Search & AI Visibility · Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
If it does not look like an answer, it will not be used as one
Answer engines do not reward a clever brand story. They extract a short, direct reply to a real question. This engagement rewrites the priority pages so the answer is in the first screen, the headings are questions a buyer would ask out loud, and the FAQ is real enough to mark up.
- The central question is answered in the first two or three sentences
- H2s and H3s are written as questions: what, how, should I, best X for
- Short paragraphs, bullets, and tables so a model can lift a clean passage
- Schema that matches the page: Organization, FAQ where the questions are real, Breadcrumb
What you get
Deliverables, not slideware
- 01
Answer block on every priority page
Two to four sentences, in prose, that a featured snippet or an AI Overview can lift without editing. If we cannot write that block, the page does not have a query yet.
- 02
Question heading pass
Existing H2s rewritten as the questions in People Also Ask and in sales calls. Each heading opens with a one-to-three sentence extractable answer, then the detail.
- 03
FAQ that is actually asked
Only questions a buyer asks. Answers live in the HTML, not only inside a closed accordion a crawler never sees.
- 04
Schema and entity consistency
Organization, Person where an author is named, FAQPage only when the FAQ is real. Name, address, and profile links match the rest of the web so a model does not invent a second version of you.
- 01Q: What is answer engine optimization?
- 02A: Answer engine optimization is the work of putting a direct,
- 03extractable reply at the top of a page, writing headings as questions,
- 04and marking the page so Google, AI Overviews, and voice answers can
- 05quote it. It sits on top of technical SEO. A page that cannot be
- 06crawled cannot be answered from.
How it runs
What actually happens, step by step
No discovery theatre. Each step ends with something you can read or use.
- 01
Questions
Pull the real questions from search suggestions, sales calls, and the current FAQ. Drop the ones nobody asks.
- 02
Rewrite
Answer first. Then context. Then proof. No heading that is only a noun.
- 03
Mark up
Schema that matches visible content. No empty FAQPage. No HowTo theatre.
- 04
Check
View source, not only the styled page. If the answer is not in the first HTML, it does not exist for a crawler that skips JavaScript.
Tangible
What lands in your hands
Named objects with a format and a week attached, so the handover is easy to picture.
Visibility audit
Where you appear in search and in assistant answers, and where you do not.
PDF · 11 pagesWeek 2Answer page plan
The questions worth owning, ranked by intent and difficulty.
Prioritised brief setWeek 2Tracking dashboard
Rankings, citations and assisted conversions in one place, refreshed weekly.
Live URLWeek 3
Search & AI Visibility Audit
Where you appear, where you do not, and the pages that would move it.
This is the real template, with client figures replaced by representative ones. Read it before you talk to us — if the format is not useful to you, the engagement will not be either.
Before and after
What the change looks like in the week
Red is the cost you carry today. Green is what the system gives back.
Today
- The H1 is a slogan
- The answer to the query is in paragraph seven
- FAQ is three invented questions for schema
- The accordion hides the answers from a non-JS fetch
After
- The H1 is the query, or the query is in the first clause
- The answer is in the first screen and in the raw HTML
- FAQ is the leftover questions, each with a short reply
- Schema describes what is on the page, nothing else
Objections
Answered before you ask
Is AEO just SEO with a new name?
SEO gets the page fetched and ranked. AEO decides whether the page is the thing that gets quoted when the result is an answer, not a link. You need both. Roughly 60 percent of searches now end without a click (SparkToro, 2024). Ranking and still losing the click is the failure mode.
Do we need a blog for this?
No. Service pages are often the better answer to a commercial question. A blog post is for a question the service page should not dilute.
Will schema alone get us into AI Overviews?
No. Google has not published an extra schema ticket for AI Overviews. Schema helps machines parse what is already on the page. The page still has to contain the answer.
Keep going
Where people look next
Related work, the category this sits in, and the proof behind it.
One next step, and it is a paid one on purpose
The AI Opportunity Diagnostic is a fixed-scope engagement. You leave with a ranked plan you can act on with us or without us.
Still sizing the problem? Write to us in your own words first. A person reads it.