You've Mastered SEO. Have You Even Started AEO?

What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and how should communications and marketing professionals approach it? AEO is how your content gets cited by AI platforms (e.g., Claude, Grok, and Perplexity) and it's now as important as the SEO strategy you've spent years perfecting.

Every communicator I know has a strong opinion about search engine optimization (SEO). Keywords, metadata, alt text, backlink strategy. We've been trained for years to ask "what does Google want?"

Here's a better question: when was the last time you actually Googled something? Because audiences are starting to move on. And if your content strategy hasn't caught up, you're optimizing for a search experience that a growing chunk of your target audience has already left behind.

Tim Keary published a sharp piece in Innovating with AI Magazine on what the rise of AI/LLM search is doing to digital publishers:

• Major publications, including CNN and Business Insider, reported traffic drops of 30-40% following Google's introduction of AI Overviews in May 2024.

• AI-generated overviews on Google correlated with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate.

• An Ahrefs study of 3,000 websites found that AI chatbots currently account for just 0.17% of average website traffic. But it's grown 7x since 2024.

• Superprompt analyzed 12 million website visits across more than 350 businesses and found AI search traffic converts at 14.2%, compared to Google's 2.8% (roughly a 500% difference!). Check out their other findings, definitely some of the most interesting I've seen in a while.

• A separate Ahrefs study found that AI search visitors had a conversion rate 23 times that of traditional organic search visitors. Fewer clicks, but from people who are ready to act.

Tim Sanders, CIO at G2, told Keary that a survey of buyers revealed 50% now start their research with AI chatbots like ChatGPT rather than Google.

"If you're looking for a CRM solution for your hospital that works on an iPad, you just go to ChatGPT and say, 'give me the best three CRM solutions for an iPad,'" Sanders said. "The world's changing really fast."

The Gap Between SEO and AEO

SEO gets you found on Google. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) gets you cited by AI platforms.

They're related but not the same discipline:

• SEO prioritizes keywords, backlinks, and page authority.

• AEO prioritizes direct answers, structured content, authoritative sourcing, and writing that AI models can parse, trust, and repeat to users who never click through at all.

AEO Strategy for Communicators

1. Write to answer questions, not to rank on keywords. People tend to ask AI questions the same way they'd ask a friend: "What is trauma-informed marketing and how does it work?" versus "trauma-informed communications best practices 2026." Lead with a direct answer in your first two or three sentences.

2. Lead with your answer. AI tools frequently pull the first section of a piece. Put your clearest, most authoritative statement at the top, not buried after a three-paragraph wind-up. If someone has to scroll to find your point, an AI model probably won't find it either.

3. Add structured data (schema markup). FAQ schema, How-To schema, and Article schema help AI models parse and cite your content accurately. Most website platforms (e.g., Wix, WordPress, Squarespace) support this. If you're not using it, you're leaving citation opportunities on the table.

4. Build your E-E-A-T signals. Google and AI tools reward Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. That means detailed author bios, credentials, citations to credible external sources, and original thinking rather than recycled takes.

5. Become a source, not just a publisher. AI tools cite original research, quotes, and fresh expert commentary. Commission your own data. Publish your own analysis. Develop a point of view that's distinctly yours. Being cited in other authoritative content signals credibility to AI.

6. Build authority beyond your own site the right way. You may have heard about brands creating standalone satellite sites designed to rank independently and funnel traffic back to their main domain. The logic: a third-party endorsement carries more weight with AI models than self-promotional content on your own site. In theory, that's true. In practice, if you build a site whose primary purpose is to declare yourself the best at something, both Google and AI models are increasingly good at detecting that.

   1. Google specifically updated its spam policies in 2024 to target "site reputation abuse" (i.e., content published on separate domains primarily to manipulate rankings).

   2. Instead, consider these (more effective) strategies:

      • Guest bylines on "high-authority" publications. (You can literally ask your preferred AI-assisted writing tool for their list in your niche/industry.) A bylined piece in a respected industry outlet that mentions your firm carries far more AEO weight than a site you built yourself. AI models cite sources with established domain authority. Your own blog, however good, starts at zero on a new domain.

      • Wikipedia and structured reference pages. AI models pull heavily from Wikipedia. Not everyone qualifies for a Wikipedia page, but being cited within existing articles on your subject area could be valuable (and often overlooked).

7. Update your content regularly. AI models favor current, accurate content. A 2021 blog post with outdated statistics is unlikely to be cited when someone asks ChatGPT for current best practices. Schedule ongoing reviews of your top-performing evergreen content.

8. Make deliberate decisions about AI crawler access. Keary's piece digs into the debate around blocking vs. allowing AI crawlers. Blocking everything can "cause companies to be invisible." Selectively allowing crawlers from high-referral tools while restricting others is a reasonable middle path. Track AI referral traffic by source so you know what's actually sending visitors your way.

9. Publish your canonical content on your own site first. This is the hub-and-spoke model: your site builds domain authority while third-party platforms distribute and extend your reach. Always publish the original version on your site, and then share condensed versions with backlinks to LinkedIn and Substack (etc.), so AI models trace the authoritative version back to you.

PROMPT: Audit Your AEO Readiness in Claude

Paste any existing piece of content into Claude and run this:

Review this content as if you are an AI search engine deciding whether to cite it in response to a user query. Identify: (1) whether the content directly answers a clear question in the opening paragraph, (2) what specific question this content is best positioned to answer, (3) what's missing that would make this more likely to be cited by an AI tool, and (4) rewrite the opening paragraph to lead with a direct, authoritative answer. Preserve the original voice and don't add filler.

Run that across your top 10 blog posts. The patterns will surface fast, and updating your content structure will help AI searches find you.

Thoughts or feedback on SEO / AEO? laura@onmessage.co

SEO AEO