Introduction
You don’t need two programs. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is what SEO done properly already produces, plus one habit most sites skip: a page that plainly answers each question a buyer actually asks, with proof beside it. If someone is quoting you for AEO as a separate retainer, ask what they’ll change on your pages. If the answer is nothing, you’re being sold an acronym.
What AEO is, in one paragraph
Traditional SEO gets your pages into the results Google shows. AEO is about being the page an AI answer quotes when it writes a sentence instead of showing a list. The machinery underneath is the same search index, so everything that makes you rank still counts. What changes is the standard: a ranking page can win on relevance alone; a quoted page has to say something specific, checkable and worth repeating. We covered the mechanics in SEO versus AI search. This article is about the buying decision.
What we saw on one Melbourne site
This month we tested a louvre roof company in Melbourne’s south east against four AI engines with three questions each: a brand question, a repair question and the discovery question that brings in new customers. Twelve answers in total. It was cited in seven and absent from five, and the pattern was not random. All four engines named it for the brand question. Three of four named it for repair, because the site had a plain repair page to quote. For “who installs motorised opening louvre roofs in Melbourne”, every engine named other providers and not them, because no page on the site answered that question in those words.
That is the whole of AEO in one example. The site was crawlable, indexed, secure and reasonably ranked. It had the SEO basics. What it lacked was an answer on a page for the question that matters, and the proof beside it to make that answer trustworthy: no case studies, no warranty detail, no named team, no service areas. Crawlable does not automatically mean quotable.
This is what you get when a website is treated like Lego. A drag and drop builder will happily let anyone click a site together in an afternoon, it will look finished, and the person who sold it will call it done. Nobody in that process asked what a buyer types before they call, wrote the answer down, or put the proof next to it. The tool didn’t fail. The thinking was never there, and no amount of “AI optimisation” bolted on afterwards can supply it.
The eight checks we run
When we audit a site for AI answers we score eight things, and none of them is a trick.
- Crawlability: can the machine reach and read every page, with clean addresses and working sitemaps.
- Entity consistency: is the business the same name, number and suburb on the site, in its code, on Google and everywhere else.
- Structured data accuracy: does the business information in the code match reality. On this site the code placed the company in the wrong state.
- Service and location specificity: is there a page per service and per real area, or one generic page doing all the work.
- First-party proof: projects, process, warranties, licences, real photographs, written down.
- Third-party corroboration: reviews with depth, and mentions from other real websites.
- Source-worthy facts: numbers and claims an answer can safely repeat, which means numbers you can back.
- Update and ownership signals: dates, named people, replies to reviews, a site that visibly belongs to someone who is still there.
Every one of those is ordinary SEO done honestly. Items four, five and seven are the ones that turn a ranking site into a quoted one, and they are the ones most sites skip because they take real writing.
So what should you actually buy?
One program, judged by what it changes on your pages. A proposal that talks about AI visibility should be able to point at the pages it will write, the questions those pages answer, the proof it will publish and the business details it will correct. If it can, it’s the real work whatever it’s called. If it talks about optimisation, signals and algorithms without naming a page, keep your money. We run the SEO and AI work as one stage, because it is one job.
The order that works
Correct the facts first: business details in the code, the Google profile, the sitemaps. Then write the answers: one page per buying question, in the words buyers use, with the proof beside it. Then earn corroboration: reviews, mentions, published projects. Then measure, monthly, with the self-test. Doing it in that order means the AI finds a consistent business, then finds something to quote, then finds reasons to trust it.
FAQs
Is AEO just a new name for SEO?
Mostly. The foundations are identical. The one real addition is discipline about answering buyer questions in plain, checkable sentences, which good SEO always should have done and rarely did.
Do I need to pay for AEO separately?
No. Pay for pages that answer questions and proof that backs them, under whatever name. A separate AEO retainer that changes nothing on your pages is an acronym on an invoice.
How do I know if it’s working?
Ask the engines your buyers’ questions and note whether you’re named, monthly. On the site we tested, the only questions it was cited for were the ones a page already answered plainly. Build the missing page, then run the test again.
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