Search is changing.
For years, the basic goal of SEO was fairly straightforward: get your website ranking as high as possible for the searches that mattered to your business.
That still matters. But there is now another layer sitting between the search and the click.
People are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI-powered search experiences for answers directly.
Instead of searching:
best accounting software small business
Someone might ask:
What's the best accounting software for a small UK business with five employees that needs VAT support and doesn't want anything complicated?
The AI doesn't simply return ten blue links.
It researches the question, interprets what the person actually wants and produces an answer. It may recommend several companies, compare products, mention strengths and weaknesses and cite sources that helped it reach the answer.
That changes what it means to be visible online.
Welcome to answer engine optimisation.
What is answer engine optimisation?
Answer engine optimisation, usually shortened to AEO, is the process of improving how frequently and accurately a brand appears in answers generated by AI and answer engines.
That includes platforms and experiences such as:
ChatGPT
Google AI Overviews
Google AI Mode
Gemini
Perplexity
Microsoft Copilot
other AI assistants and search products
AEO isn't about finding a magic way to "rank #1 in ChatGPT".
There isn't really a traditional number-one position.
The goal is to increase the probability that your company is discovered, understood, trusted and ultimately included when an AI system answers questions relevant to your market.
SEO isn't dead
Every new marketing trend apparently has to kill SEO.
AEO hasn't.
In fact, much of good AEO starts with good SEO.
AI systems with web access still discover information from websites, search results, publishers, reviews, communities and other publicly available sources.
Your technical SEO, content quality, crawlability, authority and general web presence therefore still matter.
The difference is that optimising your own website is no longer the entire job.
Imagine someone asks:
What are the best payroll platforms for a 50-person UK company?
Your company might have an excellent payroll landing page.
But the AI could also encounter:
software comparison websites
Reddit discussions
review platforms
industry publications
"best payroll software" listicles
LinkedIn discussions
competitor comparison pages
If your competitors repeatedly appear across those sources and you don't, they have a much stronger footprint for the AI to work with.
That's why AEO goes beyond your website.
Start with the questions customers actually ask
One mistake we see is companies taking their SEO keyword list and simply turning every keyword into a question.
That misses the point.
AI conversations tend to be much more specific.
A useful prompt set should cover different stages of the buying journey.
For example:
Discovery
What are the best AI visibility tracking tools?
Problem
How can I find out whether ChatGPT recommends my company?
Comparison
What are the best alternatives to [competitor]?
Requirements
What's the best AI visibility platform for an agency managing multiple clients?
Cost
What's the most affordable way to monitor AI search visibility?
Decision
Compare [Brand A], [Brand B] and [Brand C].
These questions reveal far more about your actual AI visibility than monitoring one broad keyword.
Measure visibility before trying to improve it
You can't optimise something properly if you don't know what is happening.
Run your important prompts across the AI engines your customers are likely to use.
Then record things such as:
whether your brand appears
which competitors appear
how prominently each company is discussed
which URLs and domains are cited
the sentiment around your brand
differences between AI engines
changes over time
The interesting part isn't simply finding out that you weren't mentioned.
The interesting question is why.
Look at the sources behind the answer
Suppose four competitors appear in an AI answer and you don't.
Look at the citations.
Perhaps several of the cited pages are articles titled:
10 Best CRM Platforms for Small Businesses
Your competitors appear in all of them.
You appear in none.
That's a much more useful insight than simply seeing a visibility score of 12%.
You now have an identifiable gap.
Maybe you need stronger third-party coverage. Perhaps existing comparison pages need updating. Maybe your category positioning isn't clear enough. Or perhaps the AI doesn't have enough independent evidence connecting your company with that particular use case.
AEO becomes much more useful when you stop looking at dashboards as scores and start treating them as clues.
Understand query fan-out
Another important part of modern AI search is query fan-out.
A person might ask one question, but an AI system may perform several underlying searches before producing its answer.
Someone asking:
What's the best project management software for a remote marketing agency?
could cause searches around:
project management software for agencies
remote team collaboration tools
marketing agency software
project management software reviews
Asana alternatives
ClickUp alternatives
best tools for client project management
That means one customer question can represent an entire cluster of search opportunities.
Understanding those underlying themes can influence your content strategy considerably.
Instead of creating one article for one keyword, you can build coverage around the wider information landscape the AI is investigating.
Make your content easy to understand
You don't need to write robotic content "for AI".
You need to make your content extremely clear.
If a page is about enterprise email verification software, say so.
If your product works particularly well for agencies, explain why.
If you have a free plan, state what it includes.
If you are comparing yourself with a competitor, make the differences concrete.
Useful AEO content tends to contain clear:
definitions
headings
comparisons
features
benefits
limitations
examples
FAQs
evidence
statistics where appropriate
Avoid padding an article to 3,000 words simply because somebody told you longer content ranks better.
Answer the question properly.
Your own website is only part of AEO
This is probably the biggest shift businesses need to understand.
You can control your website.
You can't completely control the rest of the web.
Yet the rest of the web can heavily influence how your brand is represented.
That's why an AEO strategy should also examine where relevant conversations are happening.
That could include industry publications, comparison sites, Reddit, Quora, YouTube, LinkedIn, review platforms and niche communities.
The objective isn't to spam these websites with your company name.
It's to create legitimate reasons for your brand to be discussed in the places that influence your market.
AEO is an ongoing process
AI answers aren't static.
Sources change.
Models change.
Competitors publish new content.
New discussions appear.
Search behaviour changes.
A company that appears prominently this month may disappear from an answer later.
That's why we think AEO should be treated more like ongoing search monitoring than a one-off optimisation exercise.
Track the prompts that matter.
Look at the answers.
Inspect the citations.
Find the gaps.
Make changes.
Then measure whether those changes actually improved visibility.
That's the part that matters.
AEO isn't about convincing an AI that your company is brilliant.
It's about making sure there is enough clear, credible and relevant information across the web for the AI to reach that conclusion itself.
