Author: Ryan Walsh

Key takeaways are:

Both AEO and GEO are adaptions and extensions of current SEO best practice. Meaning that thankfully, you do not need to reinvent the wheel.

AEO when implement correctly increases your businesses chances of appearing as a direct answer in say Google’s AI Overviews.

GEO provides the opportunity to create content marketing that shows that you’re a thought leader. This then allows the working to improve the E-EAT score also to be summarised more often by the LLM’s.

Basically SEO, GEO and AEO is all about creating quality content marketing.

 

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) where customers have a short attention span

It could be argued that people now have a shorter attention span when it comes to absorbing marketing campaigns more than ever before.

The reason is, well marketing campaigns are now bombarding customers when they are on social media platforms for example.
Therefore AEO or answer engine optimization is Brillant at providing a short and direct answer. These summaries and cites the answer is a bite-size way.

What exactly is AEO?

AEO simply stands for Answer Engine Optimisation, and it’s a content marketing strategy. This where your business can be cited in for example the Google snippets. Also a voice assistant response that could also be an AEO response to a question.
Therefore, when you asking for example, where can purchase oil-based paints for my decking locally, well an AEO answer can appear as a very short answer in text. Perhaps its even cited as an answer via a voice assistant response as you drive down the road.

How can a business better optimise their website for AEO?

Write a title that precisely answers the question. A lot of various marketing companies refer to this as writing the page title as a searchable question.

Use your headings, that’s your H1 through to H6 tags to answer follow up questions that the customer often asks.

 

Short to the point answers

Just as with traditional search engine optimisation, the search engines can only apply a certain “crawl budget” to each page.

This basically means that the search engines can only read each page for so long.

Now keep this concept in mind for GEO and AEO, that is you make the text much more likely to be cited if you write in short and snappy sentences.

Basically, if you can get to the point, with waffling too much.

AEO in particular likes sentences which are super simple to parse

Have you ever read a recent article, wondered the sentences are so short and to the point?

This could be business the author and the business want to better optimise that work for GEO and AEO. This makes the work easier to parse.

What exactly is GEO?

Optimising for GEO is a bit more complicated.

The reason for this is simple, you have to fully appreciate and also understand Google EEAT.

That is yoru website needs to be seen as the “go-to” place for that particular area of expertise.

Whether that’s how to look after pot plants, or perhaps how to best maintain the paint work on hyper cars.

With GEO you have to become that “trusted source” that place to go for the best information.

How do we optimise our website for GEO?

Longform content marketing
A lot of businesses, simply haven’t got the time to writing long guides, that have extremely high Google EEAT score. A lot of marketing companies even don’t understand what the sematic web is or how Google Knowledge Graph works.

Therefore, without this understanding its hard to write content that will truly help your businesses marketing.

Therefore, to succeed, especially when it comes to GEO, you really need to write helpful content marketing. Not only does it need to answer the question, you need to create pillar content marketing and regularly blog, so that your business and brand becomes the go-to place for information on that particular subject.

 

Be original and make a name for yourself (author bio)

It’s important when your writing say articles, that you make it clear who the author is. Why not then link that work to your businesses LinkedIn account?

And then person can start to be understood by Google’s Knowledge Graph and also the LLM’s as an expert in that area.

 

Fresh data

The AI models trust fresh information, or pages which are kept up to date. However, this is nothing new when it comes to SEO best practice.

Ever since the Google Freshness update, its always been important to keep your businesses content marketing up to date.

 

What are the benefits of optimising for AEO?

Featured snippers, various answer boxes, and also cited on voice search

AEO provides short and snappy answers to questions.

Therefore, your business could be cited as an answer.

To achieve this you need to add headers, plus make good use of on-page SEO techniques.

Remember to write using sentences which are short and snappy. Plus, also, the text can’t be marketing waffle, you do need to have the written work written by an expert. This is a key part of Google EEAT.

That is Google will see if the author has expertise, for example, does Google’s Knowledge Graph know this person as an expert in their field.

They might even be a celebrity, and well known for example being an authority on say engineering, law or lets say finance related topics.

Therefore, its this work that’s often cited more by AEO.

 

How can we better optimise my website for GEO?

Bing Copilot and Google AI Overviews

Let’s say you’re a well known chef, you publish guides on how to cook certain meals. If your regularly blogging about this area, your seen as the expert, you have written in-depth guides, and your content marketing is long form, this work will normally be used and cited by GEO.

 

Detailed content and strong expertise

This relates back to Google EEAT as well as Google’s Knowledge Graph.

To be seen as the expert, you have to show over a long period, that you are the expert on that subject.

For example, leading lawyers in the Magic Circle have to publish countless guides, articles and advice to be ranked high organically on Google. Its this work that the LLM’s will cite.

 

Keeping the content marketing up to date

Now this is harder work than it sounds.

Take for example a small business, imagine for example how many pages and articles it may have written.

Perhaps over one hundred articles.

Now, these articles may rank say in the top results on Google, that’s in the organic results.

However, just like bread gets mouldy and stale so does content marketing.

Therefore, the statistics might become outdated.

The information might clearly be dated, in this case, this is where the bounce rate increases.

That’s the amount of visitors abandoning the page, without visiting another page. Now, this shows a level of dissatisfaction, plus when you accompany this with a very low dwell time, its clear as day to Google that the work is not serving its purpose.

The LLM’s are the same, they basically want to supply the best answer to any query.

If they cant, shoppers go elsewhere, they start using different LLM’s or for example a different search engine.

Therefore, your chosen agency does need to from time-to-time return to the work and need to update it.

 

Author bios and credentials

If you’re an expert on say running shoes and sports apparel, well make this clear in yoru author bio.

Make it clear to the LLM’s and Google that you’re an expert on that subject, by writing your name, on each piece of work plus a bio.

What types of content marketing are best to write when improving a company’s GEO?

 

Long form content

When a business regularly writes long form content, which answers a question in a really in-depth way, the search engines and the LLM’s can start to better understand what that businesses area of expertise.

For example, you a leading dental practice, plus, your marketing team are regularly answering commonly asked question relating to dentistry then you can begin to build better GEO, AEO and SEO visibility.

 

So, how is GEO and AEO changing businesses marketing strategies?

The short answer is that often businesses, if they have been implementing SEO correctly, they don’t need to change that much at all.

If the business has been implementing the following:

• Quality answers
• In-depth content marketing
• Answering commonly asked questions in relation to the products or services that they sell
• Understanding Google EEAT and implementing this into the work
• Writing the best answer.
• Now if businesses do this, then what they can do, is that they can improve their GEO, AEO and SEO visibility all in one swoop.

 

Who is Ryan Walsh?

Ryan Walsh is one of the best SEO consultants in the UK.

We are proud to have our company cited on Search Engine Land.

We also work with leading companies in their respective business sectors globally and here in the UK.

We offer fixed priced packages starting from 1k per month, give us a ring if we can help you.