Short answer. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your website so AI assistants and search answer boxes can find, understand and quote it. It builds on SEO, adding direct answers, structured data and clear facts about your business.
- AEO sits on top of SEO, it does not replace it
- Direct answers and structured data do most of the work
- You can check your current standing for free
What AEO is
People now ask questions to assistants and to search pages that write an answer at the top. Instead of ten blue links, they get a short reply that may name two or three businesses. Answer engine optimisation is the work of making sure your business is one of the names in that reply.
An answer engine is any system that reads many pages and produces a single response: an AI chat assistant, an AI summary above search results, a voice assistant, or a featured snippet. They all need the same thing from a website. They need to find a clear statement, trust where it came from, and attach it to the right business.
AEO is not a trick. It is plain, careful publishing: say what you do, where you do it and who it is for, in a form a machine can read without guessing.
How AEO differs from SEO
Traditional SEO aims to put your page in a ranked list so a person clicks it. AEO aims to put your words, or your name, inside the answer itself. The two overlap a great deal. A page that is fast, crawlable and well written helps both.
The differences are in the details:
- The unit is the answer, not the page. A search result ranks a whole page. An assistant lifts one sentence or one fact from it.
- Structure matters more. Headings that match real questions and short, direct first sentences are easier to quote.
- Consistency matters more. If your name, address and services differ between your site and your listings, an assistant has less reason to trust any of them.
- Success is harder to see. A citation does not always produce a click, so you measure it by asking the questions your buyers ask and noting who is named.
What to change on your site
Most of the useful changes are small and specific.
Start each important page with a direct answer. If a page is about heat pump installation, the first lines should say what you install, where, and how a visit works. Keep it to a few sentences.
Write headings as the questions buyers actually type, then answer each one in two or three plain sentences. A reader should be able to lift any section out and still understand it.
Add structured data. The schema.org vocabulary lets you label your business, your services and your frequently asked questions in a way software can read. FAQPage, Service, Organization and LocalBusiness are the types small businesses use most.
Keep the facts identical everywhere: business name, address, service area, hours and the list of services. Check your site, your Google Business Profile and any directories.
Finally, make sure the pages load quickly and can be crawled. Assistants that fetch pages live give up on slow ones, just as visitors do.
Where to start
Pick the five questions a new customer asks before they call you. Ask them to two or three AI assistants and write down which businesses are named. That is your baseline. Then fix the pages behind those five questions first: a direct answer at the top, a short FAQ, and the matching structured data.
Expect this to take weeks, not days. Assistants refresh what they know on their own schedule, and no one can promise a particular citation. What you can do is remove the reasons you would be skipped.
If you want a starting point, run the free AEO check and we will show you where your site stands. If you would rather talk it through, book a strategy call.