Key Takeaways
- Develop an AEO strategy: When you optimise for AEO your strategy should include AI Overviews and other emergent AI search tools.
- Create user-focused content: Understand and align content with user questions, utilising psychographic analysis, long-tail keywords, and clear, conversational structures.
- Leverage NLP and Entity SEO: Break down niches into entities, optimise for semantic search, and enhance content understanding to be recommended by answer engines.
- Enhance technical SEO: Simplify website structure, use schema markup, and improve internal linking to facilitate better crawling and content delivery by AI tools.
- Build off-page authority: Strengthen your presence beyond your website through backlinks and multi-channel SEO to establish trust and expertise across various platforms.
The coolest phrase – “Just ChatGPT it”
Remember, when to “eat” something meant putting food in your mouth? Well, language changes quickly. According to Gen Zs, it now symbolises praise for something. So, if you want to eat SEO, it’s time to update your knowledge. For instance, “just Google it” has been amongst the most common English language phrases over the last 20 years. It has become a synonym for accessing information quickly. But, that’s yesterday’s news. To eat SEO, you must understand the next addition to an expanding English lexicon – “Just ChatGPT it.” Consequently, optimising for AEO is imperative.
Okay, maybe it’s a stretch to say “just Google it” is no longer relevant. Traditional search engines like Google won’t be replaced, but where searches begin will change. Central to this change is the introduction of answer engines like ChatGPT.
These answer engines are a great place for exploratory searches. For instance, if you want to know “how to run for longer.” Such a query is open-ended, making an answer engine a perfect place to start developing your knowledge because it aggregates information quickly, offering a concise answer, tailored to your specific needs. As a result, many people will use tools like ChatGPT, rather than search engines like Google to begin their search journey.
Consequently, it is critical to understand what and how answer engine optimisation works.
The ultimate guide to optimising for AEO
AI is changing SEO. Consequently, the very nature of SEO services will need to evolve. One of those changes is an understanding of how to optimise for AEO.
Unlike traditional SEO, understanding how answer engines like ChatGPT, interpret and answer queries is important when optimising for AEO. As a result, optimising for AEO will mean creating niche content that addresses and anticipates user questions.
The following steps outline how you can optimise for AEO.
1. Build the foundations with an AEO strategy
AEO shares many similarities with Google’s AI Overviews and AI tools like Bings Co-pilot. Therefore, building a strategy that covers all these emergent search tools and features is important.
However, since Google has over 80% of the market share it’s a good idea to build a strategy focused on AI Overviews. Yet, this doesn’t mean ignoring artificial engines like ChatGPT. Instead, it means you address the AI tool most likely to impact your search rankings in the short term while also optimising for AEO.
Moreover, understanding how to implement your strategy and prepare for AI Overviews can be a great step towards optimising for AEO. Many of the optimisation techniques will be similar and can have a big impact on your visibility in artificial engines.
A key feature of this AEO strategy will be understanding topical authority. This means identifying how you position yourself as an expert in a specific niche and helping search engines understand your expertise.
2. Build content with a focus on user intent
AI tools like ChatGPT are designed to understand user intent. For instance, ChatGPT’s model was trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).
Moreover, the conversational nature of these tools means people often use follow-up questions. For instance, if someone searches for the “best foods for your running” the initial response will likely be too broad. Consequently, the user will give insights into who they are and their specific requirements. This could include their running goals or health issues.
As a result, it’s important to build content aligned to this conversational dynamic. Therefore, optimise for AEO by:
- Performing a psychographic analysis: This means looking at your target users’ beliefs and behaviours rather than demographics. This way you can better understand the content your users want.
- Identifying long-tail keywords: Long-tail phrases often reflect how users naturally ask questions. For instance, “best places to run in south London” instead of shorter phrases like “running in London.”
- Finding questions asked: Social media platforms like Quora are a great source for questions people ask. Moreover, the “People also asked” section of Google is a great resource.
- Optimising content structure: Anticipate follow-up questions throughout your content. Therefore, structure it like you are having a conversation and include FAQs, bulleted lists, and clear headings.
- Focusing on readability: Avoid technical language and write like you are talking to a consumer of your content. For instance, if you sell NMN supplements, writing NMN is the precursor to NAD+ is unlikely to yield results. Instead, focus on the benefits such as improved insulin sensitivity.
3. Don’t use AI content for AI tools when optimising for AEO
This may sound obvious but unfortunately for many, it is not. Using AI tools like ChatGPT to create content and hoping the same tools feature your marvellous creation will not work. Why would they? It’s like sending Sir Paul McCartney a demo of your new song “Yesterday” and hoping he will recommend you to his recording label.
However, interest in AI content has surged 317%. Yet, this raises questions of legality from both AI content and images. Moreover, this has led to Google de-indexing AI content from their search results. As a result, AI content can also harm your search rankings.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use AI tools like ChatGPT. Instead, you must learn how to humanise your content and avoid AI detection by adding unique insights.
4. Understand NLP when trying to optimise for AEO
Understanding Entity SEO should be a key focus when optimising for AEO. This is because optimising for Entity SEO is the building block for gaining and optimising topical authority.
Think of it this way. If you had an issue with your knee, would you prefer to ask the guy at the pub for advice or a knee surgeon? Optimising for Entity SEO and consequently topical authority can help establish you as an expert for answer engines.
Moreover, creating your content around entities in a niche can help large language models like ChatGPT understand your content. It helps them to establish a deeper understanding of your content and users. As a result, they can recommend your content when a user asks a question. This is because language models use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand how and why people ask questions and identify appropriate responses.
Therefore, to optimise for AEO consider the following:
- Identify a niche, and break it down into entities (people, places, things). As a result, build your content around these entities. For example, if your niche is about men’s hormone health your entities might include, hormone types, foods, exercises and hormone tests.
- Semantic search. Focus on optimising for the meaning behind your keywords, not just the keywords themselves. For instance, when people search for “human longevity” do they want quick answers about expected lifespan or how to optimise their health? Also, consider synonyms and related terms.
5. Improve your technical SEO for AEO optimisation
Answer engines like Perplexity AI and Gemini work best when your website is simple. In particular, this includes the technical build of your website. The more complex or slow your website is, the more issues the AI will have in crawling your content and using it to deliver answers.
Therefore, focus on optimising your technical SEO. This includes:
- Including schema markup: This provides additional information and context for answer engines. Schema markup is a set of instructions you can add to your website’s code that helps search engines understand the meaning of your content.
- Improving your internal linking: Internal linking is an important part of Entity SEO as it helps answer engines crawl your site more efficiently and understand the relationships between different topics. For instance, a mental health website might have an entity that includes “foods for improved focus.” Linking your content in this entity to content in an entity about “natural remedies for positivity” can help answer engines better understand how these topics are linked.
6. Like SEO, you need to think beyond your website when optimising for AEO
If someone gave you a handful of supplements to improve your metabolic health, would you take them? Imagine you have never met this person before but they tell you they are an expert. However, they have no online proof other than their website.
Now imagine another person gave you the same supplements. Yet they have been featured in articles by established health companies and in academic journals. Who would you rather trust?
Naturally, you will trust the person recommended by established authorities on the subject. Answer engines are no different.
Of course, this idea of building your off-page SEO presence exists today. Obtaining backlinks is one tactic which is also relevant to answer engines. Therefore, consider leveraging AI to automate parts of your backlink strategy to help build your authority and optimise for AEO.
However, backlinks are diminishing in importance. Therefore, you should also focus on optimising for multi-channel SEO. This means building your presence across various online platforms to help establish yourself as an expert in different channels.
Thinking beyond search engines
The future of SEO will see answer engines rise in importance. More people will turn to them to start exploring a topic. Answer engines cut through the clutter of website links, delivering concise answers that expedite users’ quests for knowledge.
Therefore, you must adjust your SEO strategy. It’s no longer enough to find random keywords and hope they help you rank highly. The search ecosystem is becoming more complex and your SEO strategy must adapt and understand how to optimise for AEO.
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