What exactly is AEO and how is it different from our existing content SEO programme?
AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation — is the discipline of structuring your web content so that AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews cite your pages when generating answers to user questions. Traditional content SEO optimises for ranking positions in search results by targeting keywords, building authority, and improving relevance signals. AEO optimises for appearing in a generated, conversational answer — which requires a fundamentally different content structure (direct question-answer format), different technical implementation (FAQ, HowTo, and Speakable schema), and different measurement (citation rate monitoring, not rank tracking). Most companies that run strong SEO programmes have near-zero AI visibility because the signals do not overlap.
How long does the AEO Strategy programme take to show measurable results?
The first measurable citation improvements typically appear within 60 to 90 days of page restructure and schema deployment. The audit and question mapping phases complete in two to three weeks. Page restructuring and schema implementation add three to four weeks. Post-deployment, AI engines re-index and update citation patterns over four to six weeks — Perplexity is typically the fastest, Google AI Overviews the slowest. The first monthly tracking report after deployment shows baseline citation rates, and month-over-month improvement is visible from month two onward. For B2B companies, the correlation between citation rate improvement and inbound inquiry quality typically becomes visible within four to five months of programme start.
How much does AEO Strategy cost for a US B2B or SaaS business?
The AEO Strategy programme for US businesses starts at USD 5,500 for the full audit, question mapping, page restructure, and schema implementation across up to five priority pages. Monthly monitoring and expansion retainers begin at USD 1,500 per month. Larger engagements covering ten or more pages, multiple product lines, or ongoing AI-citable content production are scoped individually and typically priced on a quarterly basis. Every engagement begins with a free AI Visibility Audit — we will not ask you to commit to the programme until you have seen your current citation gap and your competitors' citation advantage in full.
Which AI platforms does the programme target for US buyers?
The standard programme targets five AI platforms: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Perplexity AI, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Bing Copilot. For B2B and SaaS companies, ChatGPT and Perplexity are the highest-priority platforms — they are the AI engines most commonly used by US business buyers for vendor research, comparison, and shortlisting. Google AI Overviews is critical for capturing buyers who start their research in Google rather than directly in an AI interface. Bing Copilot is increasingly important for enterprise buyers whose companies use Microsoft 365 as their primary productivity environment.
How do you measure whether AEO Strategy is driving pipeline impact?
Results are measured at two levels. At the citation level, we track citation rate (percentage of target questions that return a citation for your site), citation position within the AI-generated answer, and competitor citation rate for the same questions — measured monthly across all five AI engines. At the pipeline level, we track referral traffic from AI engine domains where attribution is available, lead-to-customer rates from organic-attributed pipeline (which typically improves as AI citation drives higher-intent visitors), and — where clients share CRM data — the proportion of new opportunities where the buyer mentioned AI as part of their research process. Direct attribution from AI engines is still an evolving measurement challenge across the industry, but citation rate improvement is a leading indicator that reliably precedes pipeline quality improvement.
We already have a content team and an SEO agency. How does AEO Strategy fit with what they are doing?
AEO Strategy operates as a structured layer on top of your existing content and SEO infrastructure — it does not replace either. Your content team continues producing content; we provide them with the question map and the restructuring template so that new content is AI-citable by default. Your SEO agency continues optimising for Google; the schema markup and answer-first structure we deploy typically improves Google performance as well, because FAQ schema is a recognised Google rich result signal. The monthly citation tracking we introduce adds a new metric to your reporting stack — one that captures buyer activity at the top of the funnel that your current analytics cannot see.