Want your website to show up when people ask AI questions? You need Ask Engine Optimization (AEO). This can be hard to start cold, but if you’ve already done Search Engine Optimization for your marketing (especially your website), you’re already 90% of the way there. Learn where there’s overlap, what SEO best practices are the most important, and what work you have to do to bring Ask Engine Marketing over the finish line.
The Fights of AEO Were Already Won with SEO
The major difference between AI/ask engines and search engines is how they parse data, not how they gather it. Both share the same goal: to provide users with the highest-quality results. And as the push for generative AI to deliver more accurate information with citable sources has intensified, they’ve become even more like search engines. They look for credible sources the same way search engines do, and link back to them just like search engines. Ask Engine Optimization is all about showing up in the AI results as the source when someone asks a question.
Translating SEO into Ask Engine Marketing Best Practices
Of course, this means there aren’t really shortcuts to Ask Engine Marketing. Just like with SEO before it, there might be black hat hacks that provide short-term benefits, but eventually those exploits will get patched and your work will be undone—or even turned against you by taking a hit to your rating or even blacklisting you from crawler bots. So you should:
- Write Good Content: Write original content that has been thoroughly reviewed (free from typos or formatting errors) that is clear, concise, and talks about products and services using terms people may search for (keywords).
- Do Your Metadata: Metadata (meta titles, meta descriptions, and metadata for images) isn’t just for search engines. All crawlers (including AEO bots) use this data to review pages and pull important information quickly.
- Update Content Occasionally: Either refreshing your pages’ content periodically or making fresh written content on a regular basis will also help, as updated content is prioritized over old data.
Learn more about troubleshooting your current SEO with our blogs Overhauling Your SEO: Uncovering the Issues and Overhauling Your SEO: Content Re-Creation.
What Sources Can You Make for AEO?
Now that we’ve talked about the double-duty that SEO best practices can do for ask engine optimization, let’s talk about what specific additions and changes you can make to your website to act as magnets for AEO.
Build Out a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Section
Since Ask Engines are typically responding to queries in the form of a question, having those questions along with your answers is prime AEO material. While what your FAQ should contain will vary industry to industry, you should focus on questions about products and services, keep these answers short, and follow Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) or “reverse pyramid” best practices: i.e., answer the question as succinctly as you can at the beginning, then expand upon it.
It’s Time to Write a Business Blog
If you need regular content that can use questions and keywords that ask engines might need, it’ll be hard to find a better solution than a blog. However, writing a business blog can be a difficult undertaking. You’ll need to create original content on a regular schedule and check all the SEO and marketing boxes to make them work, from focusing on your industry to writing strong calls to action. But if you can do it right, these can be a goldmine for SEO and AEO.
Of course, it’s easier to talk about making content than actually doing it. If you need help writing content and hooking it into your marketing—ask engines and otherwise—it’s time to get some help. Contact Vision today to start talking about your marketing, from granular support on AEO to broader marketing strategies. Want to start with more expert advice? Check out the rest of our Vision blogs, our enVisioning Success podcast, and our downloadable Marketing Strategies Playbook.
