Answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO) mean shaping your content so search engines and AI assistants can understand it, trust it and use it in direct answers. Nobody can promise a citation. What you can do is publish clear, accurate, well-structured pages from a recognisable source, and keep them crawlable and current.
Key takeaways
- AEO targets answer boxes and voice results; GEO targets AI-generated answers. Both rely on the same fundamentals.
- No one outside the platforms knows exactly how AI answers choose sources, so treat claims of secret ranking factors with suspicion.
- Answer the question directly near the top of the page, then support it with detail.
- Structured data and entity facts must match what visitors can actually see.
- Original expertise, clear authorship and up-to-date pages are the most defensible long-term investment.
What AEO and GEO actually mean
Answer engine optimisation grew out of featured snippets, voice assistants and "people also ask" boxes, where a search engine extracts a short answer from a page. Generative engine optimisation is a newer term for improving how your content is used in answers written by large language model assistants and AI search features, which may summarise several sources and sometimes cite them.
The labels are marketing shorthand rather than a formal discipline. Underneath, both are about being a clear, trustworthy source on a topic. If you already invest in SEO, you are most of the way there; the difference is emphasis on direct answers, entity clarity and brand mentions.
What is known and what is not
Honesty matters here, because this area attracts exaggeration.
Reasonably well established
- AI search features and assistants generally draw on content they can access, so a page that blocks crawlers or sits behind a login is unlikely to be used.
- Clear, well-organised content is easier for any system, human or machine, to summarise accurately.
- Search engines publish guidance saying that helpful, original content and sound technical foundations matter. The relevant pages are in Google Search Central.
Not known
- The exact signals any assistant uses to pick, rank or cite a source. These are not public and they change.
- Whether any particular tactic will produce a citation for your brand. Results vary by query, platform and time.
- How much weight mentions on other websites carry compared with your own pages.
Be sceptical of anyone selling a sure-fire method. The sensible approach is to do things that are good for readers and low-risk, then observe what happens.
Practical steps that hold up
1. Write answer-first content
Put the direct answer to the question in the first paragraph, in plain language, before adding context. Use headings phrased like the questions people ask, then answer each in a few sentences. This helps readers first, and it also gives answer systems a clean passage to extract.
2. Use structured data that matches the page
Mark up articles, organisations, products and FAQs with schema.org structured data only where the content is visible on the page. Mismatches between markup and visible text erode trust and can break eligibility rules. A technical SEO review should include validating your markup with the testing tools the search engines provide.
3. Make your identity unmistakable
Answer systems and people both want to know who is speaking. Publish a detailed About page, name authors with short bios and credentials you can verify, and provide real contact details. Keep your business name, address, phone number, service descriptions and founding facts consistent across your site and your public profiles. Inconsistent facts make it harder for any system to be confident about who you are.
4. Keep search bots able to crawl you
Check your robots.txt and any bot-blocking rules at your host or CDN. Decide deliberately which crawlers you allow, because policies differ between search crawlers and AI training crawlers, and each platform documents its own bot names. Blocking everything by accident is a common error.
5. Offer original expertise
Generic summaries are everywhere and easy to replace. Pages that include your own process, real examples, original explanations, data you collected yourself or clear opinions with reasoning are harder to substitute. Be careful to label hypothetical examples as hypothetical.
6. Keep pages current
Review important pages on a schedule, update facts, dates, policies and screenshots, and remove outdated advice. A visible "last reviewed" date helps readers, and stale pages are a quiet reputational risk.
7. Build mentions where your audience looks
Being discussed credibly on industry sites, directories, podcasts and communities builds recognition for your brand. Aim for genuine contributions, not link schemes. Active social media marketing helps people find and trust you as well.
What about llms.txt?
llms.txt is an emerging convention: a plain-text or Markdown file at the root of a site that lists and summarises key pages for language models. It is not a formal standard, and at the time of writing it is not universally supported, with the major platforms not committing to use it. Adding one is cheap and low risk, so it can be a reasonable experiment, but do not expect it to replace good content, and do not rely on it for visibility.
A worked example
Imagine a small accounting software company with a page titled "What is GST reconciliation?" The current page opens with a long story about the company. A better version opens with a two-sentence definition, follows with a short step list, adds an FAQ with real customer questions, names the finance expert who reviewed it, links to the product page and carries a visible review date. Matching FAQ markup is added. None of this promises a citation, but the page is now clearer for readers, easier to summarise accurately and easier to verify.
How to measure without fooling yourself
Track branded searches, referral traffic from AI products where it is visible in your analytics, and periodically ask relevant questions in the assistants your customers use, noting whether you appear and whether the answer about you is correct. Record the date, because answers change. Treat this as directional evidence, not a precise scoreboard. Our SEO services can help set up reporting like this, and our AI and machine learning team works with these assistants from the building side.
FAQ
Is AEO different from SEO?
It overlaps heavily. SEO covers all search visibility, while AEO focuses on being the source of a concise direct answer. The foundations, such as crawlability, helpful content and clear structure, are shared.
Can I pay to be cited by AI assistants?
You cannot reliably buy organic citations. Some platforms offer advertising formats, which are separate and clearly labelled. Be cautious of services that promise placement in AI answers.
Do I need a separate website for GEO?
No. Improve the site you already have: clear answers, accurate structured data, strong About and author pages, and accessible crawling.
Should I block AI crawlers?
It depends on your goals. Blocking may protect content from reuse but can also reduce the chance of being referenced. Decide based on your business model and review each platform's current documentation.
Next steps
Pick your five most important pages and rewrite their openings so each answers its question in two or three sentences. Then check crawl access and structured data. If you would like help auditing your content for clarity and search readiness, contact us and we can talk it through. You can also read how startups and SaaS teams approach content and positioning.
