Have you heard of answer engine optimization (AEO)? In the first installment of our two-part series on AEO, we discussed the changing landscape of internet search with the growth of AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perspective AI and Microsoft Copilot. As more users turn to these and similar tools for answers to their queries, it will become increasingly important for your business to show up as the expert in your industry on these platforms. Just like optimizing for search engines, to establish your expertise on answer engines, you need to optimize your content to be read and served up by them. This is called answer engine optimization or AEO.
Since this is new technology and answer engines aren’t public about how their technology works exactly (just like with Google’s organic search algorithm), much of AEO is theoretical. With a solid baseline and keeping track of your progress, it is possible to move the needle and jump out ahead of your competition. Here are six things you can do right now to increase the AEO value of your website.
How to get started with AEO
1. Think like your customer
A foundational piece of AEO is understanding what your customer wants to know. Think of conversational questions that your target audience might be asking that your brand could answer. To find more related questions, type a query into a Google search and see what other questions are featured in the “People also ask” section. Once you identify a few strong question-based keywords, you can start to optimize your site pages to expertly answer them.
2. Understand user intent
It’s also important to understand what the user is hoping to get from their query. Intent breaks down into three general buckets:
- Informational (seeking knowledge)
- Navigational (looking for a specific website)
- Transactional (ready to take an action like buy a product or hire an expert)
Your content will need to match the intent of the query to be picked up by an answer engine. For example, if a query usually leads users to make purchases, it would be a waste of resources to optimize a more top-of-funnel general knowledge piece for those keywords.
3. Create high-quality, answer-focused content
Whether you’re updating an existing post or page or creating a new one, your focus should be creating content that answers users’ questions in a relatable, helpful way. Avoid using overly technical or complex language as that can be a barrier to understanding for many.
Writing in a conversational tone is always best. Not only does this make your information feel more approachable, but it can also help your content be referenced by voice search. Other tips for AEO writing include writing in short question and answer format and incorporating location specific keywords, if applicable.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages are really valuable AEO content, as is how-to content.
4. Structure your content for AI
The way you structure your content can have a positive effect on your AEO as well. Think about the responses and prompts that are used and generated by answer engines when writing your content. Structure your content using headings, lists, short paragraphs and visuals to both improve user experience and have your content in an easy-to-use form for AI answer engines. Similarly, using data, numbers and quotes, as available, will fill your page with content ripe to be picked for answers to user queries.
To boost the visibility of these structural formats, we recommend generating and adding schema markup. Schema markup is code that you add to your website that helps search engines better understand the type of content on your site. In SEO, it’s helpful for getting your content surfaced in featured snippets and AI summaries, so the same stands to reason for AEO. Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can get you started. Types of schema markup include FAQ, how-to, local business and Q&A schema.
5. Increase credibility and prove expertise
The goal of your AEO content updates is to position your webpages as authoritative, helpful resources that users can trust to tell them truthful answers. The more trustworthy you are, the more likely the answer engine will return your content in its responses. But how do you prove that your site is trustworthy?
First, showcase the expertise of the authors of your blog posts and articles by including author bios on the post pages. This helps to back up the authority of those writing the article. Next, cite authoritative sources in your articles like reputable studies, known industry experts and reports. This builds trust with your audience and the answer engine, showing that your site is committed to facts.
Finally, make sure that you regularly fact check and update your posts and articles to keep all your information up to date. This ensures that your site can be trusted as a reliable, valuable reference for users and engines alike.
6. Measure and fine tune your strategy
As this is an emerging technology, there aren’t many options for ways to easily track your performance, but some software-as-a-service products are beginning to pop up to track a website’s AI mentions.
However, if you’re not ready to buy a SaaS product just yet, you can also monitor if your brand is being cited on answer engines through desk research. To do this, search your key phrases and queries yourself and keep track on a spreadsheet of when and how often you are mentioned. Similar to a Google search, however, answer engines show different results to different users, so your results could be biased and not completely representative of what consumers might be seeing.
Additionally, there are a few metrics you can keep an eye on to begin to determine if your AEO efforts are paying off, including:
- Snippet capture rate: the frequency that your content appears in featured snippets on Google, which could indicate being picked up by AI in the same format.
- Voice search ranking: your visibility in voice search results (if optimizing for this).
- Organic traffic growth: your brand being mentioned in answer engine queries may lead to an increase in referral traffic to your site.
- User engagement metrics: improved bounce rates and time-on-page rates could indicate that a very relevant audience is being driven to your page, or that on-page optimizations are better helping your users.
It’s still early days for answer engine optimization, which presents an exciting opportunity for brands to jump in on the ground floor. Want help implementing these tactics in your own content? B&Y can help—reach out to start a conversation.