Found in AI

AEO, GEO, and the Future of SEO: How to Show Up in AI Search

• Cassie Clark • Episode 3

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In this episode of Found in AI, I sit down with Ioana Wilkinson, B2B content writer and founder of Innovatech Content, to unpack how SEO, AEO, and GEO actually fit together in today’s AI-driven search landscape. We cover:

  • What Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) really means in practice.
  • Why micro-intent queries are the secret to getting cited in AI answers.
  • How GEO builds on SEO and AEO to structure content for AI clarity.
  • Why authority sources (like bios and high-trust platforms) matter more than ever.
  • My own experiment: updating my HubSpot bio with targeted keywords to see if LLMs start surfacing me in AI search.

If you’ve been wondering how to prepare your brand for AI search — and what actually moves the needle — this episode is for you.

📌 Mentioned in this episode:

  • AEO vs SEO vs GEO
  • Answer Engine Optimization strategies
  • Micro-intent keyword targeting
  • FAQ schema for AI visibility
  • AI content optimization for startups

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Keywords: AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, AI Search, Generative Engine Optimization, SEO, Content Strategy, AI Marketing, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, ChatGPT SEO, FAQ Schema, AI Content Optimization, Startup Marketing, B2B Content Marketing, Digital Marketing Trends

Find the show notes and transcript here.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Over the past year, you've probably heard terms like AEO, GEO, and even LLM optimization thrown around in marketing conversations or littered all over your LinkedIn feed. I know it is mine. But what do those terms actually mean in practice, and how do they change the way we show up in search now that AI is pulling the answers? If we haven't met yet, I'm Cassie Clark. I'm a content strategist who helps startups and B2B brands get seen. And now that AI engines are part of how people search, that means creating content that shows up in those AI-generated answers. This show is where I share what I'm learning, the experiments I'm running, and the strategies you can use to get your business found in AI search. And in today's episode, we're talking with Yolana Wilkinson, B2B content writer and founder of Innovatech content, and we're talking about how SEO, AEO, and GEO actually fit together in this new landscape. Here's part of that conversation. So when people say AEO, what do they actually mean in practice? What have you been seeing and what have you been telling your clients? Yeah, it's actually pretty simple. It just means answer engine optimization. And basically for that, you just want to make sure that what you're writing about, the AEO can pull your content for direct answers within the search results. So that's going to be like the snippets at the top. And so it can be like, you know, FAQ sections are super, that's a super easy ad. You can add that to literally any kind of piece of content with clear answers to common questions about that topic that you're writing about. And always include like a piece of the question and the answer. So if it's like, you know, what is productivity software and why does it matter? Then your answer should be like productivity software is X and it matters because. And so those very clear answers to those questions is really going to help a lot. And like I said, the FAQ schema, there's also little extra things like adding a table of contents, adding a highlight section at the top of your pieces that just call out a few of the summaries from the article. It's funny because Google has said that some of this stuff doesn't work. And I'm like, why do you say that? Because it's so untrue. We track the data and we have seen that it is actually one of the easiest ways for it to pull. So yeah, that's essentially what it means. Yeah. So a couple of my clients, like maybe early last year, so early 2024, they started adding the FAQ on there. And I even mentioned this to another content writer at the time. And they were like, well, if everyone starts doing that, then what does, what good does that do? So it's kind of funny that that's the advice now is do add the FAQ on there. And I don't think I realized this, the custom code for the FAQ schema. I didn't know that you had to add that to the end of a blog post. I thought just ask the questions. Have you been doing that too? So I don't do a lot of like the backend technical work. My clients do that or their like technical SEOs do that, but I do supply them with the FAQ text and then they do the backend. Yeah. So that was not a thing that I like I'm adding it in now. And I don't think it will do because I just started within the last couple of weeks. But have you seen any of your clients like seeing results by adding in that backend code? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's super, super, super easy. It's to me, it's like a no brainer ad to almost any kind of content you can create can have an FAQ to it. The main thing is that you want to target more like micro intents because when you target conversational micro intent queries, for example, like what is the best productivity software for small businesses under a hundred dollars a month, right? Instead of just productivity software, then your questions and answers are going to be even more hyper hyper-specific, which means you have low competition. Right. Right. So now it's easier to, for the, for the search engine to go ahead and pop that up at the top because there's not as many people writing about that and you're covering the FAQs. They want to be helpful. That's what it's really about. It wants to be helpful and give the user as many like helpful little summaries and snippets as they can get about whatever they're searching. So the more specific the better. Absolutely. Yes. And actually like at USERP, which is one of the agencies that I've partnered with, they are amazing. They've actually analyzed over 200 client queries and they found that brands using micro intent targeting instead of evergreen terms got cited about five times more often in AI responses. That is good to know. So be as specific as possible with whatever it is that you're talking about. Yes. Precise intent rich queries. Yeah. They're like, think about it like what you would add. It's also kind of goes back to conversational SEO. If you remember like with the bots, you know, like what you would ask Alexa or what you would ask, you know, with, with the voice search SEO, it's going to be more of a conversational long question and it's easier to rank for those and to get spotted for those types of terms. Right. Okay. So GEO. Yes. How's GEO different from AEO and from traditional SEO? Yeah, they're all like, they're all like, you know, sisters and brothers, you know, but yeah, GEO like expands on SEO and AEO. It optimizes content for use in AI generated responses. So this is going to be like a lot of formatting is going to help, like really strategic formatting is going to help in this situation. So again, you know, with, with the different things I just mentioned, the highlights and the FAQ, that also plays a role, but also like structuring, like maybe having more like what, why, how sections in your pieces, which is funny because that's so 2020 SEO, right. It's so old school, but it's, it's, it's made a comeback. So yeah, you want to really structure your content for AI clarity, you know and you just want to make sure that you are like feeding the LLMs what they want, which is like, you know, case studies, screenshots, original research, maybe ROI calculators, product comparisons, things like that. You want to, you want to give it a lot of value so that it can easily pull and reference it. Oh, this person said this about that, you know, here's the data here, you know, any how, what, when, where question, but it's not an FAQ section. It's like dedicated H2s and H3s is what I'm talking about, which is kind of what we've been doing all along. Right. I mean, amazing. Yeah. It's like, keep doing, keep on keeping on, you know. Yeah. So absolutely. So when we say AI surge, what falls under that umbrella and what didn't fall under that umbrella? Yeah, pretty much all of these terms, AO, GEO, even SEO, LLMO, you know, all, all of the terms basically fall into it. And it's just making sure that, that different AI channels can pull things from your content that is, is valuable. And it, and the SEO is the foundation. This is what we cannot forget is SEO is the foundation. So without SEO, there is no AO and GEO and LMO. Yes, we have Reddit, but even Reddit, like, you know, there's like a search engine kind of component to it. And that like, you can search through so many different threads and, and I don't know, it's, it's kind of like its own, like peer community search in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. Reddit's a whole different blogging, but I have seen tons of people on LinkedIn lately talking about how to get into Reddit marketing. Are any of your clients doing that? Have you suggested that to anyone? A hundred percent. It's extremely smart. AI often trusts real user-generated content from these niche forums like Quora and Reddit more than even like a polished product page or like metadata or something. So how are your clients getting into these Reddit communities? Yeah. Because everyone's like, Oh, I did something and I got banned immediately. Yeah. You want to be, you want to be authentic. You want to add value. So like only jump in, if you can be genuinely helpful, if you can give genuine insight, right? Like don't jump in and be like, Oh, you don't like that email marketing tool. We'll try mine. Cause it's better. You know, that's, that's not, no, you could be like, Oh yeah, I used that too. And I noticed XYZ. That's why I started switching over to this one and I've noticed these benefits and this is how it's helped me and more value based, which is what, which is what should always be the goal in content marketing anyway. Right. So I guess my biggest question with Reddit, it is so easy to go like into a rabbit hole on something completely different. So do you suggest they have like a dedicated person on their team? That's like the Reddit person or how, how has that structure worked? That's a really good question. I mean, I love specializing and I think anytime, if you have the bandwidth or resources to have people that specialize in different channels, I think I say go for it. If you don't have that possibility, then it should just be a part of your SEO tasks. It should be on your list of things that you do going forward because also it's also because people are getting a little bit desensitized and over inundated with information that they're trying to look for more authentic spaces to communicate. And so that's, you know, that's in, of course, us marketers, we're always going to go and attack all those authentic spaces, but if we can do that with some value, right. Right. Don't mind us. We're just, you know, browsing kind of. Absolutely. Yeah. If you can guide also, if you can guide the customers in Reddit to share like specific outcomes or use cases in those community threads, that's a really great way to pull some user generated content. Right. So I've been, I've been using chat GPT's agent to like just go search these relevant Reddit communities, tell me what their questions they're asking. And I've been using that in creating content and that's been super helpful. Oh, smart. I don't know where I picked that up. It was someone, I wish I had their name because it was, it's been very helpful. Super smart. Super smart. Yeah. That's great. The more like aligned you are with what, what you're searching and contributing to the better. So just back to SEO for a little bit. Do you think keywords are still useful or is it completely different now? Oh no. Keywords will always be useful. You know, it's, it's because we're in bot land all the time, you know, these bots need terms, they need terms to cling onto. And if not, like they have no language, they have nothing to decode. So yeah, keywords are always going to be important. You know, if you have a recipe blog and you're writing a blueberry muffin recipe, you know, like you want to say blueberry muffin on there a gajillion times, you know, but not in a, not in like a spammy way in, in a natural way that adds value, you know, like talk about, you know, your grandmother's blueberry muffin recipe and all the different blueberry muffin recipes that you've tried throughout the years and, and break down, you know, maybe some do's and don'ts of baking blueberry muffins. And, you know, that, so it gives you like excuses to use those keywords, but you're also still being valuable. So yeah, they'll, they'll always matter. Yeah. Yeah. So keywords, we're going to keep them. We're going to work with long tail keywords. I had them those questions. So if you were advising a new business, a new startup, how should they approach AO or geo differently from SEO? What would you suggest? Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say that first and foremost, you need to like, know your target audience very deeply. So I, before you do anything, I would start interviewing your target audience and, and cover all of their desires, their needs, their pain points, ask them very specific questions, you know, like what were you searching for right before you found us? You know, if they don't have customers yet, it could be target customers or maybe like beta customers or a focus group that would buy from them. What was going on wrong, you know, that made you start looking for us? What was like the most helpful thing someone told you while evaluating options, like very specific questions like these, this is your content gold. And this is what you need in order to map pain points to the SaaS marketing funnel stages, if you're in SaaS or in funnel stages in general. Cause then you want to break it down with your top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel content. And in that is where you have so many opportunities to build your topical authority and also focus on those content best practices. So you still want your, your tofu, mofu, bofu content, you know, create content for each of those pillars, make sure you have your clusters, your parent pages, your child pages. And then on within that content, that is where you want to make sure you are, you're targeting those long tail conversational queries that are like micro intent queries. You know, you're adding that, the FAQ, the highlights, the T the TOC, lots of like, um, quick answers, lots of like short and snappy, um, information without being like, without, without removing depth. Cause you still want to provide depth. Um, you don't want to just give them some outline. So it has to have kind of like that balance of short and sweet answers and also in depth, like case studies and, and, and tool walkthroughs and, and actual examples and personal expertise, like all of these different things. Then of course the, the Reddit and the Quora and get in those communities, um, you know, build your personal brand, add in, you know, any kind of, um, content in your personal brand, like on LinkedIn that could also be picked up, um, again, like conversational queries always. Um, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a feat, you know, it's not something small. Like I think, I think you start charging like 30 K or something, um, for, for AISCO it's, it's, it's, it's, it's massive. It's a massive undertaking, but it's worth it. Yeah. So just, just out of general curiosity, if someone were to like start implementing SEO, geo, AO, the whole strategy, like today timeline wise, when do you think they'd start showing up in AI search and Google, if they were doing everything that they should be? Hmm. I feel like that's hard to say and hard to answer, but I will say that I've noticed that if you are like, if you're competitive and you're, you're really strategic, you can, you can start seeing results in three months or less. Listening back to that conversation. One thing that really stuck with me is how much authority sources matter both to Google and AI engines. And that brings me into this week's experiment. I've been testing prompts in chat GPT, like I'm looking for a fractional content strategist who works with series A and B startups. Even though my website is updated and I'm creating content focused on those keywords, I'm not yet showing up in those AI generated answers. Instead, the LLMs are pulling over information from an old bio that reads something like Cassie is a teacher turned writer. While this is true, I sharpened my marketing skills in the classroom. That's absolutely not the brand story I want showing up now. When I looked closer, I realized the sources were always pointing back to high authority bios, like the one I have on HubSpot. So last week I asked the HubSpot team to update my bio with new keywords like fractional content strategist for a series A and B companies. And thankfully they did that for me. They are so nice over there, I swear. The theory that I'm going with now is that once Google reindexes the bio, the LLMs will start servicing the updated version and I'll begin showing up in the right kinds of searches. I'll keep you posted on whether that works. If you've been listening and thinking, we should be showing up in those AI answers, but I have no idea where to start. That's exactly what I help brands figure out. I'm Cassie Clark, a content strategist who builds AI search ready content systems for startups and B2B companies. If you want to talk about how we can make your content work harder in this new search landscape, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit cassieclarkmarketing.com. Next week we're tackling how to track and measure AO and GO metrics and I will catch you then.