Answer engine optimisation (AEO): how to be the source an AI answer cites
AI assistants and search overviews compose answers from a few sources. What makes a page one of them — answer-first structure, verifiable claims, entity clarity, freshness — and how to check whether you are being cited.
07 Nov 2025 · 2 min read · by HeiSyn
When someone asks an AI assistant 'which agencies build outbound systems on Clay', the assistant composes an answer from a handful of pages it considers reliable and relevant. Answer engine optimisation is the work of being one of those pages. It overlaps with search optimisation but rewards different things: directness over length, verifiable specifics over marketing language, and clarity about who you are.
Answer first, then support
The first paragraph under any heading should be a complete, quotable answer to the heading's question. Assistants lift these paragraphs nearly verbatim. A page that opens with three paragraphs of context before answering is skipped for one that answers immediately.
Be specific and checkable
Numbers, names of tools, timelines, prices where you can state them, examples with detail. 'Typically two to four weeks because domains need warm-up' is citable; 'fast turnaround' is not. Assistants prefer claims they can cross-reference, and they penalise pages whose claims contradict other sources.
Make the entity unambiguous
Who you are, what you do, where, for whom, in the same words on every page, in structured data, and in an llms.txt at the site root. Consistent naming across your site, LinkedIn, directories and reviews lets the assistant connect the mentions into one entity with authority.
Check and iterate
Ask the major assistants the questions your buyers ask and note which sources they cite. If it is not you, read the pages that are cited and compare: they are usually more direct, more specific, or fresher. Update pages with dates and changelogs; recency is a factor. Track branded queries and referral traffic from assistants as the outcome.
Questions people ask next
- Does AEO conflict with traditional SEO?
- Rarely. Answer-first structure, specificity and clear entities help both. The one tension is length: SEO folklore favoured long pages, while answer engines lift the direct paragraph. Write the direct answer first and let the supporting detail follow, and both are served.
- How quickly do AI answers reflect changes to a page?
- Search-connected assistants can reflect a change within days of a recrawl; assistants relying on training data may take months or more. Keep pages dated and consistent so each system picks up the current version when it looks.
- Do FAQ sections help with AEO?
- Yes, when each question is one a real person asks and each answer is complete on its own. FAQ markup makes them machine-readable. Generic FAQs written to hit keywords do not help; specific ones are frequently cited.
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