How to Optimize Your Company for ChatGPT and Other AI Search Engines
Why Should You Care About AEO?
If you want your company to stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing, you should be investing in AEO and SEO services. Consumers are relying more and more on generative search engines to find the products and services they are looking for, so neglecting this rapidly growing market means you could be missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your business.
AEO vs SEO
Consumers are Searching Differently
Gone are the days of a simple Google search to give you all of the information you’re looking for. With more and more people looking to AI for search results, it has completely changed the way they search, from the language they use to the way they interact with the results.
Query Fanout vs Keyword Targeting
Traditional SEO focused on very specific keyword matching, but AEO takes a different approach. AI search engines use query fanout, searching for answers to similar questions and trying to predict what additional information is related and helpful. This shift away from keyword targeting means that you have to build a content library focused more on answering questions than hitting specific keywords.
Flexible Strategies
Successful AEO means having a strategy that is constantly shifting to keep up with consumer behavior. If you find that your strategy isn’t yielding the results you’re looking for, don’t hesitate to go back to the drawing board and reassess your plan to suit the changing market better.
Research is Key
Competitor Research
Researching the way that your competitors show up in AI results can give you an idea of how you should be building your own AEO strategy. It can highlight gaps in their coverage where your company can swoop in and show off your expertise. It can also show you places where they have a well-established presence and allow you to study what their content looks like and what enabled them to gain those citations and mentions.
Consumer Studies
The most important part of AEO is to know how your consumers are actually searching. It doesn’t do you any good to be earning citations in areas where your customers are not. By doing in-depth research on how and what they’re searching for, you can create a plan that will bring in qualified leads.
Market Deep-Dive
You know your industry better than anyone, which gives you the chance to really dig into industry specifics. Intimate knowledge of the specifics of your industry means that you can get into the nitty-gritty areas and figure out what specific niches your company can look to fill.
Optimizing Your Website
Wide and Unique Content Library
While AI is certainly a valuable tool, it isn’t able to replace the human element that your content library should have. Focus on broad topics with a focus on the personal side to appeal to both consumers and the AI algorithm, and try to make each piece as unique as possible. Articles that are too similar can turn AI away and make your site less reliable, even if the content is informed and valuable.
Site Design and Structure
The way that your site is laid out and designed plays into how well optimized it is for AI search engines. It’s important when designing your site that all internal links are functional and that each separate page is logically connected to other pages. Simple, clean, organized design is the best way to help AI crawl and index your website.
Technical AEO
The technical aspects of your website are just as important as the on-page elements. Running technical audits to make sure the coding behind your website is organized and crawlable is imperative to ensure that your content is showing up in search results the way you want it to.
Expanding From Your Site
Link Building and Mentions
AI engines look at websites within the context of your industry, so earning mentions on other reliable sites within your industry can go a long way toward being cited by AI engines. Focus on your digital PR to help build a favorable reputation both with other companies and customers within your industry. The more often your brand is mentioned favorably, the more likely you are to appear in AI search results.
Partner with Reliable Companies
When looking for mentions and link building, prioritize quality over quantity. Earning a single mention on a reliable, industry-leading website can do more for your AI visibility than a dozen rankings on untrustworthy sites or sites that consumers may have a more negative impression of.
Stay Active
Regularly posting to and updating your website or posting on social media lets the AI search engines know that your information is up to date and reliable. If you can interact on community forums as well, you can earn those positive mentions about your brand as well. AI algorithms tend to return results that factor in real-world sentiments about your brand and products.
Tracking AEO Success
Tangible Metrics
To track your success on AI platforms, you need to track several tangible metrics. Without these measurable benchmarks, it can be hard to assess how well your AEO strategy is working. These metrics can also ensure that any increases in revenue or business you’re seeing are actually related to your AEO instead of other aspects of your marketing.
Citations and AI Visibility
Tracking how often your company is mentioned in AI search results is the best way to track how successful your AEO plan is. Being mentioned in search results is good, but citations are the best way to increase your site traffic and drive in more qualified leads.
Watch your Competitors
As you monitor your own AEO success, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing as well. Watching where they are succeeding or failing can give you a good idea of what content is working without going through your own trials. As their rankings and numbers within AI results change, you can also keep track of the changes in consumer behavior and figure out if there are areas where your company could swoop in and establish itself as an expert in the field.
