As artificial intelligence tools start to take a larger role in how consumers search for products and brands online, it’s important to understand how to make sure your brand is showing up to users in this new avenue. In this article, we’ll explain how to optimize web content for AI searches so you’re ready to reach new audiences.
What Is Answer Engine Optimization?
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is a way of constructing web content to prioritize brand visibility in AI search responses. It primarily involves identifying a set of prompts the brand wants to appear in responses for, then publishing content that answers those prompts that’s structured in a way that an AI is likely to use or mention.
Why AEO Matters for AI Search Visibility
Practicing AEO allows your brand to both increase its presence in AI responses and control the messaging in those responses. If your web content is optimized for selection for an AI’s search response, it’s more likely that your brand will be featured directly in responses, increasing traffic from a rapidly growing new group of users.
How to Optimize Content for AEO
Identify the Prompts You Want to Appear For
Identify Buyer Questions and Decision-Stage Prompts
To start your brand’s AEO strategy, identify some prompts that you want your brand to appear as results for. Consider the different decision stages that consumers might be researching from and predict some questions that they might be posing to AI; your AEO strategy will be based on answering these prompts.
Group Prompts by Service, Audience, and Buying Stage
Customers conduct research at every stage of the decision-making process, and each of these stages represents a chance to reach new users and increase visibility. When listing prompts, categorize them based on how informed the customer is about your brand and how close they might be to making a buying decision.
Prioritize Prompts With Commercial Intent
While all customer questions are important for AEO, it’s smart to prioritize prompts that indicate an active intent to invest in your brand. Focus content on answering prompts about comparisons to other brands, locations or ways to purchase products, and other actionable, purchase-based questions.
Map the Query Fan-Outs Behind Those Prompts
Identify the Related Searches Behind Each Prompt
When an AI tool is instructed to search the internet for information, it actually conducts several related searches to develop its answer and further interaction with its user. When testing prompts, use in-model or third-party tools to access the logic behind the LLM’s decision to see its additional searches, then focus AEO content to be ranked for those queries as well.
Review Which Fan-Out Queries Already Rank
Starting with an understanding of where your brand already appears in fan-out results will help orient your strategy towards the areas that need the biggest rankings boost. Simulate some fan-out queries to determine where you can reinforce your content presence with relevant answers.
Create or Optimize Pages for Fan-Out Searches
Build Pages That Directly Answer Fan-Out Queries
If a recurring fan-out query isn’t covered by your existing content, publishing new pages or working the relevant information into existing material is the best way to boost your AEO metrics. Once these new pages are accessible, it’s important to build their authority with backlinks, readable site schema, and a clear, concise structure.
Improve Existing Pages That Are Close to Ranking
Because an AI tool search is still fundamentally a web search, traditional SEO techniques can be used in tandem with AEO practices to improve their chances of being featured in a response. Ensure mid-ranked pages are brief, provide direct answers to fan-out queries, and have machine-readable markup that makes it easy for an AI to fully and correctly understand your content.
Add Specific Claims, Examples, and Proof Points
E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) are specific metrics and examples that are clearly linked to trustworthy, high-authority sources. AI tools are searching for specific facts and information that they can relay back to their users, so they’re more likely to feature your sources if they feature these points of proof distinctly and prominently.
Connect Supporting Pages Into Topic Clusters
Linking related pages to each other allows an AI tool to reach more of your content faster, allowing it to absorb more brand content than it could from a single page. Linking various fan-outs together increases the AI’s ease of access, which in turn increases the likelihood of a citation or feature in its response.
Build Links and Authority to Priority Pages
As with traditional SEO, AI tools will prefer pages that have high “trust scores,” as determined by backlinks to trustworthy sites, EEAT signals, and a legible technical backend. Honing and maintaining these aspects of your content will lead AI to discover pages more quickly, increasing your chances of being featured in responses.
Measure and Improve AEO Performance
Track AI Visibility Percentage
AI visibility percentage tracks the amount of responses that refer to your brand. As it directly measures a primary impact of AEO strategy, it’s highly important to track using a third-party service or regular prompt testing to see how your content is being served over time.
Track Citation Percentage
Citation percentage refers to the rate at which AI models use your content as one of their sources in its response. While direct mentions are usually considered more valuable for visibility, citations are certainly a metric worth tracking, as the two often appear together.
Track Traffic From AI Tools
As the ultimate goal of AEO is to drive traffic from AI tools to your brand’s sites, measuring that traffic is the best way to measure the success of your content optimization strategy. Use your CMS or another tool to track how much traffic is being sourced from AI tools, and adapt content and presence accordingly.
AEO Content Optimization FAQs
How do I get started with answer engine optimization?
Identify the AI prompts that your brand is targeting, then publish content that answers those questions, using EEAT and SEO techniques to increase visibility to AI models.
What are query fan-outs in AEO?
AI models don’t just search for a single question when asked to research a single question. A query fan-out refers to the additional supporting searches that an AI conducts to support an answer to a main prompt.
Do backlinks matter for AEO content?
Backlinks are a big part of building trust for SEO rankings, but they also factor into AEO. AI models make citation decisions based on trustworthiness and traditional search rankings, so establishing backlinks will help pages get picked by AI models for inclusion in their responses.