AEO: how to help AI assistants find and recommend your business

What is AEO?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. SEO is about ranking in a list of links. AEO is about being the answer: making it easy for AI assistants and AI search features to understand your business and mention it when someone asks a question.

When someone types "who builds websites I can edit with AI?" or "best physio near me open Saturdays" into an assistant, it pulls together an answer from what it can find and understand. AEO is about being easy to find and easy to understand.

Why it matters now

More people start their research by asking an assistant. If your site is hard to read, out of date or vague about what you do, you're less likely to show up in those answers. The good news: most of what helps AEO also helps your customers.

Seven steps to start

1. Say clearly what you do, for whom, and where. Put it in your home page's first lines. "Family physio clinic in Leeds, open Saturdays" beats "Your wellness journey starts here".
2. Answer real questions. Add an FAQ with the questions customers actually ask you, in their words, with short, direct answers.
3. Use headings that match questions. A heading like "How much does a website cost?" followed by a clear answer is easy for people and machines to use.
4. Add structured data. Schema markup tells search engines and assistants what's on the page: your business, services, prices and FAQs.
5. Keep your details consistent. Your name, address, hours and phone should match everywhere: your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
6. Keep it fresh. Old prices and closed offers make your site less trustworthy. This is where running your site by chat helps: updates take a minute.
7. Consider an llms.txt file. It's a proposed, plain-text summary of your site written for AI tools. It isn't a standard every tool uses yet, but it's quick to add.

What not to do

• Don't stuff pages with keywords or write for robots. Clear writing wins.
• Don't trust anyone who promises guaranteed mentions in ChatGPT or other assistants. Nobody controls those answers.
• Don't hide key facts in images or PDFs. Put them in the page text.

How we help

Every site we build at SellWell Studio comes with clear page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, structured data and an llms.txt file. And because you run it by chat, keeping it fresh is one message away. See what's included.