From ten blue links to one answer
For 25 years, search meant a page of links. You optimized to rank #1 and earn the click. Increasingly, people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google's AI Overviews — and get a single synthesized answer that names a few businesses or sources. If you're not named, you're invisible, no matter how well you "rank."
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — also called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — is the practice of making your business one of the sources an AI cites and recommends.
AEO doesn't replace SEO — it sits on top of it
Most of the foundations still matter: crawlable pages, clear structure, trustworthy content, and a strong entity (a business the web clearly understands). What changes is the *goal*. Instead of only "rank and earn the click," you also want to "be the cited, recommended answer."
What an answer engine needs from you
- Clear, factual, well-structured content it can extract and quote
- A consistent, verifiable identity (name, location, what you do) across the web
- Signals of trust and expertise (real authorship, reviews, citations)
- Machine-readable data (structured data / schema) that removes ambiguity
What you'll learn in this course
- How AI engines actually choose what to cite
- How to make your entity unambiguous with structured data
- How to write content AI is likely to quote
- How to measure and grow your AI visibility over time