JONGMA.DEV

AI developmentsPublished · Updated

What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) | and why is it urgent?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is optimising your content so AI systems, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, cite your site as a source in their answers. Where SEO is about positions, AEO is about being cited. Whoever isn't citable now disappears from a growing part of the search journey.

Why AEO matters now

A rapidly growing share of searches is answered withóut a classic results list: users ask ChatGPT or get an AI summary at the top of Google. Those answers name only a few sources. If you're not among them, you don't exist for that searcher, however good your classic rankings are.

How do you become citable?

AI systems cite content that answers directly: a clear question as heading, the answer right below it, factual and compact. Structured data (FAQ, Article and HowTo schemas) helps machines understand the structure. Technically your site must allow AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) and deliver content server-side, what only appears after JavaScript is often missed.

Authority remains the multiplier: consistent entities (organisation, author), current dates and substantive depth determine whether an AI cites you over a competitor.

SEO and AEO: not a choice but a stack

The good news: the foundations overlap. Speed, structure, schemas and good content carry both classic rankings and AI citations. The difference is in the writing style (answer-first) and measurability (monitoring citations instead of only positions). Whoever builds their site today builds for both at once, that's how we build every site by default.

· Maricio Jongma, Jongma Development

FAQ

No, it stacks on top. Classic search traffic will keep delivering the volume for now, while AI answers take over a growing and influential part of orientation. You need both, and they share the same technical basis.

By structurally monitoring whether your domain is mentioned in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on your core questions. Specialised tools are emerging; we set up that monitoring during further development.

Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt, add FAQ schema to your key pages and rewrite core pages answer-first: the question as heading, the complete answer in the first paragraph.

Lead generation websites Our approach
Back to knowledge base
Chat with our AI agent Meindert Wilhelmus