AEO and SEO share a foundation
An answer engine can only quote a page it can reach, so AEO starts where SEO does: the page is crawlable, indexed and linked from the rest of your site. Google's own guidance for its AI features says the usual SEO fundamentals are what matter.
The difference is the unit. SEO asks whether the page ranks for a search. AEO asks whether a passage on the page answers one question well enough, on its own, to be lifted into someone else's answer.
What AEO work looks like
Most of it is editing pages you already have:
- Put the direct answer in the first sentence under a heading that asks the question.
- Cover one question per section, so a passage makes sense lifted out of the page.
- Give numbers, dates and sources rather than general claims.
- Keep the page open to the crawlers of the assistants you want to be quoted by.
- Use structured data that matches what the page visibly says.
How to check it
Ask the questions your buyers ask in Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity and note which sites get quoted. Then compare the quoted passage with yours: is theirs shorter, more specific, or simply the only one that answers the exact question?