What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is a modern content strategy that focuses on helping your website provide direct, concise answers to specific questions users ask online. While traditional SEO focuses on improving rankings for broad keywords, AEO zooms in on user intent—giving clear, structured responses that can be easily understood by search engines and featured in tools like ChatGPT, Google’s featured snippets, and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa.

Why is AEO important for modern search?

Search behaviour is changing. Instead of typing general phrases like “best marketing agency”, users are asking specific questions like “How do I choose a digital marketing agency?” or “What does a full-service creative agency do?”. AEO ensures that your content is positioned to answer those questions directly and clearly, increasing your chances of being selected as a trusted result by AI and voice-powered search tools.

At Fort Hartley, we write content in a way that directly addresses these types of queries—because today’s search engines want content that is helpful, relevant, and fast to digest.

How does AEO differ from traditional SEO?

Traditional SEO:

• Optimises for keyword rankings
• Focuses on backlinks, meta tags, and page authority
• Aims for visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs)

AEO:

• Optimises for direct answers to questions
• Uses structured data and natural language
• Targets answer boxes, voice search results, and AI engines

In other words, traditional SEO helps you show up. AEO helps you get chosen.

What kind of content works best for AEO?

To perform well in answer engines, content should:

• Be clearly structured with headings and short paragraphs
• Use question-based formats (like this FAQ)
• Include relevant keywords naturally
• Provide concise, valuable responses up front
• Make use of structured data (schema markup) where possible

At Fort Hartley, we optimise your blog posts, service pages, and FAQs to meet AEO standards—so your business doesn’t just compete in search results, it leads the conversation.

Does AEO work with tools like ChatGPT?

Yes. Platforms like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Google Gemini rely on large language models to surface helpful, trustworthy content. By aligning your site with AEO principles, you improve your chances of being recommended by these AI tools in response to user queries.

We use AEO-focused tools to identify question-based keywords, understand search intent, and structure your content so that it’s not only human-friendly—but AI-friendly too.