Buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview for recommendations before they ever visit a website. If those systems can't clearly read, trust and cite your business, you're invisible at the exact moment a decision is forming.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) fixes that. These five steps, roughly in order of impact, are the foundations that get your business surfaced as the answer, not just ranked in a list of links.
Answer engines extract short, self-contained passages, not whole pages. Open each key section with a plain, direct answer to its question in the first 40-60 words, then add the detail underneath.
Question-style headings ("What is...", "How much does...") map onto real queries and help models find the right section. Make each section stand on its own, since passages are often extracted in isolation.
Schema (JSON-LD) hands AI systems explicit facts instead of making them infer from prose. Mark up your Organization, FAQPage and HowTo content, matched exactly to what's visible on the page.
Models build a picture of you from your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories at once. When those disagree on your description, pricing or claims, confidence drops, and so does the citation.
AI weighs the whole web's view of you, not just your own domain. Genuine mentions from press, directories, reviews and guest content compound over time; mass, low-quality link building does the opposite.
Tick off each item as you work through it.
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