Search engine marketing has changed—yes, again. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022 the answer engine optimization era began, and if you were following SEO best practices, your business was already suited up for the game. Yet even with the best SEO strategies, generative AI brought with it new ways for consumers to engage with information, and more concerns to be addressed by specific enhancement efforts. The great news is that optimizing is something Rocks Digital does very well, and today we’re sharing the best answer engine optimization strategies to help your business stand out in the AI Age.
What Should Answer Engine Optimization Services Offer?
You may have heard that New York Magazine recently declared that SEO is dead, and its practitioners are no longer the gatekeepers for how consumers interact with the web. Wait a moment, that’s not entirely true. SEO is certainly not dead, it is rapidly evolving. The parameters for optimization have expanded to include AEO and generative engine optimization (GEO). Both of these affect when, where and how businesses show up with AI-supported search.
So as you’re implementing AEO, or searching for the best answer engine optimization service to assist your business, what should you look for? As always, you want to select a business partner that’s committed to a well-rounded digital marketing strategy. Let’s dive into what that looks like in detail.
The Best Answer Engine Optimization Strategies
Winning AEO strategies will not be a surprise to business owners who already understand the importance of SEO. Online presence management strategies can (and should) be adjusted when new technologies like generative AI break through. Whether consumers use ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot, Perplexity, Grok or other chatbots, these strategies and elements help your business become the answer to consumers’ questions.
1. A Website
Your business needs to have a branded, owned, well-structured website. This is a vital component, foundational to your AEO strategy. Your website provides you with a platform to tell your story, share necessary information for engaging with your brand, and build a sustainable repository of content that leads potential clients, customers, patients and patrons to you for SEO. For AEO, your data and content become the answers to the queries made within chatbots.
2. Good Content
Ah yes, content. Content still reigns in the AI Age and will make or break your optimization efforts. Good content for AEO purposes should focus on user intent, and should consider what kinds of questions you might ask if you were having a conversation with an AI chatbot in search of information.
Having said that, you may be surprised at our answer to questions like, “Will using AI to write city pages help SEO?” The simple answer is yes, but it needs to be thoroughly edited, fact checked for veracity, and reviewed by a real person before it’s posted. Good AEO includes human involvement, especially for content. In brief, content that adheres to EEAT quality rater standards has a better chance of being returned in AI searches.
3. Structured Data
On the more technical side, LLMS.txt files and schema markup play an important role in making your information visible to AI robots. You want all your optimization efforts to be accessible to them. For example, ensure that you have FAQ Schema, LocalBusiness Schema, Video Schema, and How-To Schema associated with the content on your website. It is one more
“must-do” to achieve visibility.
4. Updated Reviews
Reviews remain your very loud silent salesman. Consumers still trust quality reviews on reputable websites, and it’s important to have current reviews across varying websites (think Yelp, Facebook and so on), not on your Google Business Profile alone! Having a specific plan to obtain new reviews consistently keeps new data flowing and grabs the attention of AI-powered search engines. If your business appears in vertical-specific directories, be sure to look over your reviews there too.
5. Citations
Having quality, consistent citations in reputable directories is another important factor for the best answer engine optimization strategies. The NAP data (name, address, phone number) for your business will always be key to consumer engagement. Clean citations make sure you show up the same way, no matter where the data is pulled from.
6. Additional Considerations
These elements are core to your AEO strategy, but they hardly cover it all. Having an active social media presence on the sites that align with your business also gives answer engines more places to gather information from your content about your business to generate its answers. And YouTube still remains a viable, reputable search engine in its own right. A solid video-centered strategy will go a long way for you.
Often the focus in search (and now in generative AI) is geared towards Google, but Bing cannot be ignored. ChatGPT, the largest of the AI chatbots, is powered by Bing Search, as is Perplexity and of course, CoPilot. Optimize for Bing.
Hire a Top-Rated Answer Engine Optimization Service
Answer engine optimization may be a buzzword, but Rocks Digital clients continue to see success implementing our strategies, as we’ve been implementing all of these best practices before the AI age was upon us. If you’d like to join them in providing clear, concise, reputable information across AI search chatbots and in traditional search, request a website evaluation today, or call (214) 989-7549.
