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AEO / AI search

AEO is simpler than most marketers make it sound.

Make your business easy for AI to understand, trust, and recommend.

AI search changes how answers are assembled, but the fundamentals are familiar: clear structure, useful content, credible signals, and strong answers.

See the framework Why AI discovery matters
A simple view of AI discovery
  1. 01 Ask Question “Who is the best orthodontist in Maple Ridge?”
  2. 02 Gather Sources
    • Google
    • ChatGPT
    • Perplexity
    • Reviews
    • Articles
    • Website
  3. 03 Answer AI Answer “Here are several highly recommended options…”
  4. 04 Discover Your Business
    • Recommended.
    • Cited.
    • Discovered.

Different sources. A clearer path to your business.

Start with the simple version.

AEO = making your business easier for AI systems to understand and reference.

SEOHelps you appear in search results.

AEOHelps you become part of the answer.

Search used to send you somewhere. AI increasingly gives the answer first.

Traditional search

  1. Query
  2. Results
  3. Website

You search. You get a list. You click.

AI discovery

  1. Question
  2. Multiple sources
  3. Answer
  4. Maybe website

You ask. AI reads, compares, and gives an answer.

The website still matters. It just has to do more than rank.

The AEO framework

Foundation. Authority. Coverage. Measurement.

Same fundamentals.
A bigger surface area.

  1. Foundation

    Can systems understand the business?

    Crawlability, site architecture, schema, entity clarity.

    Make it understandable.

  2. Authority

    Why should the business be trusted?

    Reviews, mentions, citations, first-party expertise.

    Make it trustworthy.

  3. Coverage

    Have you answered enough of the questions people ask?

    Services, products, locations, FAQs, comparisons, use cases.

    Make it relevant.

  4. Measurement

    Are you actually becoming more visible?

    Prompt tracking, AI visibility, citations, rankings, leads.

    Make it measurable.

The technical layer, in plain English

AI can’t understand what you haven’t structured clearly.

  • Who you are Organization
  • What you do Service
  • Where you operate LocalBusiness
  • What you know Article / FAQPage
  • Why people trust you Review / AggregateRating

What you say about yourself matters. What the rest of the internet says about you matters too.

First-party (your control)

  • Website pages
  • Service pages
  • Location pages
  • FAQs
  • Structured data
Your business

Third-party (built over time)

  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Directories
  • Reddit
  • YouTube
  • Associations
  • Mentions

Strong AI visibility usually needs both.

The unit of AEO isn’t just the keyword. It’s the question.

Keyword (old world)

orthodontist Maple Ridge

Short. Generic. Limited context.

AI-style questions (new world)

  • Who is the best orthodontist in Maple Ridge for Invisalign?
  • Which orthodontists offer financing?

Longer. More specific. Higher intent.

Keywords are short. Questions reveal what the person actually wants to know.

If we can’t measure it, it’s just a nice theory.

A simple measurement framework

  • Visibility Are you showing up in AI answers?
  • Position Where do you appear in the answer?
  • Citation Are you being referenced as a source?
  • Coverage Are your topics, services and locations represented?
  • Business outcome Does it produce traffic, leads and customers?

Putting it into practice

Where I apply it.

  • Maple Ridge Orthodontics logo

    Maple Ridge Orthodontics

    Local healthcare, where the question is always “which one, near me, for this.”

    • AI visibility
    • Local search
    • GBP
  • Blaze logo

    Blaze

    Multi-state coverage, where the hard part is a real page for every place and question.

    • Geographic AEO
    • Prompt tracking
  • HIFA Insurance logo

    HIFA Insurance

    An intangible product that has to be described clearly before it can be recommended.

    • Foundation
    • Credibility

What AEO isn’t.

  • Stuffing keywords into “AI-friendly” pages.
  • Publishing hundreds of low-value AI articles.
  • Treating one Reddit mention as a strategy.
  • Replacing SEO entirely.

The boring fundamentals are still doing most of the work.

Writing

Latest thinking on AEO.

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Let's talk

Want to talk AI search?

AEO, prompts, structured content, visibility, citations — or just trying to figure out why ChatGPT recommends everyone except you.

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