Marketing leaders find the same principles driving successful SEO—creating high-quality, structured, and user-centric content—are also effective for AEO. The focus should be on adapting existing strategies rather than inventing new ones from scratch.

Businesses excelling at traditional SEO can still be invisible to AI-powered search engines. AI prioritizes structured data (schema) and directory signals differently than Google's algorithm. A separate strategy for "Answer Engine Optimization" (AEO) is now required.

Don't abandon SEO for GEO. LLMs rely on the same crawling and indexing systems as traditional search engines. To be cited by AI, you must first have strong SEO fundamentals like fast load times and structured data. GEO then builds on this by focusing on answering specific user questions.

To rank in AI search results, focus less on traditional keyword SEO and more on building trust signals. AI algorithms heavily weigh external validation like online reviews, directory listings, and PR mentions. These long-standing marketing tactics are now critical for AI visibility.

The skills of an SEO team—building content for algorithms and understanding technical discovery—are perfectly positioned to lead the charge in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). CMOs should empower and invest in this function, elevating it from a marketing silo to a core business priority.

Traditional SEO aims to drive traffic to your site where you deliver an answer. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) requires a new goal: getting your brand or data included directly in the AI-generated response, as the answer engine now sits above your website as a new top-level channel.

As users increasingly turn to AI for answers, clicks to websites are dropping. Brands must now focus on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), structuring their site's data and content to be easily scraped and presented by AI, not just ranking for keywords in traditional search.

The new frontier is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), the skill of ensuring your product or content is the primary answer provided by AI agents. As users shift from search engines to AI chats, ranking within AI-generated answers becomes more valuable than traditional link placement.

As AI-powered search provides direct answers instead of links, the traditional practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming obsolete. The new imperative is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which focuses on making information visible and trusted by AI models to be included in their generated answers, prioritizing creator-led trust.