Answer Engine Optimisation · Audit + retainer · Hertfordshire & UK
Answer Engine Optimisation: get cited by the AI that answers your customers
More people now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overview instead of scrolling a page of blue links. Answer Engine Optimisation gets your business named in those answers. It starts with a fixed-price AI Visibility Audit and, where it makes sense, an ongoing retainer — and it's grounded in Google's own published guidance, not the magic-schema myths doing the rounds.
What is Answer Engine Optimisation?
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the work of making your business discoverable, extractable and citable by AI answer engines — Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. It is not a separate "AI channel" bolted onto your marketing. As Google states plainly, optimising for its AI features is still SEO: the AI draws answers from the same search index, so AEO is strong SEO fundamentals plus extractable structure plus genuine authority — measured by how often you get cited.
The honest version — what Google actually says
Most AEO pitches sell you a myth. There is no special schema that unlocks AI Overviews — Google says structured data "isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add". An llms.txt file won't help you in Google either — Google says it "doesn't use them" and they "neither harm nor help" your visibility (they're worth shipping only for non-Google engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity). And chunking your content into AI-bait fragments is actively discouraged. I lead with this honesty because it's the truth, it saves you money, and it's how you actually win: helpful, first-hand content, real expertise, and clean structure.
How I do AEO — the five stages
One: technical foundation — make sure every priority page is crawlable, indexed and snippet-eligible, with clean structured data for parsing and healthy Core Web Vitals, and that the AI crawlers you want (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) aren't blocked. Two: E-E-A-T and entity building — establish you and your business as recognisable, trusted entities with real credentials, consistent facts everywhere, and Person/Organization schema. Three: answer-shaped content — restructure key pages so each section leads with a direct, liftable answer under a real question. Four: llms.txt and agent-readability for the non-Google engines. Five: measurement — track your citation share across engines and report it monthly.
How we measure it — honestly
For Google specifically, the measurement source is Google's own Search Console "Generative AI performance report" — and Google is clear that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, so I'll caution you against anyone claiming to measure your "AI Overview rankings" directly. For the non-Google engines, I run your top queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini each month and log whether you're cited, on which page, and which competitors show up. You get a straight report of citation rate and share of AI voice — directional where it must be, never dressed up as data it isn't.
What it costs, and where to start
Start with the AI Visibility Audit: a fixed-price diagnostic, £1,500–£2,500, that baselines where you're cited today across the main engines, audits the technical, structured-data and E-E-A-T foundations, gives you answer-shaped content templates and a prioritised roadmap, and includes a read-out session. From there, an Answer Engine Optimisation retainer (£900–£2,000/month, three-month minimum) implements the plan and runs the content engine that keeps earning citations. Prefer just the technical groundwork? A one-off entity and structured-data sprint is around £950.
Straight answers
Is AEO just SEO?
Yes, largely — and that's straight from Google. Its own guidance says the best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because its generative AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking systems. AEO is SEO fundamentals plus extractable structure plus entity authority, re-pointed at citation as the goal. Anyone selling it as a brand-new discipline that replaces SEO is overcharging you for a rebrand.
Do I need special schema to appear in Google's AI Overviews?
No. Google states directly that structured data "isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add". I still implement clean structured data because it helps machines parse your content and earns rich results in normal Search and citations in non-Google engines — but not as an AI Overview cheat code. Beware anyone selling a magic AI schema.
Which AI engines can you get me cited in?
The ones that matter: Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT (search), Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. The foundations that win Google — helpful, people-first content, E-E-A-T, clean structure — are the same ones the other engines reward, so the work compounds across all of them rather than chasing each separately.
Does an llms.txt file get me into AI answers?
Not into Google's. Google says it doesn't use llms.txt and that the file will "neither harm nor help" your visibility there. It's still worth shipping because non-Google engines and autonomous agents — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity — do read it. I'm upfront about exactly which tactic helps which engine, so you never pay for something that does nothing.
How will I know it's working?
You get a monthly report: your citation rate and share of AI voice on your target queries, which of your pages are being cited, and which competitors appear. For Google I use Search Console's Generative AI performance report; for the other engines I track citations directly. Traditional SEO gains — rankings, featured snippets, rich results — come along too, because it's the same index.
Book your AI Visibility Audit
Find out where you're cited by AI today, where your competitors are beating you, and exactly what to fix — grounded in Google's own guidance, from £1,500.