AEO Optimization Services That Get Your Brand Cited
Remember the goal of being #1 on a Google search for your products and services? It may still be your intention, but in the past few years, there has been a shift in digital marketing focus from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as a strategy for getting found online. In fact, every day more and more buyers turn to Answer Engines (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude) to ask questions, and get answers, about the products and services they are interested in purchasing.
If your prospects are using AI to research solutions, your visibility strategy needs to evolve.
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What is AEO?
AEO is the practice of improving the visibility of your brand in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini.
The way marketers achieve more visibility is by writing, structuring, and formatting their content so that the platforms can easily pick up, understand and cite their information in their answers to searchers’ questions. Visibility is now frequently measured by whether an AI platform cites your brand as a primary solution to buyers' needs.
If you're wondering whether AEO is meant to replace SEO, the answer is no. They complement one another. But their goals, strategy, content format, and measurement of success are different.
Here's the simplest way to explain the difference between these two digital marketing strategies: The purpose of SEO is to optimize websites to rank higher on Search Engine Results Pages. AEO focuses on structuring content so the AI engines can easily extract the content and provide it as a direct answer.
Why AEO Matters Right Now
The reason AEO matters now is because buyers have changed the way they search for solutions. Gartner predicts traditional search volume will drop 25% in 2026 as Answer Engines grow in adoption and capability. One industry benchmark indicates that 56% of search volume globally is now monthly AI sessions.
To demonstrate the importance of AEO to your company, every marketer needs to ask this question: when your prospective buyers go to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, or other AI assistants to ask questions about the kinds of products and services you offer, does your brand show up in the answer?
AEO gives your brand visibility when your target audience is considering their options. It is often the first touchpoint in the buying process. So if you are invisible, it means you are missing opportunities for new business.
How AEO Works
The Answer Engines are influenced by and combine information from many sources to produce one response. These sources include:
Your company's content: FAQ pages, blog posts, case studies, product pages, product comparison pages, how-to pages.
Earned media: Press coverage
Third-party content: Industry write-ups, listicles, comparison sites
Social media content: LinkedIn articles, YouTube videos
Review platforms: Industry platforms, Google Reviews
The more your brand appears, repeatedly, in all of these places, the more likely your brand is to be referenced by an Answer Engine. When multiple trusted platforms say similar (positive) things about your brand, the Large Language Models are confident about recommending your brand, so they synthesize the information they've extracted and include it in the answer to the questions they receive.
To make it easy for the Answer Engines to understand the content you create for your website, and in turn provide it in their responses, here are several guidelines to follow:
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Be specific. The more detailed your content is about a subject, the more likely it is to be cited. Explain why your products and services make sense vs. focusing on what they do.
- Use proper schema (structure). Schema, also known as structured data, is code added to the back end of websites telling AI what the meaning of your page content is. The best example is a Headline on your page; it's not just large text, it's an Article Headline. And while you don't see this information when a website page is loaded, AI does. The clearer a page is, with structured data, the easier is it for AI to pull the information into a summary.
Answer questions directly. Provide a direct, one-sentence (no more than 50 words) response to a query/prompt, followed by supporting information and context as needed. You will be answering the question in the first sentence. Be certain to use conversational, natural language.
Demonstrate credibility. Third-party validation matters—from customer testimonials and case studies to reviews (e.g., Google, industry directories). This type of content, along with original data, increases the likelihood that AI will cite your content as authoritative, demonstrating your company's experience, expertise, and trustworthiness.
Be consistent. While you can't control all of the content that appears online about your brand, you can make certain your website and social media accounts have a consistent voice and tone.
Key Pillars of an AEO Strategy
Until your brand's AI visibility has been assessed, your company doesn't know where it stands with AI—including in comparison to your competitors. A Brand Visibility Score, which is the percentage of tracked prompts where your brand appears in Answer Engines' responses, will give you a single metric to track and improve over time.
Other key pillars include:
Brand Sentiment. Is your brand favorably discussed across the internet? If so, that will help lead the AI engines to describe your brand as trustworthy and recommend it. (If you have negative sentiment, AI could recommend your competitors.)
Advocacy. AI values content indicating that your customers are loyal (e.g., on directories, review sites, on social media). It means more to the engines than the content you create on your website.
Prompt Tracking & Recommended Prompts. What questions are your prospects asking AI? Tracking your visibility on the prompts they are asking and getting recommendations on is a key step towards improving your visibility. AEO tools (or the right AEO Optimization Services Partner) will provide the frequently asked questions by your prospects along with the insights needed to fill your content gaps.
Content. First, your website content needs to be conversational so the LLMs and AI assistants can easily understand it. Whether you're adding content or updating existing content—or both—keep in mind that you are trying to position your brand as a trusted subject matter expert.
When you're ready to implement your AEO Optimization Plan, know this: AEO is not a "set it and forget it" program. AI systems check when information was last updated. If you frequently update your content, it's more likely to be featured in AI answers.
How to Measure AEO Success
A key part of AEO success is staying visible. You will need to run regular AI Audits to see if your content is being cited; review brand mentions; and evaluate how your content is appearing in AI summaries.
The core metrics to track in your AEO Strategy and Program are:
Brand Visibility Score. This is the percentage of tracked prompts where your brand appears in AI responses (essentially your KPI for Brand Visibility).
Share of Voice. This metric indicates how often your brand is cited in comparison to your competitors across the same prompts.
Sentiment Score. Your Sentiment Score indicates how positively (or negatively) your brand is described when it is mentioned online. The scale ranges from -100% to +100%.
Prompt-level Visibility. This metric indicates which specific buyer questions you're winning versus losing. This enables you to know where to focus your content efforts.
Citation Sources. By knowing which domains and content types AI is drawing from for your category, you'll know where you need to build a bigger presence.
AI Referral Traffic. This tracks traffic to your site from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and the direct impact this traffic has on your business.
AI Referral Conversion Rate. This metric indicates how well AI-referred visitors convert to buyers versus other channels. Typically, the AI Referral conversion rate is 4-23× higher than organic.
How The WDG Agency's AEO Optimization Services Can Help Your Company
A successful AEO program requires expertise in many areas—from visibility monitoring, content strategy and content to channel optimization and ongoing iteration—and the tools to develop and implement the program.
The first step to improving your AEO visibility is to find out where your brand stands with AI.
Ready for your Free AEO Visibility Assessment?
Our assessment evaluates your brand based on five factors—Sentiment, Presence Quality, Brand Recognition, Share of Voice, and Market Competition—with a total score out of 100. We'll provide a detailed report of the steps you need to take (with or without our help!) to improve your visibility and increase the likelihood of getting cited by the engines. Our report also includes a comparison to how some of your key competitors line up amongst the engines.
Request our report today to start the process of getting cited by the Answer Engines!
