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AEO, GEO and SEO for Google search and AI answer engines

AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are the work of getting a site quoted when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude or Google's AI Overviews a question in your field. Both sit on top of ordinary SEO, because an answer engine can only cite a page its crawler can reach and read. The work is technical fixes and answer-first page rewrites, followed by tracking whether the brand is cited for the queries that bring in customers.

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Deliverables

What you get

  • 01

    Technical SEO fixes

    Core Web Vitals, crawlability, canonical URLs, hreflang for multilingual sites, XML sitemaps and redirects, checked page by page and fixed in your code or CMS, not left as a to-do list.

  • 02

    Structured data

    JSON-LD for Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Product and FAQPage where each one applies, validated, so search engines and AI systems get your name, locations and services as data instead of guessing them from page text.

  • 03

    AI crawler rules and discovery files

    robots.txt rules that admit the AI search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Googlebot, Applebot), a separate decision you make about training crawlers, and an llms.txt file that points AI tools to your most useful pages.

  • 04

    Answer-first pages

    Key service and FAQ pages restructured so the opening sentence answers the question. The GEO paper from Princeton and IIT Delhi researchers (KDD 2024) found that adding statistics, quotations and cited sources made content more visible in generative answers, so we add them, using figures from your own records or a named source and never invented ones.

  • 05

    Lighthouse audits

    Lighthouse runs on mobile and desktop for your main page templates, before and after the changes, so you can see what the work moved.

  • 06

    AI citation tracking

    A fixed list of the questions customers ask, checked on a schedule in ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews. Each check records whether the brand is mentioned or linked, and which competitor is cited when you are not.

How it runs

The steps, in order

  1. 1

    Audit

    We crawl the site, run Lighthouse on mobile and desktop, read robots.txt, sitemaps and structured data, and record where you appear today in Google results and AI answers for an agreed list of queries.

  2. 2

    Fix the technical base

    Crawl errors, slow templates, duplicate URLs, missing canonicals and broken redirects come first. Content work does little for a page that crawlers cannot read.

  3. 3

    Add markup and rework pages

    We add JSON-LD, crawler rules and llms.txt, then rewrite the pages that matter most so each one answers its question in the first lines and carries its sources.

  4. 4

    Measure and adjust

    We re-check rankings and AI citations on the same query list and report what moved and what to work on next.

What we build with

  • Lighthouse
  • Google Search Console
  • Schema.org JSON-LD
  • Next.js
  • React
  • WordPress
  • Sanity

Case studies

Where this service did the work

AEO and marketing automation

Client-reported

Custom AEO and an AI content pipeline

A client of our AEO and content automation work

Sales growth, with better lead quality and efficiency
80%
Sales growth, with better lead quality and efficiency

The client wanted more of its inquiries to come from buyers who fit, and less of the team's time spent finding and chasing them.

  • Custom AEO and SEO work, so search engines and AI assistants can find and cite the client's pages.
  • An AI content and lead pipeline built around the client's channels, with a person approving what goes out.
AEO, GEO & SEOMarketing automation agents

Industries

Where it fits best

Dental and medical clinics

Booking, reminders and recall through your practice software, with patient data kept in the systems you have approved.

Restaurants

Catering and reservation questions answered during the dinner rush, and dish posts for Xiaohongshu and Instagram that you approve.

Pharmacies

Pickup reminders and vaccine booking in your customers' languages. Anything clinical goes to a pharmacist.

Auto dealers

Every listing-site lead answered from live inventory within minutes, with the test drive on a salesperson's calendar.

Education

Trial-class questions answered in English and Chinese on WeChat and your website, with the trial booked into your timetable.

Commercial real estate

Portal inquiries answered from your listing sheets within minutes, with the tour booked on the broker's calendar.

FAQ

AEO, GEO & SEO: common questions

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO gets pages ranked in search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) shapes pages so a system answering a question can lift a direct answer from them. GEO (generative engine optimization) comes from a 2024 research paper and covers making content more likely to be used and cited in AI-generated answers. The three overlap heavily, and all of them start with a site that crawlers can read.

Can you guarantee we will appear in ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews?

No. Nobody controls what an AI system cites, and the answer to the same question can change from one day to the next. What we can do is remove the reasons you are not cited, such as blocked crawlers or pages that bury the answer, and measure the effect on a fixed list of queries.

Should we block AI crawlers?

Search crawlers and training crawlers are different bots, and robots.txt can treat them differently. Blocking OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot can keep you out of those engines' answers, while blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot stops your pages being collected for model training. We set the rules bot by bot, and the training decision is yours.

Does llms.txt make a difference?

It is a proposed convention: a plain-text file listing your most useful pages for AI tools, and not every engine reads it yet. It costs little to add and maintain, so we add it, but we do not rely on it. Crawlable pages and clear structured data do most of the work.

How long before we see results?

Technical fixes take effect once search engines recrawl the pages, which depends on your site's size and how often it gets crawled. Rankings and AI citations move more slowly and differ by query and competition. We report on the same query list at regular intervals instead of promising a date.

Do we need to rebuild our website first?

Usually not. Most of the work happens in the site you have: templates, metadata, structured data, robots.txt and page copy. If your platform cannot serve full HTML or control its own markup, we will tell you and explain what a rebuild would change.

Other AI services

Related services

Custom AI agents

Agents that handle one workflow inside the tools you already use, with a person approving anything that sends, spends or changes a record.

Marketing automation agents

A content pipeline that drafts platform-native posts in the brand's own voice, scores them, and publishes once a person approves.

AI training for teams

Staff learn to use AI tools on their real work, with a written policy on what data goes where and a separate track for managers.

Tell us about the workflow that costs you the most time

A first call is about the business you run, not a pitch. We will tell you what an agent could handle, what it should not, and what it would take to build.

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