More and more people get their answers from AI — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot — instead of scrolling search results. When someone asks one of these “what’s the best…” or “how do I…,” you want your site to be the source it quotes. That practice has a name — Answer Engine Optimisation, or AEO — and this is a plain-English, do-it-yourself guide to it. No code, no jargon, and it links you to free tools and to our deeper how-to pages for each part.
Traditional SEO is about ranking — being one of the blue links. AI search is different: the engine reads many sources and writes one answer, naming a few of them. Your goal is to be named inside that answer. The encouraging part is that AI engines draw from a wider pool than just the top ten links, so even if your rankings aren’t where you want them, you can still be cited — if you give the AI what it looks for.
This is the step most people miss, and it’s the one that makes everything else pointless if you get it wrong. AI engines send their own automated visitors — crawlers — to read your site, each with its own name. If your site’s “robots” file (a small instruction file at yoursite.com/robots.txt) blocks them, that engine simply can’t see you, no matter how good your content is.
Make sure these crawlers are allowed: GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), Google-Extended (Google’s AI). If you’re not sure what your robots file says, that’s exactly what the AEO Checker looks at — it flags whether AI engines can actually reach you. For the detail on fixing a blocking robots file, see our guide on how to fix robots.txt AI blocks.
Just as robots.txt guides search crawlers, a newer file called llms.txt helps AI engines find and understand your most important content. It’s a simple text file listing your key pages in a clean, machine-friendly form. You don’t have to write it by hand — the LLMs.txt Auditor can generate one for your site and check it’s right. It’s a small, one-off job that makes you easier for AI to read.
This is the heart of getting cited. AI engines pull out passages that answer a question clearly and stand on their own. So structure your content as questions and direct answers:
You can measure how readable and well-structured your content is with the Readability checker, and check your overall AI visibility with the AEO Checker.
AI engines try to recommend sources that are credible, and they look for agreement about you across the web. The things that build that trust are the same ones Google rewards: a real, named business; clear authorship on your content; genuine reviews and mentions elsewhere; and accurate, up-to-date information. Google calls this E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust), and you can see how you score with the E-E-A-T Checker. Keeping your content fresh matters too — Perplexity in particular favours recently updated pages — so revisit and update your key pages rather than leaving them to go stale.
Schema markup is invisible code that tells machines exactly what your page and business are. For AI, the most valuable types are Organization (who you are, where, your social profiles), FAQPage (your questions and answers in machine-readable form), and Article with a clear author. You don’t write any code — the AI Schema Generator produces it for you. For the full picture, see our guide on what schema markup is and how to add it without code.
Finally, measure it — you can’t improve what you don’t track. Run the AEO Checker to see your AI visibility and what’s holding it back, and a Site Audit to catch anything on the page letting you down. Then simply ask the AI engines themselves: type the questions your customers would ask into ChatGPT and Perplexity and see whether you’re mentioned. Re-check every so often as you make improvements.
Picture an independent accountant who never shows up when people ask ChatGPT “who’s a good accountant for small businesses near me?” They run the AEO Checker and discover their robots file was quietly blocking GPTBot — so they fix that first. They generate an llms.txt file. They rewrite their services page as clear questions and answers (“How much does a self-assessment cost?” answered directly), and add an FAQ section. They add Organization and FAQPage schema with the generator, and make sure their author bio and reviews are visible for trust. A few weeks later, asking ChatGPT and Perplexity the same questions, their firm starts being named. None of it needed coding — it needed opening the door, answering clearly, and proving they’re real.
The big ones: blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt without realising (the silent killer). Burying answers deep in waffle instead of stating them upfront. Having no FAQ or question-style content at all. Letting pages go stale. And being an anonymous site with no clear business identity, authorship or schema, so the AI has nothing to trust. Fix these and you give AI every reason to quote you.
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation — structuring your site so AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews mention and quote it in their answers, rather than just ranking it as a link.
Allow the AI crawlers in your robots file, write clear question-and-answer content, prove your trustworthiness with reviews and clear authorship, and add Organization and FAQPage schema. Then test by asking the engines your customers’ questions.
The most common reason is that your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers like GPTBot or PerplexityBot. If they can’t reach your site, no amount of good content will get you cited. The AEO Checker flags this.
No. Allowing crawlers, generating an llms.txt file, writing clear answers, and adding schema with a generator all need no coding.
Yes. Organization, FAQPage and Article schema spell out who you are and what your content says in a form AI reads instantly, making you easier to understand and trust.
Google ranking is about being one of the listed links. AI search reads many sources and writes one answer, naming a few. The goal of AEO is to be one of the sources named inside that answer.