts, named sources, real expertise).
AEO versus SEO.
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Wins | A ranking humans scroll to | Being the answer itself |
| Unit | Keyword | Question |
| Rewards | Breadth and backlinks | Extractable, citable answers |
| Sources cited per query | 10+ blue links | A handful per engine, far fewer than a results page |
They share foundations, and good AEO work is good SEO work. But the citation math is the strategic point: answer engines cite few sources, so early movers in a niche can own questions that will be unwinnable later.
The practical checklist.
- Pages shaped as buyer questions, one question per page, answered completely in the first paragraph.
- JSON-LD structured data (FAQPage, Article, Organization) so machines parse claims instead of guessing at them.
- An llms.txt file mapping your site for AI crawlers, and content readable without JavaScript.
- Answers only you can give. Generic content loses; rare, verifiable expertise wins citations.
Who actually needs it.
Specialists first: the practice with rare credentials, the brand with deep product knowledge, the lender in a niche nobody covers. Take a therapy practice: zero-competition questions found by matching rare expertise against what nobody else in the market could claim. And this site practices what it sells; the page you are reading is an AEO answer page.
Apply it
AEO is Phase 3 of the roadmap.
Foundation first, then the content engine that reads it. The roadmap · Book a discovery call