Search/Answer Engine Optimisation (SEO/AEO)
Find a steady stream of organic traffic to your website through traditional search engines like Google, or AI generated answers from popular platforms like ChatGPT.
- ✓ Get a dedicated marketing practitioner
- ✓ You bring the strategy, I handle the execution
- ✓ Choose between managing ads, SEO, or both
- ✓ Monthly reporting on the actions completed
* One-off setup fees may apply.
- Content focus to help your website be more reachable
- Technical work to help search engines and AI chatbots understand your website better
- Review and update business listing profiles (i.e. Google Maps)
- One meeting per month for up to 1 hour duration
- Clear reporting or performance dashboard with insight of the prior month's results
- Content creation - I can work with third parties on this
- More meetings - additional charge at hourly rate
- Content strategy - charged separately if needed
- Any guaranteed results - these are third-party platforms that update their systems regularly
The opportunities for putting your business online are expanding.
Where the focus previously used to be on getting a blue link for your business on the first page of Google or Bing, there are now more ways to get your business seen online. With the rapid expansion of AI becoming a part of the customer researching psyche, there are now opportunities to get your business cited in hundreds of thousands of generated answers too.
The current opportunities available with AI answers are for the most part untapped by your competition. But, the door will be closing fast as more catch on to the importance of having AI optimisation as a part of their marketing strategy to be seen online through all organic sources.
Treat your website like a valuable sales team member.
Oftentimes the business website is treated as a brochure or simply ‘something that a business has to have.’ While that is true to a point, it often is the main point that your potential customers will look at to identify if you’re worth reaching out to.
If your website is lacking in detail or information about your products or services, that will be costing you future business. Because no contact efforts are ever made, the damage will be silent and unknown.
Think of it like a member of your sales team. In its current form, would it pass the test? You might find that as a representative of your business that is working for you 24/7, and barely gives you any trouble, you might not be giving it the credit it deserves.
Why not show it a bit of love to make it a stand out part of your business?
Your online presence is equal to building trust in the market.
Social proof is a large part of what makes customers lean towards working with a potential business. Online reviews, social media engagement, relevant and up-to-date content to help make informed decisions. All of these also form a web of knowledge that search engines - and AI platforms - use to better understand how to present your business to customers.
It’s not just about keywords. It’s content. It’s showcasing your authority as an expert. Proudly displaying your customer reviews, and actively engaging with your audience across Facebook or YouTube. These all play an equal part at lifting your visibility, and strengthening the case on why your future customers should work with you, not the competition.
The long-term brand building play.
Optimising for search engines and AI answers is around establishing an effective content marketing strategy for your business. It may take months before you start to notice any lift - especially if you’re in a highly competitive industry or sector.
SEO and AEO is a spoke in your content marketing wheel. Content marketing is predominantly focused on giving you the ability to start the snowball effect of having steady, consistent traffic that comes to you with little to no cost associated with it.
Where you might look to Google Ads or Meta Ads for that immediate performance boost, SEO and AEO lets you play the long game. A good marketing mix will have you place some focus on your organic content, and paid advertising elements to reach your potential customers in the right place at the right time.
SEO (and AEO in some respects) will work towards the guiding E-E-A-T principles: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Demonstrating this through your website content, and online profiles you control and manage, will work towards your efforts to build a long-lasting reputation with your brand and business.
There’s a reason why the bigger brands like Apple and Coca-Cola still focus on building organic content and pay for advertising, despite being highly recognised in their own right. Why should your business be any different?
Get the optimised answers to your questions - without using AI.
Search Engine Optimisation is an important part to your online strategy to have your content seen. Answer Engine Optimisation adds to it to let you be seen by even more people that SEO might miss. So it raises some questions on what is best for you.
Is SEO even worth it with all the AI traffic?
Even with the popularity of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity rising, most of these platforms still depend on sourcing their information from the web. This means they will often look to Google or even Bing to find the most up-to-date information.
Because of that, SEO is arguably more important than ever to prioritise in your marketing mix. Not only will it be important to have your website presented in the traditional list of links on the search engines, it also increases your opportunity to be cited from the AI generated answers too.
What is an AI citation?
The shorter answer: an AI citation is when your content, or website, is referenced as part of a generated answer the AI model creates.
The longer (but not complete) answer: Every time the AI model is presented with an input query from the user, it tries to identify components that are relevant - much like keywords for a search result. From this information, the model then attempts to find a broad range of answers from different types of search results, which is often called ‘query fan out’. This gives the AI model as much context as possible around search combinations. It will then use some elements of its training data, the search results, and direct content it might have received, to generate an answer it feels is the most relevant to that query.
As the answer is generated based on the information received, and data weightings based on which model you select to use, you can find that asking the same input again can yield a different result.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO for short) is a complimentary layer on top of your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts. It applies best practices known to date that can improve your business website being referenced more for generated answers.
Similarly to SEO, there’s no guarantee that it will result in immediate traffic to your website. It can go some distance to build brand recognition for your business being a subject matter expert, leading to greater consideration by future customers that are using AI to research their options today.
What content should I create for SEO and AEO?
The content you create can go hand in hand for both search engines and answer engines. Think along the lines of frequently asked questions, or informational content like brochures or reports. These are more likely to be referenced by AI, and can provide SEO benefits at establishing your authority at being a knowledgeable source about the product or service.
Overall, your content should be created with your customer in mind. Adaptation for search engines and AI answers can then be considered. More often than not, though, there’s very little change required.
Have more questions on SEO, AEO, or both? Feel free to reach out and I'll do my best to help you find answers.
Let's have an honest conversation about your marketing goals.
Make sure that our values are aligned before you commit to anything. Book in a 30-minute call for a deep dive into your marketing goals, and learn how I can help you achieve them. If I can't see me adding value, I'll tell you.