AEO, or how to be the answer instead of a link

For most of our careers, the goal was simple. Get onto page one of Google. Everyone wanted it, everyone sold it.

That still matters. But watch how people search now. More and more of them type a full question into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, or just read the AI summary at the top of Google, and never click on anything. If your business isn’t in that answer, those people simply never meet you.

AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. We know. Another acronym. But it’s a useful one.

How it’s different from SEO

SEO is about helping search engines rank your pages. AEO is about helping AI tools understand your business well enough to trust it and quote it. There’s a lot of overlap. A fast, well-built, clearly written site helps with both. But AEO cares more about a few particular things.

It wants direct answers. AI tools look for the sentence that answers the question. If yours is hiding in paragraph six, under three lines about your passion for excellence, it gets skipped.

It wants structure it can read. There’s a type of code called schema markup that tells machines exactly what you are, where you are, what you sell, when you’re open and what people think of you. Most sites we look at either don’t have it or have it set up wrong.

And it wants signs you’re real. Who wrote this? Does this business exist elsewhere online? Are the details consistent? AI tools lean towards sources that look trustworthy, which is fair enough.

What we actually do

When we retrofit an existing site, we fix or add the schema, rewrite the key pages so each one opens with a plain answer, build proper FAQs from real customer questions, make sure AI crawlers aren’t accidentally being blocked (you’d be surprised), tidy up the business details so they match everywhere, and strengthen the about and author info. Before any of that, we record a baseline so we can see what changes.

If your business isn’t in that answer, those people simply never meet you.

Does it work?

We’re testing it on our own site and on a client’s site right now, and we’ll publish the numbers either way. What we can tell you already is that most South African business sites we look at are missing basic schema completely, which means AI tools are basically guessing about them.

Try this tonight

Ask ChatGPT something your ideal customer would ask. “Best [whatever you do] in [your town].” Do you come up? Is what it says about you actually true? If not, let’s sort it out.