AEO FAQ: 49 answers for buyers

AEO is the work of getting your company cited, named and recommended inside AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews. Instead of only ranking a page, the goal is that when a buyer asks "who should I hire for X", the answer names you. See AEO services.

GEO is another name for the same discipline: optimizing for generative AI engines that write answers instead of listing links. AEO, GEO and LLM SEO overlap almost completely. See GEO services and LLM SEO services.

LLM SEO means optimizing your site and your off-site footprint so large language models understand, trust and recommend your brand. It covers entity consistency, structured data, citable pages and third-party mentions. Details on LLM SEO services.

They combine what they learned in training with live web retrieval. Companies that are named consistently across trusted third-party pages (lists, reviews, publications), have clear pages that answer buyer questions, and are easy to crawl get recommended more often.

B2B buyers increasingly ask AI assistants for shortlists before they talk to sales. If the answer names three competitors and not you, you are out before the first call. AEO is how you get onto that shortlist.

Austin Heaton is an independent AEO consultant with 12+ years in search. He works hands-on with B2B SaaS, fintech, crypto and AI companies. Read about Austin or see case studies.

Engagements start at $5,000/month with a 3-month minimum. The final quote depends on scope, category coverage and off-site cadence. Full details on pricing.

The work is senior-led from day one: technical fixes, 4 money pages a month for the first 60 to 90 days, 8 commercial blogs a month, a monthly refresh and off-site authority work. You are not paying for an account manager layer.

Yes, 3 months. AEO compounds: the first weeks build pages and mentions that engines pick up over the following months, so shorter terms rarely show the full effect.

Both plans share the same on-site work. "Expand category coverage" adds more off-site work: 5 authority posts instead of 3, 25 brand mentions instead of 10 and 10 backlinks instead of 5, in bigger publications. See plans.

Yes. In a 30-minute call we look at where AI engines recommend competitors instead of you, which scope fits and what it would cost. There is no obligation to sign. Book a Call.

Use the AEO ROI calculator with your own deal size and close rate, then sanity-check it on a call.

First results are typically seen within the first 2 to 3 weeks, and they compound every month as content, authority and AI search presence build up.

Yes. Austin guarantees AI recommendations for your company. The service is built around getting your brand cited and recommended when buyers search for solutions in your category.

Most of the compounding happens across the first 3 to 6 months: money pages get indexed and cited, mentions accumulate, and engines start naming you for more prompts.

Published examples include Rise (+575% AI search traffic and +288% organic in 12 months) and Cevro (ChatGPT visibility from 0 to 28%). More on case studies and results.

Yes. The strategy is built around your most important buyer prompts: which competitors get recommended today, which sources the engines cite, and what it takes to replace them.

Technical SEO and AEO fixes, new money pages (comparisons, alternatives, use cases), commercial blogs, a monthly refresh, authority posts, brand mentions, backlinks and PR. See services.

Very little. The work is fully managed: strategy, off-site posts, backlinks, brand mentions, landing pages, technical fixes and PR. Your team reviews and approves.

Money pages are the commercial pages buyers and AI engines use to compare vendors: comparisons, alternatives, pricing and use cases. They are the heaviest on-site lever for both SEO and AEO.

AI engines name brands they see named consistently on sources they trust. Mentions on lists, reviews and publications in your niche are the strongest off-site signal for recommendations.

Yes. Organization, Person, Service, FAQPage and similar schema make your entity, offer and answers machine-readable. Try the free AEO schema generator.

It is a cheap, low-risk addition: a plain-text summary of who you are and your key pages for AI crawlers. Create one with the free llms.txt generator.

We discuss your company, the customers you want, and the competitors you want to beat, then how a fully managed AEO engagement could support those goals.

SEO aims to rank pages in Google results. AEO aims to get your company named inside AI answers. They share foundations (crawlable pages, authority, good content) but AEO weighs entity consistency and third-party mentions much more. Full comparison: AEO vs SEO.

No. AI engines retrieve from the web, and pages that rank well in Google are more likely to be cited. Engagements cover both Google and AI search.

Yes. Many teams keep their SEO setup and add AEO on top. Austin can also set the money-page and citation plan an existing team executes against.

Yes. AI Overviews and AI Mode are answer engines inside Google. See Google AI Overviews optimization.

A consultant gives you a senior owner who does the work; an agency gives you more people, usually with juniors on the account. See AEO consultant vs agency.

All three are established agencies. First Page Sage lists its own GEO/AEO pricing at $6,000 to $12,000/month in its October 2026 pricing study. iPullRank does not publish pricing. Omniscient Digital is reported by third-party sites to start around $10,000/month. Austin starts at $5,000/month and works hands-on. Head-to-head: vs First Page Sage, vs iPullRank, vs Omniscient Digital.

An in-house hire costs a full salary and takes months to ramp. A fractional consultant brings a working system from week one. See AEO consultant vs in-house.

Austin scopes and owns the work personally. There is no handoff from a senior pitch to a junior account team.

Named case studies with reported numbers, senior hands-on execution, and a plan built around the buyer prompts that drive revenue. Compare options in best AEO consultants for B2B.

Yes. Agencies can resell AEO under their own brand with unbranded reports. See white-label AEO.

You own the client relationship; Austin delivers the strategy, pages, mentions and reporting under your brand. Scope and pricing start from the same $5,000/month floor.

SEO, content and marketing agencies whose clients are asking about ChatGPT and AI search but who do not want to build an AEO team.

Yes, as an add-on at $3,000/month on top of an engagement. It covers getting local businesses and locations recommended for "near me" and city-level AI questions. See local lead generation.

Local AEO is offered as an add-on to an engagement, not as a standalone plan.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot. See ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude optimization.

Make sure ChatGPT can find consistent facts about you (who you serve, what you cost, proof), publish pages that answer buyer questions directly, and get named on the third-party pages it cites. See ChatGPT optimization.

Perplexity cites live web sources on almost every answer, so fresh, well-structured pages and third-party mentions show up faster there.

Each engine uses different training data, retrieval sources and ranking. That is why tracking is done per engine and per prompt.

Four outcomes: AI citations and recommendations for tracked buyer prompts, AI referral traffic, Google clicks and qualified leads.

A monthly report with prompt-level AI visibility versus your competitors, AI referral traffic, Google performance and the work shipped that month.

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the questions your buyers ask and note who gets named. The free AEO readiness score and AEO report card help you start.

Yes. Referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and similar sources show up as referral traffic; we set up a channel group so it is easy to track.

Mainly B2B SaaS, fintech, crypto and AI startups, plus devtools, cybersecurity and enterprise. See AEO for B2B SaaS, fintech and crypto.

Yes, including fintech and crypto. Claims and proof points are kept accurate and compliant with your review process.

If buyers in your category already ask AI for vendor recommendations, yes. See AEO for AI startups.