AEO (answer engine optimisation)

AEO grew from featured snippets and voice search. When a search engine answers a question directly, at the top of the results or out loud, it takes the answer from a page. AEO is shaping your page to be that page.

What it involves:

1. 1Using the customer's question as a heading.
2. 2Answering it plainly in the first sentence or two under the heading.
3. 3Following with detail: steps, a short list or a table.
4. 4Keeping each page focused on one topic.

There's no markup that guarantees an answer position; the search engine picks the passage it judges most helpful. AEO overlaps heavily with GEO, because AI assistants also prefer clear, direct answers they can quote.

In practice

In practice, take the questions customers ask you most and check whether each has a clear answer on your site. For each one, put the question as a heading on the most relevant page and answer it in the first two sentences, then add the detail. Avoid one giant FAQ page covering everything; answers work best on the page about that topic, where a reader and a search engine both expect them.