AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The discipline of making a brand’s existing content easy for AI answer engines to cite.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making a brand’s existing content easier for AI engines to cite when they answer a user query. AEO strengthens surface area you already own.
AEO treats the AI answer — not the blue link — as the destination, and works backwards from how engines select and quote sources.
Where classic SEO optimised pages to rank in a list of links, AEO optimises content to be selected, summarised and quoted inside a generated answer. The unit of success shifts from a ranking position to a citation: did ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity reference your brand when answering the question your buyers actually ask?
AEO works on content that already exists. You restructure articles answer-first, add explicit definitions, mark up entities and FAQs, and tighten the passages an engine is most likely to lift. It is the lower-risk half of the discipline because you are sharpening assets you have already published rather than commissioning new ones.
Its complement is GEO, which produces new content built to be referenced. In SkuLift the two run as distinct lift types: AEO lifts harden existing pages, GEO lifts ship net-new pillars. Both are measured by the same Share of Voice pyramid, so you can see which motion actually moved citations.