What is AI SEO?

AI SEO is the practice of making a business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini to find, understand, trust and recommend. Where traditional SEO aims for a high position in a list of links, AI SEO aims for a place inside the answer itself: being named, described accurately and cited as a source.

You will also see it called generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO) or LLM SEO. The names differ, but the goal is the same: when someone asks an AI assistant for help with a problem you solve, your business should be part of the answer.

Why AI answers matter now

People increasingly ask full questions and read a written answer before they visit any website. They compare options in a conversation, ask follow-up questions and arrive at a shortlist before they ever reach your homepage. If you are not in that answer, you are often not on the shortlist.

The answer also shapes how people see you. An assistant that describes your business vaguely, or with out-of-date details, sets expectations before you have a chance to.

How AI assistants decide what to say

AI assistants draw on two kinds of knowledge. The first is what the underlying model learned during training: patterns and facts from a large body of text written before the model was released. The second is what the assistant looks up at the time of the question, by searching the web, reading a handful of pages and summarising them. This second approach is called retrieval-augmented generation.

Each assistant uses its own mix of search indexes, crawlers and partners, and the details change often. In practice, two things matter for all of them. For training, your business needs to be described clearly and consistently across the web over time. For live retrieval, your pages need to be reachable, fast to read and written so that a clear answer can be lifted from them.

  • Can the assistant reach your pages? Crawler rules, firewalls and heavy scripts can block it.
  • Can it tell who you are? Your name, what you do and who you serve should be unambiguous.
  • Can it find a quotable answer? A direct answer under a clear question heading is far easier to use than a vague paragraph.
  • Does it have reasons to trust you? Named experts, evidence and mentions on other reputable sites all help.

AI SEO, SEO, GEO and AEO: how they relate

Traditional SEO helps search engines crawl, index and rank your pages. AI SEO builds on it, because many assistants find their sources through search indexes. GEO and AEO are overlapping names for the parts of the work that focus on being included and quoted in generated answers.

A useful way to think about it: SEO gets your pages into the library, and AI SEO makes sure the librarian understands them well enough to recommend you by name.

Layer 1: Make your site accessible to AI

Start by checking that AI systems can actually read your site. This is quick, and mistakes here make every other effort pointless.

  • Check robots.txt and any firewall or bot-protection settings so that crawlers such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot are not blocked from pages you want found.
  • Make sure important content is in the HTML when the page loads, not only behind clicks, tabs or client-side scripts.
  • Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, since several assistants rely on search indexes.
  • Add an llms.txt file: a short markdown summary of who you are and links to your most useful pages.
  • Keep pages fast and stable on mobile.

Layer 2: Make it unmistakable who you are

AI systems build their understanding of your business, your entity, from the facts they find about you. When those facts are clear and consistent, they are more confident describing you. When they conflict, they hedge or leave you out.

  • Write one plain definition sentence: what you do, for whom and where. Use it on your homepage, your about page and your profiles.
  • Keep your name, description, services and contact details identical across your website, LinkedIn, directories and review platforms.
  • Add Organization structured data with your name, logo, description, founder, contact details and links to your official profiles.
  • Give each service its own page with a clear name and definition, marked up with Service structured data.

Layer 3: Write answer-first content

Assistants look for passages that answer a question directly. The format that works for them also works for busy people.

  • Collect the questions your buyers actually ask: from sales calls, support emails, reviews and community threads.
  • Use each important question as a heading, and answer it completely in the first one or two sentences.
  • Follow with the detail: how it works, trade-offs, examples, what it costs, how long it takes.
  • Keep one idea per section, so each passage makes sense on its own when quoted.
  • Add FAQ sections to service pages, with FAQ structured data that matches the visible text.
  • Show when the page was last updated, and keep key pages current.

Layer 4: Show evidence and earn trust

Specific, supported claims are easier to cite than broad promises. Assistants, like people, lean towards sources that show their working.

  • Name the people behind the business, with short bios and links to their profiles.
  • Explain your process, what is included and where the limits are.
  • Publish real examples, case studies and original findings when you can.
  • Avoid guarantees that no one can honestly make; they undermine trust with people and machines alike.

Layer 5: Be present where AI assistants look

What other sites say about you matters as much as what you say about yourself. Assistants frequently cite review platforms, industry directories, publications and community discussions.

  • Create and complete profiles on the platforms relevant to your industry, with the same description everywhere.
  • Encourage genuine reviews from real clients.
  • Contribute useful answers in communities where your buyers ask questions.
  • Publish expert articles on reputable industry sites, and appear on podcasts and in interviews.
  • Link your official profiles from your site and in your structured data.

How to measure AI visibility

You cannot improve what you do not measure, and AI visibility is measurable with a simple, repeatable routine.

  • Choose 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask, from broad (“best agency for…”) to specific (“how much does… cost”).
  • Ask them in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, and record whether you are mentioned, how you are described, who else is named and which sources are cited.
  • Repeat monthly with the same questions, and track your share of answers against competitors.
  • In your analytics, segment visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com.
  • Treat single answers with caution; responses vary, so look at trends across many questions.

A 30-day starter plan

  • Week 1: Fix access. Check robots.txt and firewall rules, confirm key content is in the HTML, submit sitemaps to Google and Bing, and add llms.txt.
  • Week 2: Fix clarity. Write your definition sentence, align your details across every profile, and add Organization and Service structured data.
  • Week 3: Answer questions. Rewrite your most important service page answer-first and add a focused FAQ with structured data.
  • Week 4: Build trust and start measuring. Add named people with bios, request reviews, and run your first set of tracked questions as a baseline.

Common mistakes

  • Blocking AI crawlers by accident through a firewall or a copied robots.txt.
  • Describing your business differently on every platform.
  • Writing clever headlines that never say plainly what you do.
  • Hiding key information in images, PDFs or interactive widgets.
  • Chasing a single answer from a single assistant instead of tracking trends.
  • Buying into guaranteed rankings or guaranteed AI mentions.

Where to start

If you want a quick sense of where you stand, take the free AI Readiness Score. It takes two minutes and gives you a prioritised checklist. If you want evidence, the AI Visibility Report shows exactly how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini answer your buyers’ questions today, and what to fix first, delivered within 48 hours.