AEO for SEO Practitioners: What Changes, What Stays, and Where to Start

If you've been doing SEO for any length of time, you've heard the phrase "SEO is dead" at least a dozen times. It wasn't true when blogs said it in 2012. It wasn't true when voice search was supposed to kill it in 2018. And it's not true now that AI search is supposedly replacing it.

What IS happening is an evolution. Answer Engine Optimization, AEO, is the practice of optimizing your content so it gets cited in AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It's not replacing SEO. It's extending it. And if you're already a competent SEO practitioner, you're closer to mastering AEO than you think.

This guide is specifically for people who already know traditional SEO well. It skips the basics and focuses on what's actually different, what stays the same, and exactly where to start adapting your workflow.

Let's clear the air right away. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are used interchangeably in the industry. Both refer to optimizing content for AI-generated answers. Profound and some agencies prefer "AEO." Trackerly, AthenaHQ, and others use "GEO." The optimization techniques are identical.

More importantly: roughly 90% of what makes content rank well in traditional search also makes it likely to be cited by AI platforms. The same signals, content quality, topical authority, domain trust, structured data, E-E-A-T, drive both.

The actual "new" parts of AEO are:

• Answer formatting: Structuring content so AI can easily extract answers
• Citation optimization: Making your content specifically citable (data, stats, clear claims)
• AI platform monitoring: Tracking where and how AI mentions your brand
• Prompt-aware content: Understanding how people phrase questions to AI versus typed search queries

That's the delta. It's real, but it's additive, not transformative. Your existing SEO skills transfer almost entirely.

Before diving into what's new, let's talk about what hasn't changed. This is the larger portion.

Keyword Research Still Matters

People ask AI platforms questions the same way they search Google, just in slightly more conversational language. The underlying topics and intent are identical. Your keyword research process, tools, and instincts are still valid. You're mapping the same territory.

Content Quality and Depth Remain King

AI platforms cite thorough, authoritative content. Thin pages don't get cited any more than they rank well on Google. Content depth, original insights, expert perspectives, and full topic coverage, all the things that have driven SEO success for years, are equally critical for AEO.

Technical SEO Is Still Critical

Crawlability, site speed, mobile responsiveness, schema markup, structured data, all of it still matters. AI platforms that crawl the web in real-time (Perplexity, ChatGPT with browsing) use the same signals to assess page quality. Google AI Overviews draws from Google's own index, which uses all your traditional technical SEO signals.

Backlinks and Domain Authority Still Count

AI platforms don't have their own "authority" metric, but they inherit it from the web. High-authority domains get cited more because they appear more prominently in search results, training data, and live web crawls. Your link building strategy is still relavent.

E-E-A-T Is Even More Important

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, Google's quality framework, is arguably more important for AEO than for traditional SEO. AI platforms need to cite trustworthy sources because their answers are presented as facts. Content from established experts on authoritative domains gets preferential citation.

Here's what's genuinely new. These are small additions to your existing workflow, not replacements.

Answer Format Shifts

Traditional SEO content often buries the answer deep in the page after an introduction, context section, and background. For AEO, the answer needs to come first.

Traditional structure:

• Introduction (why this matters)
• Background (context)
• The answer (buried in paragraph 3-4)
• Supporting detail

AEO-optimized structure:

• H2 that poses the question directly
• 1-2 sentence direct answer (this is what AI extracts)
• Supporting detail and nuance
• Data and evidence

You don't lose anything by leading with the answer. In fact, this "inverted pyramid" structure also improves featured snippet capture in traditional search. It's a win-win change.

Question-Aware Content

In traditional SEO, you optimize for keyword phrases: "best CRM for small business." In AEO, you also need to think about how people phrase the same question to AI: "What CRM should a 10-person startup use to manage customer relationships?"

The core topic is identical, but the framing is more:

• Conversational: Natural language, not search shorthand
• Specific: More context and constraints in the query
• Question-formatted: Typically starts with who, what, how, why

This doesn't require a seperate content strategy. It means your headings should pose specific questions, and your content should answer them directly.

Citation Optimization

AI platforms cite content that's easy to cite. This means:

• Specific data points: "47% of B2B companies" is citable. "Many companies" is not.
• Clear factual claims: "The average conversion rate for SaaS landing pages is 3.2%" gives AI something concrete to cite.
• Named frameworks: "The Impact-Effort Matrix" is citable. "A way to prioritize" is not.
• Source attribution: Citing your own data or referencing specific studies increases your credibility as a source.

Multi-Platform Awareness

Google is no longer the only search engine that matters. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others each have different user bases and citation behaviors. You don't need to optimize differently for each, the same quality content works across all, but you do need to monitor more than just Google.

AI Visibility Monitoring

This is the most clearly new skill. In traditional SEO, you track positions in Google. In AEO, you also track:

• Which AI platforms mention your brand
• For which queries you get cited
• How citation frequency changes over time
• Where competitors are cited but you're not

Before optimizing anything, you need to know where you stand. Here's a structured audit process for your existing content library:

Step 1: Select Your Top 20 Pages by Organic Traffic

Pull these from Google Search Console or your analytics platform. These are the pages with the most existing authority and traffic, and therefore the highest AEO potential.

Step 2: Score Each Page on AEO Readiness

For each page, evaluate five factors:

Total score per page: 5-25 points.

Step 3: Categorize

• 20-25: AEO-ready. Monitor and maintain.
• 15-19: Minor tweaks needed. Quick optimizations.
• 10-14: Moderate work. Schedule for optimization sprint.
• 5-9: Big work needed. Prioritize only if the page has high traffic.

Step 4: Prioritize by Impact

Cross-reference AEO readiness scores with traffic volume. A page scoring 12/25 with 5,000 monthly visits is a higher priority than a page scoring 8/25 with 200 monthly visits.

Once you've got your priority list, here's a practical checklist you can run in roughly 30 minutes per page:

1. Add an FAQ Section (10 minutes)

Write 4-6 questions your audience actually asks about the page's topic. For each question, write a short 2-3 sentence answer. Place the FAQ section near the bottom of the page, before the conclusion.

Where to find questions:

• Google's "People Also Ask" boxes for your target keywords
• Your own customer support inquiries
• Reddit and forum threads about your topic
• ChatGPT and Perplexity, ask them what questions people have about your topic

2. Lead Sections With Direct Answers (5 minutes)

For each H2 section on the page, check the first 1-2 sentences. Do they directly answer the question posed by the heading? If the answer is buried in paragraph 2 or 3, rewrite the opening to put the answer first.

Before:

Content marketing has evolved a lot over the past decade. With the rise of social media, video platforms, and now AI-generated content, marketers face an increasingly complex landscape. The most effective content marketing strategy in 2026 focuses on creating deeply researched, expert-driven content.

After:

The most effective content marketing strategy in 2026 centers on deeply researched, expert-driven content that shows genuine expertise. This shift reflects a decade of evolution driven by social media, video platforms, and the rise of AI-generated content.

Same information. Answer first.

3. Add Specific Data Points (5 minutes)

Scan the page for vague claims. Replace them with specific, sourced data:

• "Many companies see improvements" → "A 2025 HubSpot study found that 67% of companies that used content clustering saw a 30%+ increase in organic traffic within 6 months."
• "SEO takes time" → "The median time for a new page to reach the top 10 is 5.7 months, according to Ahrefs data."

Aim for at least 3 specific data points per page.

4. Implement FAQ Schema Markup (5 minutes)

Add JSON-LD FAQ schema to the page. If you're using a CMS with schema plugins, this is often a few clicks. If doing it manually, use the standard FAQPage schema format.

Many modern frameworks and blog systems, including ours, generate FAQ schema automatically from structured data in the content, making this step even simpler.

5. Update Publication Date and Statistics (3 minutes)

If the page hasn't been updated in 6+ months, update any outdated statistics to the most current available. Update the "last modified" date in your page metadata. This signals freshness to both Google and AI platforms.

6. Verify Mobile Performance (2 minutes)

Run a quick PageSpeed Insights test on mobile. If the page loads in under 3 seconds and passes Core Web Vitals, you're fine. If not, flag it for technical fixes. Slow mobile pages rank worse in both traditional and AI search.

Your keyword research process doesn't change fundementally. But the output should now include a second column: the conversational prompt equivalent.

How to build this mapping:

1. Start with your existing keyword list
2. For each keyword, ask yourself: "How would someone phrase this as a question to ChatGPT?"
3. Verify by actually asking ChatGPT and Perplexity. Do they understand the prompt? Do they return relevant results?
4. Use the prompt phrasing for H2 headings and FAQ questions in your content

This isn't a separate research process. It's an additional lens on the keyword research you already do.

Traditional SEO has clear metrics: position, CTR, clicks, organic sessions. AEO metrics are still maturing, but here's a practical measurement framework:

Monthly Metrics

The Leading Indicator

The single best predictor of future AEO success: pages ranking in positions 1-5 on Google that are structured for AI citation.

If a page ranks top 5 AND has clear question-answer structure, FAQ schema, and specific data points, it has the highest chance of being cited by AI platforms. Track the number of pages that meet both criteria over time. This is your pipeline metric for AEO success.

Tools

For manual monitoring, all you need is a spreadsheet and 1-2 hours per month. For automated monitoring at scale, tools like Serploom combine GSC position tracking with AI visibility monitoring, giving you a single dashboard for both traditional and AI search performance.

Every few years, the SEO industry goes through an existential crisis. Social media was supposed to kill it. Mobile-first was supposed to change everything. Voice search was going to make keywords obsolete. None of those predictions came true. They just added new dimensions to an evolving discipline.

AEO is the same. It's a new dimension, not a replacement. The practitioners who add AI monitoring to their existing workflow and make the small structural adjustments outlined in this guide will capture a new distribution channel while their competitors are still debating whether to start.

Here's the practical bottom line:

• Your SEO skills are more valuable than ever. The foundation of AEO is traditional SEO excellence.
• The additional work is small. FAQ sections, direct answers, data points, schema, monitoring. Roughly 20% on top of what you already do.
• The payoff is a new channel. AI search is a growing distribution channel. Getting in early costs almost nothing. Getting in late means competing against entrenched citations.

Start with the audit. Score your top 20 pages. Optimize the top 5 this month. Measure results next month. The same iterative, data-driven process you've always used for SEO applies perfectly to AEO.

Your striking distance keywords are the perfect starting point, pages that are close to page 1, with the highest potential for both traditional and AI visibility gains.

SEO didn't die. It evolved. And as a practitioner, you're already 80% of the way there. The remaining 20% is documented above. Time to add it to your workflow.