AEO Guide
Answer engine optimization: how to get your B2B brand cited by AI
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is how you get your brand cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It is not a trick. It is a set of practices that make your content easy for a model to find and quote. The fundamentals are simple to name and harder to do well. Here is what actually moves the needle for B2B brands.
Best practices
Six practices that get you cited
Answer the question in the first sentence
Lead with the answer. Models lift the first clear, self-contained sentence that responds to a query, so bury it and you lose the citation. Say the thing, then expand. The opening line should stand on its own if a model quotes nothing else.
Structure content as real questions
Use the questions your buyers actually type as headings. Then answer each one directly underneath. This question-and-answer shape maps cleanly to how assistants retrieve and assemble responses, which makes your page far easier to quote.
Add structured data machines can read
Schema markup is how you hand a model a clean, labeled version of your content. FAQPage and Organization markup tell engines what a page is and what it claims. Without it, you are asking the model to guess.
Make your claims citable
Vague assertions do not get quoted. Specific, sourced ones do. Publish original data, name real numbers, and attribute them clearly. A model reaching for a confident answer reaches for the source that gave it something concrete to stand on.
Build a brand entity engines recognize
AI systems cite brands they can identify with confidence. Keep your name, descriptions, and external profiles consistent so a model can disambiguate you from everything else with a similar name. Entity clarity is what turns a mention into a trusted citation.
Open the door for AI crawlers
A model cannot cite what it never read. Serve clean HTML, keep critical content out of client-only rendering, and publish an /llms.txt so AI crawlers know what you want them to use. Technical hygiene is unglamorous, and it decides whether any of the above ever gets seen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about getting cited by AI.
Straight answers to the questions B2B marketing leaders ask before choosing a partner.
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