# Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Guide

## What is AEO?

**Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)** is the practice of improving how your business appears in answers generated by AI assistants and answer engines—rather than only in traditional search result rankings.

Where SEO optimizes for clicks from a list of links, AEO optimizes for **inclusion, recommendation, and citation** inside a single synthesized response.

## AEO vs SEO

| | SEO | AEO |
|---|-----|-----|
| **Surface** | Search results page | Generated AI answer |
| **Success metric** | Rank position, CTR | Mentions, recommendations, citations |
| **Content focus** | Keywords, backlinks, page authority | Evidence, clarity, trust, semantic coverage |
| **Technical focus** | Crawlability, Core Web Vitals | AI crawlability, llms.txt, structured data, static readable content |
| **Competitive lens** | Who ranks above you | Who AI recommends instead of you |

Both disciplines matter. SEO drives discovery through search; AEO drives discovery through conversational and generative interfaces.

## Core AEO practices

### 1. Map customer questions

Identify the recommendation, comparison, buying, and problem-solving prompts your customers actually ask AI. Cover the full decision journey—not just top-of-funnel keywords.

### 2. Publish evidence-backed answers

Create comparison pages, buying guides, FAQs, and methodology content with original evidence AI can trust and cite.

### 3. Strengthen trust and authority signals

Add expert review, transparent methodology, case studies, and third-party validation. AI models weight sources they perceive as authoritative.

### 4. Make content machine-readable

- Serve `llms.txt` at your domain root
- Include `sitemap.xml` and an accurate `robots.txt`
- Add JSON-LD structured data (Organization, FAQPage, Product)
- Provide static markdown versions of key pages

### 5. Monitor and iterate

Track recommendation rates, share of voice, and citation frequency across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Fix gaps in priority order.

## How CiteCue approaches AEO

CiteCue automates the full AEO loop:

1. Scan website AI readiness
2. Generate customer prompts at scale
3. Query leading AI models
4. Explain why competitors win
5. Prioritize fixes by impact
6. Generate and deploy content

Learn more: https://citecue.com/#how

## Get started

Join the waitlist for a free AI visibility audit: https://citecue.com/#free-audit

## Related resources

- [AI visibility guide](https://citecue.com/ai-visibility.md)
- [CiteCue methodology](https://citecue.com/methodology.md)