What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is a content strategy focused on structuring information for direct extraction and presentation by AI-powered platforms and Search Generative Experiences (SGE). It involves optimizing content for semantic understanding by AI models, using techniques such as schema markup, natural language processing (NLP) aware content creation, and knowledge graph integration. AEO prioritizes providing succinct, contextually relevant answers formatted for algorithmic consumption and natural language generation, rather than solely focusing on keyword-based ranking factors for traditional search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes optimizing for entity recognition, relationship extraction, and question answering tasks performed by AI models to populate AI overviews and other direct answer formats.