What an AEO agency does
An answer engine optimization (AEO) agency works on how AI assistants answer questions about your category, so that they name you, describe you correctly and link to your site. When someone asks “what’s the best help desk for a small team?”, the AI tool searches the web, reads a handful of pages and writes one answer. AEO is the work of being in those pages and in that answer.
It overlaps with SEO, because AI tools lean on search indexes to find what to read. But the goal is different: not a blue link on page one, but a mention inside the answer itself. We cover both. See AEO vs SEO for how they differ.
Our AEO services
- Prompt research. The questions your buyers ask AI tools, from “best X for Y” to “X vs Y” and “is X worth it”, ranked by how close they are to a purchase.
- AI answer tracking. We run those prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and log who’s named, what’s said and which pages are cited.
- Fact fixes. Wrong prices, old plan names and missing features get corrected at the source: your site, your docs and the third-party pages AI tools read.
- Pages built to be quoted. A direct answer up top, clear comparisons, real numbers and dated facts. That is what AI tools lift into their answers.
- Comparison and alternatives pages. The pages AI tools cite most for “X vs Y” and “X alternatives” questions.
- Technical access. AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt, pages that render without JavaScript, structured data, sitemaps and an llms.txt.
- Off-site mentions. Directories, review sites, “best of” lists and community threads, because AI answers lean on what others say about you.
- A weekly report. Every Monday: what shipped, which answers changed, and what’s next.
How we work
- Week one: the baseline. We run your category’s prompts across every AI tool and record where you stand, and who wins instead of you.
- Fix what’s wrong. Crawler access, wrong facts and pages that bury the answer get fixed first, because they’re the fastest wins.
- Fill the gaps. For each prompt where a rival is cited and you aren’t, we build or rewrite the page that should win it.
- Earn the mentions. We get you onto the lists, directories and threads that AI tools keep citing.
- Measure and repeat. We re-run the prompts every week and move effort to what’s working.
What results look like
AI answers are noisy, so we measure share of answers across many prompts, not a single screenshot. Search data moves first. For our first client, daily Google impressions went from about 7 to 168 within four weeks of starting, and clicks rose 2.4× against the four weeks before. For a larger client site, daily impressions went from about 1,800 to 5,000 in seven weeks, and clicks doubled.
Want to see where your category stands today? The AEO Index shows which software brands ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend in 15 categories, and the free AEO audit checks whether AI crawlers can read your site.
How to choose an AEO agency
AEO is new, and plenty of agencies have added it to an old SEO menu. Ask these five questions:
- Which prompts will you track, and how often? A real answer names a list, the AI tools and how often they’re checked.
- Do you report AI mentions, or only rankings? Rankings alone don’t tell you whether ChatGPT names you.
- Who makes the changes? Advice decks don’t move answers. Changes that ship to your site do.
- Do you guarantee placements? The honest answer is no.
- What does it cost, all in? You should know the monthly price and what you get for it before the first call.
Our answer to the last one: $1,500 a month, one plan, everything below included.