AEO stands for answer engine optimization. A search engine gives a list of links. An answer engine gives one answer, and often names two or three businesses. If you aren't one of them, there is no page two to be found on. The customer gets a name and calls it. That is the whole list.
2 of 3 · 10 stepsAnswer Engine Optimization is making your business the one ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI name when someone asks who to hire. The tools build answers from what is public about you: your website, your Google profile, your reviews, and your listings. Make your facts clear, consistent, and easy to read everywhere, and they quote you.
When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini who to hire, the tool names one or two businesses. If you are not one of them, there is no page two.
These tools do not keep their own business directory. They build answers from what is already public about you, so the work is making your facts clear and consistent everywhere.
In ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode, ask what a customer would ask. Write down who gets named and any facts about you that are wrong. This is your baseline. Do it again every quarter and compare. If you are not named at all, you have work to do. If you are named but the facts are wrong, fix the facts.
Ask ChatGPT 'Who is the best plumber in Bakersfield?' and write down every business it names. Then ask 'Is Valley Plumbing any good?' and note whether the hours and services it repeats are correct.
Who is the best {service} in {city}?
Is {your business} any good?
What are {your business}'s hours?
Does {your business} do {service}?
How much does {service} cost in {city}?Make your name, address, phone, hours, and services identical on your website, Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp, and Facebook. An answer engine that finds two different phone numbers has to guess. It usually guesses wrong or skips you. Check every listing by hand. If your phone number changed two years ago, there is probably a listing out there that still has the old one.
Your Google profile says (661) 555-0123 and your website footer says (661) 555-0124. An AI tool sees two numbers and either picks one or skips you. Fix it so they match.
Most owners skip Bing because few customers use it directly. But ChatGPT's web search has drawn on Bing's index, so a missing or stale Bing listing can mean missing or stale answers in ChatGPT. It's free at bingplaces.com and can import from your Google profile with one click. Take the ten minutes. It is the easiest win on this list.
Sign in at bingplaces.com, click 'Import from Google,' and your Bing listing copies your Google profile in one step.
Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in your browser. If it blocks OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot, Googlebot, or Bingbot, those tools cannot read your site. Some website security settings block AI crawlers by default. Ask whoever manages your site to check. If the robots.txt says 'Disallow' next to one of those names, the crawler sees a blank page. You will not show up in that tool's answers.
A robots.txt line that says 'Disallow: /' tells every crawler to leave. One that says 'Disallow: /admin' only blocks the admin area. Check which you have.
Use the customer's question as the heading. Answer it in the first two or three sentences. Add detail after. Answer engines lift short, direct passages, and they skip pages that take five paragraphs to get to the point. If your page starts with a story about your grandfather who started the business, the AI is already gone. Put the answer first. Tell the story later.
On your water heater page, the first line should answer 'How much does a water heater replacement cost?' in two sentences, before any other text.
'Quality service at fair prices' gives an AI nothing to quote. 'Most windshield replacements take 60 to 90 minutes and we come to you anywhere in Kern County' does. State your service area, turnaround times, price ranges or how you quote, licenses, and years in business. The more specific you are, the more an AI has to work with when someone asks about you. Vague sites get skipped.
'Family owned plumber in Bakersfield since 2008, specializing in tankless water heaters and same day leak repair' gives an AI real facts to quote. 'Quality workmanship you can trust' gives it nothing.
Hours inside an image, a menu in a PDF, or services listed only in a video cannot be read reliably. Google's own guidance for AI features says to keep important content in text. If your hours are in a photo, type them out. If your services are in a PDF, add them as text on the page too. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between being quoted and being skipped.
If your hours are in a photo of your storefront, add them as text under the photo too. The AI can read the text but not the photo.
Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features. LocalBusiness markup is still worth adding because it states your facts in a format machines read without guessing. It must match what's visible on the page. If your schema says you are open until 6 but your page says 5, the AI does not know which to trust. They match or they do not count. Test it at validator.schema.org.
A LocalBusiness schema block includes your name, address, phone, hours, and geo coordinates, all matching the text on your contact page exactly.
AI summaries pull from review text, not just the star count. A review that says 'replaced my water heater the same day in Oildale' tells an answer engine what you do and where. You cannot script reviews, but you can ask customers to mention the job you did. When you text them the review link, say 'tell people what we did and how it went.' Reviews with real detail beat reviews that just say 'great service.'
A review that says 'Brad came out the same day and fixed the leak under my sink in Bakersfield' gives an AI a service, a location, and a speed to quote. A review that says 'great company' gives it nothing.
Answer engines weigh what others say about you. Local news, trade associations, chamber directories, supplier pages, and neighborhood groups all count. Ask your chamber for a profile page. Sponsor a local event and get a link. Get quoted in a local article. Then repeat step one every quarter and compare against your baseline. If you are showing up more, keep doing what you are doing.
Ask your chamber of commerce for a profile page with a link to your site. One real local mention beats a hundred links from a link package.
Answer Engine Optimization is making your business the one ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI name when someone asks who to hire. It is mostly doing the basics thoroughly and making your facts easy to read and consistent everywhere.
AEO builds on regular SEO. Regular SEO gets you into the list of links. AEO gets you into the one answer an AI tool gives. Most of AEO is doing your SEO thoroughly and making your facts easy for a machine to read.
Ask every caller how they heard about you and write it down. Watch your referral traffic in Google Analytics for visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and gemini.google.com. If you see clicks from those, AI tools are sending you people.
Ask the tools yourself using the prompts in step one, and do it again every quarter. Our free website audit checks whether your site is set up to show up in AI answers and shows you what to fix.