The core principle
AI engines extract answers. They're not browsing your site; they're parsing it for structured, trustworthy, directly-useful information. The easier you make that extraction, the more likely they are to cite you.
1. Write in the FAQ format
The single highest-impact change most websites can make is restructuring content into explicit questions and direct answers. Not "our approach to X", but "What is X? X is..." AI engines are trained to recognise and extract this pattern.
2. Add schema markup
JSON-LD schema tells AI engines (and Google) structured facts about your content. At minimum, you need:
3. Define your entities clearly
Every page should clearly establish: who wrote it, who it's about, what organisation it comes from, and what topic it covers.
4. Build factual density
Vague content doesn't get cited. Content with specific numbers, named sources, dated studies, and clear definitions does. Every paragraph should have at least one concrete, verifiable fact.
5. Earn inbound citations
Just like SEO needs backlinks, AEO benefits from other content citing you. Guest articles, PR placements, and industry publication mentions all signal to AI that your domain is a reliable source.
6. Monitor what gets cited
Use a tool like Signal Flow (or query ChatGPT and Perplexity directly) to find out which of your pages are being cited and which aren't.