AEO · answer engine optimization

Answer Engine Optimization: be the answer, not a result.

An answer engine returns one response, not ten links. AEO is the practice of making sure that response includes you — by fixing what machines can read, and publishing the facts they need to recommend you.

The AEO engagement

Audit, fix, publish, verify.

Five days to a full picture, three weeks to a fixed site.

01
Audit
Every template fetched as each answer engine, with real headers and no JavaScript.
02
Fix the layer
llms.txt, schema, structured on-page facts, crawler access and clean markup.
03
Publish the facts
Prices, limits, policies and comparisons written in a form an engine can quote directly.
04
Verify
A re-crawl confirms each fix landed, and the change is logged against your visibility score.
What AEO involves

Six workstreams.

Three technical, three editorial — both are required.

Crawler access

Per-agent audit of robots.txt, x-robots-tag, WAF and CDN rules for every major answer engine.

llms.txt and content maps

A curated index pointing engines at the canonical, plain-text version of your key facts.

Structured data

Validated, deduplicated markup that matches the visible page and stays in sync with it.

Answer-shaped content

Pages built around the questions buyers ask, with the answer in the first two sentences.

Published specifics

Numbers, limits and policies out of PDFs and support tickets and into readable HTML.

Answer monitoring

Weekly re-checks with alerts the hour you lose a mention you previously held.

Before / after

What changes in practice.

A typical client-rendered marketing site.

Before
<title>Home | Acme</title>
<div id="app"></div>

// no llms.txt
// no JSON-LD
// content requires JS
After
# /llms.txt
> Acme runs payroll for UK agencies.
## Pricing /pricing.md

<script type="application/ld+json">
{"@type":"Product","name":"Acme Payroll",
 "offers":{"price":"49","priceCurrency":"GBP"}}
</script>
Questions

The practical ones.

Making a site legible and quotable to the systems that assemble answers, rather than the ones that rank links.

In practice yes. Different teams prefer different acronyms for the same discipline; we use them interchangeably.

No. Most fixes are publishing your key facts as readable text and adding schema — not a rebuild. On WordPress we do it directly; on other stacks we hand your devs a patch-level spec.

Either. Implementation is included on retainer plans; audit-only clients get a patch-level spec their developers can action.

Five working days for a standard site. Fixes are usually shipped inside three weeks.

Start with the free site audit.

Run the free check and get a prioritised list your developers can actually ship — no account, two minutes.

Run my free audit →