AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation
Be the answer,
not the sixth link
AEO · Part of search
Ranking first matters less when the answer sits above the results.
Our work has been published by 50 outlets
A growing share of searches now resolve above the results: an AI Overview, a featured snippet, a direct answer in Perplexity or Copilot. Ranking fourth on a page nobody scrolls is not a result. AEO is the structural work that makes your page the one an answer engine extracts from — direct answers, clean formatting, correct markup and evidence a machine can verify.
AEO
Being the answer in AI Overviews, snippets and Perplexity — not link number six.
Answer engines extract rather than read. They look for a question stated plainly, an answer given immediately after it in a self-contained paragraph, and a page structured so that paragraph can be lifted without losing its meaning. Most corporate pages bury the answer three paragraphs into a narrative, which is why they are passed over by systems that would otherwise consider them authoritative.
So the method is unglamorous and specific: mine the real questions, answer each one in forty to sixty words directly under the heading that asks it, then let the detail follow for the human who wants it. Add the structured data that tells the machine what it is looking at. Format comparisons as tables and sequences as lists, because those are the shapes extraction prefers.
Then measure the thing that actually changed. Classical rank tracking cannot see an AI Overview. We track which queries produce one, whether you appear inside it, and what happens to qualified traffic and enquiries when you do — including the uncomfortable case where visibility rises and clicks fall.
Structure
Question-led headings, answers stated in the first sentence, and a page shape that survives being quoted out of context.
Markup
FAQPage, QAPage, HowTo and author markup, so the engine is told what each block is rather than left to infer it.
Evidence
Named authors, cited figures and dated sources — the signals an answer engine uses to decide whether a claim is safe to repeat.
Measurement
Which queries trigger an answer box, whether you are in it, and what it does to qualified traffic. Rank trackers do not show this.
Capabilities
Everything an
AEO brief covers
The full scope, listed. Engage all of it or the two or three lines that are actually holding you back — most programmes start narrow and widen once the first results justify it.
Common questions
AEO, the
questions that matter
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation: the work of having your content selected as the answer — in Google AI Overviews, in featured snippets, in answer engines such as Perplexity — rather than merely ranking somewhere on the page. In practice it means direct question-and-answer structure, clean formatting, structured data and demonstrable authority on the subject.
Two things. Branded presence inside the answer carries the attribution, and buyers researching a considered purchase do click through — later in the process, with much higher intent. We report both: the visibility you gained and the enquiries it assisted, including when raw sessions fall.
No, and sites that treat it that way see nothing. Markup tells an engine what a block is; it does not make a buried, hedged answer worth extracting. The gain comes from rewriting the page so the answer is stated plainly and early. The schema then makes that legible.
It sits on top of it. AEO without a crawlable, authoritative site has nothing to stand on, so we usually start with the SEO fundamentals. What differs is the target: SEO competes for a position in a list, AEO competes to be the source of a composed answer.
The other two disciplines
AEO — the next step
Let’s talk
about AEO
Send the domain and what you are trying to rank, be cited or be recommended for. You will get back a candid read on where AEO would and would not move the number — not a template proposal.