AIEO.
Making your brand the source AI search builds its answers from — entities, structure, and the authority engines reward.
40 articles · See the AIEO service →
A twelve-month AIEO plan
What to do, in what order, over a year — with the fast work first so the slow work has something to compound on.
AIEO for a brand new site with no history
No authority, no mentions, nothing written about you. What to do in the first ninety days, in order.
Why your competitor gets recommended and you don’t
Four reasons a model picks someone else, in the order they’re worth fixing. None of them is that they spend more than you.
Do video and podcasts help you get cited?
Only in text form. Which is an argument for publishing the transcript, not for abandoning the medium.
What AI search does with your pricing page
“Contact us for pricing” reads to a model as no information. What that costs you, and what to publish instead.
Why your best page isn’t the one getting cited
The page you are proudest of is often the least quotable thing you publish. Four reasons the model picked something else.
Your traffic is down and your enquiries aren’t. What now?
The pattern most sites are seeing: fewer visits, similar business. It means your reporting is measuring the wrong thing.
Should you hire someone for AIEO or do it yourself?
A meaningful share of the work is unglamorous editing only you can do. Here is the line between what to keep and what to buy.
How to structure a page so AI search will quote it
Being quoted is a formatting decision as much as a content one. The anatomy of a page that models can lift from cleanly.
Content pruning: what to delete
Publishing is easy and removing is frightening. But thin, stale and duplicate pages actively dilute the ones you want cited.
What to do when AI describes your business wrong
There is no support ticket for a model that misstates what you do. The correction path runs through the sources it read.
What a useful AIEO report looks like
Not a traffic chart. Four sections that tell whoever reads it whether the work is landing and what to do next.
Should you block AI crawlers?
Publishers with paid content have a real case. If you are a business trying to be recommended, blocking is aiming at your own foot.
How AIEO and SEO actually differ
They share more than the consultancies selling both would like. The four places they genuinely diverge are the ones worth budgeting for.
AIEO: how to become the answer AI search gives
Search isn’t ten blue links anymore — it’s one synthesized answer. Here’s the playbook for being the brand that answer is built from.
How to audit a competitor’s AI visibility
You can see exactly why a model prefers them, because it will tell you if you ask properly. An afternoon’s work.
Writing about competitors without lying
Comparison queries are among the most commercial prompts there are. A page that only flatters you won’t be cited for them.
How long does AIEO take to work?
Parts of it move in weeks and parts take quarters. Knowing which is which stops the programme being cancelled at month two.
The page that used to rank and doesn’t any more
Before rewriting it, work out which of four things happened. Three of them have completely different fixes.
Do backlinks still matter for AI search?
Yes, but not in the way the link-building industry sold them. What corroboration actually does inside a synthesized answer.
Should you publish on other people’s platforms?
Corroboration lives off your own site, which argues for publishing elsewhere. The trap is doing it in a way that competes with you.
Schema markup that actually changes what AI says about you
Most schema is decoration. A small subset genuinely disambiguates your brand for a model. Here’s which parts earn their place.
Definition pages: the most quotable thing you can publish
“What is X” is the most common shape of question there is, and a good definition is the most liftable passage there is.
The FAQ page is back, and it works differently now
SEO spent a decade telling you to delete it. In an answer-shaped web, the format is suddenly the right one — if the questions are real.
How to brief a writer on AIEO
Hand them a keyword and you get keyword content. The brief that produces citable writing looks quite different.
Do you need a content calendar?
You need a queue and a review cycle. A calendar that mandates publishing on a schedule produces filler, which is now actively harmful.
How reviews show up in AI answers
Models read what customers wrote about you, not just your star rating. The text matters more than the number now.
Should you write for humans or for models?
The question assumes a trade-off that mostly doesn’t exist. Where it genuinely does, humans win — and here’s why that’s also the right AIEO call.
How to measure AI visibility when there are no rankings
There is no position one in a synthesized answer. What to track instead, and how to tell real movement from noise.
How to pick the questions worth answering
Keyword volume was a proxy for demand. With AI search you can go straight to the thing it was approximating: what buyers actually ask.
AIEO for a business that serves one area
“Near me” became “who should I use in…”. The answer is assembled from sources most local businesses never check.
Internal linking is the lever nobody pulls
It costs nothing, requires no outreach, and it is how a pile of articles becomes a library that reads as authoritative.
Your documentation is marketing now
Buyers ask assistants how a product works before they contact you. The answer comes from your docs, if your docs are public.
The AIEO mistakes that cost the most
Six errors, ordered by damage. Most are things being done deliberately, for reasons that made sense under the old rules.
The entity graph starts with naming things consistently
Your company, your products, your categories. Every variant you use is a chance for a model to conclude you are two different things.
Do author pages help you get cited?
Attribution is a credibility signal, and most company blogs publish everything under the company name. What that costs.
Do you need a separate page for every question?
No — and the sites that tried it built a thin-content problem instead of an authority one. How to decide what deserves its own URL.
How often should you update a page for AI search?
Changing the date is not updating the page. What freshness actually signals, and which pages genuinely need it.
Do press releases still do anything?
As a link-building tactic, no. As a way to get accurately described at credible sources, occasionally yes.
The 30-minute AIEO audit
Six checks you can run on your own site this afternoon, in the order that finds the most damage fastest.