How to Merge SEO and AEO for AI Visibility
To merge SEO and AEO, you need to tweak and expand your existing strategy to include optimizations for specific AI searches in addition to keywords.
Why should you merge SEO and AEO?
Content optimized for AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is all about direct answers, statistics, quotes, strong link building, and formatting text for AI.
The primary goals for AEO are:
- Ranking content like FAQs, support, guides, etc. in AI answers
- Targeting social searches
- Providing comparisons, such as the cost or value between products
If your SEO goals include any of these, you’ll benefit from incorporating AEO into your strategy. There are many elements of SEO that overlap with AEO. If your strategy already includes these optimizations, you’re already “doing” AEO! Merging the two makes sense because your existing SEO activities, steps, and procedures probably already support AEO methods. There are only a few things to toss in to expand your strategy.
What SEO Elements Connect to AEO?
In order to merge SEO and AEO, we’ll focus on:
- Backlinking
- Content quality
- Content formatting
- Schema markup
Backlinking and External Links
By ensuring strong backlinks and external links, LLMs can validate your content more easily. These tools want to make sure they’re providing specific answers to specific questions.
We know that search engines – AI and otherwise – place value on the ways in which other sites on the internet link to your content. And vice versa. High-quality backlinks and external links in your content show that you are connected to your industry and provide reliable information.
So if you want to learn toward optimizing for AI, apply more time and energy to earning high-quality backlinks and conducting thorough research.
Content Quality
Ensure that you’re focusing on how helpful, accurate, and clear your content really is. AI engines want to be able to pick out the correct answers to user searches. By publishing great website content that is grammatically correct, up to date, and easy to understand, you’re making it easier for these tools to cite you.
Your SEO strategy should already include writing high quality content. In order to incorporate an AEO focus, dedicate resources to:
- Proofreading work before it’s published
- Incorporating research into your writing process
- Creating routines for updating old links, facts, and statistics
Schema Markup
Implementing schema markup is a strong method for providing the most specific information possible to search engines. This practice is already popular within the SEO space. And it has even more benefit when optimizing for AI.
You can use multiple methods – code, plugins, etc. – to add markup to each page. This markup can give extremely specific information to search engines. This information is vital for earning you preference over other resources.
If you want AI tools to cite you as a source, you have to use every tool available to make it easy for them to not only find answers, but understand that you have the best answers. Using schema markup can help you accomplish that.
Content Formatting is key in merging SEO and AEO for AI
AI search is all about finding concise answers to questions, so the format of your content needs to support that. Formatting content in a specific way for AI is probably the biggest and most important element you might need to adjust in order to merge SEO and AEO for AI.
If you’ve been writing for SEO for a while, you know that it can often feel like writing an essay. Search engines like Google like content that mimics academic writing.
AI search engines on the other hand want something slightly different. They want the information presented in a precise way. That way it’s faster and easier to collect the answers they need in order to cite you.
If you were to go back to an old blog post and update it for AEO, here’s what you might do:
- Turn your H2 (and sometimes H3) subheadings into questions. Then answer that question directly after.
- Use lists, like bullet and numbered lists. Questions posed online often need answers that include multiple elements. Make each element easy to find by summarizing them in one list.
- Include rich details like statistics, data, links, percentages, etc. These things give more concrete and quantitative answers to questions.
- Include an FAQ section to the bottom of the page if you can. This gives you the opportunity to make sure you’re answering any question someone may have.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! Traditional SEO is the foundation for AI search optimization. They work together and overlap. You can’t optimize well for AI without understanding and implementing standard SEO best practices.
You can monitor organic traffic, monitor keyword rankings, and use tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Semrush to see where you are being cited.
No! Instead, use those keywords to build on your content goals. Focus on answering questions that incorporate the keywords you know your audience is using.
