More purchasing decisions now start with a question asked to a model, not a search engine. If your business isn’t in that answer - you don’t exist in that channel.
SEO and AEO are two layers#
- SEO answers the question: Will Google show your page?
- AEO answers the question: Will the model cite your content in its response?
Both layers rely on the same foundation: readable structure, reliable facts, and structured data (schema.org).
How to build for AEO#
- Answer directly. A section with a one-sentence, citable answer at the top of the topic.
- Structured data. Article, FAQPage, Breadcrumb - so the machine understands context.
- Content map for models. An
llms.txtfile with a site guide.
Measure, don’t guess#
Without measuring AEO, it’s fortune-telling. A custom monitoring system (like Rank Sentinel) lets you track rankings in Google and citability in model responses - with full history for trend analysis. You can structure the measurement itself in four steps:
- Prompt set. Build 10–20 real questions your customer asks (e.g. “best company for AI implementation in Poland,” “how much does an AI agent cost”), including variants without your brand name - those reveal whether the model reaches for you on its own.
- Cadence. Re-run the same prompts weekly or every two weeks on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Citability shifts slowly, so the trend matters, not a single reading.
- What to log per question. Whether you were cited (yes/no), the order of the citation in the response, the exact URL or snippet, and which competitors are co-cited.
- Share-of-voice metric. Your share is the number of responses that cited you, divided by the number of prompts checked. Share-of-voice against competitors is your citations divided by all brand citations in that set. Track both numbers over time - a single percentage says little, the direction says everything.
Related paths#
The practical AEO foundation is covered in AI model citability, the Rank Sentinel product, and our research hub for data and visibility.
FAQ#
What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?#
It’s optimizing content to be cited by answer engines - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. What counts is a concise, self-contained answer at the top of the page and clean structured data.
How does AEO differ from classic SEO?#
SEO fights for position in links; AEO fights to be cited in a model’s response. It requires answer-first, FAQPage, entities, and facts easy to extract - not just keywords.
How to measure visibility in model responses?#
By monitoring citability: ask models about your topics and check if and how they cite you. This complements rank tracking in Google with visibility in the AI layer.