AEO (answer engine optimisation) means structuring content so AI search tools can quote it directly: every page answers one specific question with a short, unambiguous answer at the top, followed by detail, facts, prices and structured data (schema.org), and the company’s details are identical everywhere.
What has changed in search? Buyers ask AI, and only a few sources get cited
Buyers increasingly put full-sentence questions to Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity, and the answer cites only a handful of sources. If you don’t give a clear, quotable answer, you’re left out.
Seven rules for content AI will quote
- One page, one question. The title is the question itself, or the exact topic.
- Answer first. A 40–60-word summary in the introduction that makes sense on its own.
- Facts and figures. Price, duration, country, conditions: things AI can quote with confidence.
- Clear structure. Descriptive subheadings, lists, tables.
- Structured data. Organization, Service, Offer, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList, following schema.org.
- Consistent company details. Name, address, VAT number and phone written exactly the same way everywhere.
- Internal links within a topic cluster. The pillar page (e.g. a service page) and related articles link to each other.
Technical foundations: fast HTML that AI crawlers can read
AI search engines can only cite what they can actually read. Put important content in the HTML as text (not only in images or behind JavaScript), make sure pages load fast on mobile, don’t block search crawlers in robots.txt, keep an up-to-date XML sitemap and show the last-updated date on every page.
- Fast, server-side rendered HTML, because AI crawlers often don’t execute JavaScript.
- A robots.txt that doesn’t block search engines and AI crawlers, plus a sitemap.xml.
- A short llms.txt file in the root that summarises who the company is, what it offers and where the main pages are.
- Canonical URLs and clear language tagging.
What this means for a B2B company: answer your buyers’ top ten questions
Write answers to your buyers’ ten most common questions, with prices, conditions and countries, and give each one its own well-structured page. This helps classic SEO, AI search and your sales team at the same time, since they can send the very same links to customers.
How to measure it: test AI answers, Search Console and “how did you hear about us?”
Regularly ask AI search tools your key questions and note whether your company appears; watch long, question-style queries in Search Console; and ask enquirers on your website where they heard about you.
Want us to do this for your website? Our SEO & AI Search programme applies these rules every week, in every language you sell in, for €990 a month.