Answer Engine Optimization 101
Marketing trends, tools, and strategies are constantly evolving and adapting to meet the continuously changing customer behavior. In today’s market, you either stay on top of them or risk becoming irrelevant.
One such new thing is аnswer еngine оptimization, or AEO, and it can turn your entire marketing strategy on its head. Being quite new, it offers many advantages to the businesses that choose to implement it.
If you want to be one of them, continue reading to find out more about what AEO actually is, the relationship between AEO and SEO, as well as practical advice on how to get started with it. Let’s jump right in.
What Is Answer Engine Optimization?
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, aims to provide concise answers for voice and AI-powered search queries. Whether we are talking about Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), Microsoft Bing AI, or conversational tools like ChatGPT and Bard, they all need to get information from somewhere. AEO ensures that your website is the source for people’s queries in such search engines and on AI-driven platforms.
How your content could be used in such AI tools depends. In the usual search engines, instead of just ranking web pages, AEO aims to provide concise, authoritative answers that appear at the top of search results. The user will see a snippet from your website containing the answer to their question. If they want to know more, they can go directly to your website, driving traffic.
Conversational tools like ChatGPT work a little differently because they provide more information and the user can keep asking questions on the topic. If your website is optimized and you have provided enough information in your blog, ChatGPT’s answers will come from there, driving traffic and attracting interested people.
A third option is appearing in voice search responses. For example, if a person asks Siri or Alexa for coffee shops near them, AI will pull direct recommendations from answer engine-optimized websites.
Relationship Between AEO and SEO
AEO (answer engine optimization) and SEO (search engine optimization) have a close relationship and both aim to improve website visibility. However, they have some key differences. Traditional SEO is focused on optimizing content and websites to rank higher in traditional search engine results and to drive organic traffic. AEO, on the other hand, optimizes content for direct, concise, and authoritative answers for AI-driven platforms with the goal of attracting traffic from them. When implementing SEO, keywords, backlinks, and technical optimization play a crucial role, while AEO focuses on structured data, conversational language, and user intent.
But what does that mean for the future of SEO? While AEO is a significant development in the digital landscape, it’s not a replacement for search engine optimization. Instead, it complements and enhances existing SEO strategies.
Let’s take for example a person looking for the best social media strategies. SEO will make sure your blog post on the topic appears in the top Google results. AEO will make sure AI pulls the necessary information from your website to give a direct answer to the person and list your website as a source. Though in different ways, both help you get discovered by your target audience.
Importance of AEO in Modern Digital Marketing
You might be wondering why you should trouble yourself with implementing answer engine optimization on top of your marketing efforts. The truth is, it can be of great help to your business. AI’s importance and popularity grows by the day and changes the way users search for information and products.
Nowadays, about 2 out of 3 people would use ChatGPT to ask a question instead of Google. And the one person still using the classic search engines will still see an AI-generated answer above all the links. So even if you manage to rank your website among the top results, the person might get their answer from the snippet and completely ignore everything else.
But this is not the only reason making answer engine optimization so beneficial. It is still relatively new and businesses choosing to implement it have the “first-movers” advantage. This is especially beneficial to small and medium-sized businesses who might struggle with ranking high the usual way.
AEO also creates new search environments that align better with the shift towards immediate information retrieval. Before, if you had a question, you would have to google it and search through all the links until you find what you need. Now, you can just ask chatGPT or Siri and get a precise answer. Answer engine optimization can make sure this answer comes from your website and leads people to it. AEO also drives organic traffic by appearing in answer boxes and featured snippets, which are highly visible in search engine results.
Practical Steps to Implement Answer Engine Optimization
Now, how do you actually implement AEO in your strategy? There are a few practical steps that can help you get started.
1. Conduct Keyword Research for User Queries
One of the most important things you should remember is that your target audience asks the questions and you provide the answers. Targeting your audience and their needs correctly is crucial for answer engine optimization. For this, more than every other type of marketing tool, you need to find the right questions. Otherwise, you are just shooting out answers to nobody.
Before implementing AEO, do a thorough keyword research. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help identify popular queries relevant to your business and industry, and the Google Search Console dashboard can provide valuable insights into how your content performs in answer-based searches.
Modifiers such as ‘what is’ and ‘how-to’ can effectively be used to search for search queries about a topic, helping you understand user intent better. Another way to do this is by analyzing customer feedback and exploring online forums.
2. Write High-Quality Content
In inbound marketing, clarity, concision, and relevance have always been the priority. Now with AEO, this is true more than ever. Although content must be appealing to human readers, it must also align with AI algorithms. You can achieve that by using straightforward language that directly answers questions, along with well-structured articles laid out with clear subheadings.
Think about what you found out from your keyword research for user queries and tailor your content accordingly. Make sure you provide the needed information in a simple and direct manner and, if needed, cite only authoritative sources to build trust. High-quality content should be well-researched, informative, and tailored to meet the specific needs of your target audience. That way you can enhance user engagement and consistently deliver relevant and accurate information making it more likely for your content to be featured in answer boxes and voice search results.
3. Utilize Structured Data Markup
A data structure is a format for organizing, processing, retrieving, and storing data so it can be easily accessed and effectively used. Schema markups help contextualize your content, making it easier for search engines and AI systems to interpret. Use FAQ, How-To, and Q&A schema to structure your content. This is not only well-received by people looking for certain answers, but it will help search engines understand and highlight relevant information.
4. Optimize Content for Voice Search
AI comes in many forms and users may look for answers in different ways. It’s important to structure your content in a way that all AI tools can easily extract answers. Voice search engines respond to user queries and your content should match such conversational and natural tone. Adding alt text for images, transcripts for video content, and efficient keyboard navigability takes it a step further and ensures all your kinds of content are discoverable.
Additionally, more than 58% of users use voice search to find local businesses, making it very important to optimize for “near me” and location-based queries.
5. Build Trust and Authority
Answer engine optimization is not a one-time trick that will help you drive traffic. To successfully implement it into your marketing strategy, you need to regularly update your content and keep it relevant and to the point. Constant monitoring and analysis will further help you stay on top of emerging trends and changes and adjust what works and what doesn’t.
Getting Started with Answer Engine Optimization
Although answer engine optimization is not an easy task, it can bring great advantages to your business and benefit your SEO strategy.
If you struggle with getting started or optimizing your strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out to our experienced inbound marketing consultants who will assist you with your content marketing KPIs.
Just drop us a line and we’ll find a simple fix to any complex marketing problem you’re having.