AEO Services
When your customer asks AI, be the answer
Search is changing. More people ask ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity instead of scrolling a page of links. AEO makes sure your business is the one they quote, not the one they skip.
Schema Markup/
Google AI Overviews/
Answer Content/
Citation Tracking/
Voice Search/
AI Visibility/
Schema Markup/
Google AI Overviews/
Answer Content/
Citation Tracking/
Voice Search/
The One Answer.
Think about how you search now.
The old way was a page of blue links. Ten options to compare, a shelf to browse, and you did the work of picking. Most businesses spent years trying to climb that list.
AI changed the question. Ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview where to find something and you don’t get ten links. You get one answer, with a couple of sources cited underneath. The shelf is gone. There is one recommendation, and a name or two attached to it.
AEO, Answer Engine Optimisation, is the work of being that name. Not buried on page one, but quoted in the answer itself: the business the AI points to when your customer asks.
AEO is not a magic trick. It’s SEO’s sharper sibling.
There is a lot of noise about AI search right now, and plenty of people selling magic. We will be straight with you: getting cited by AI comes down to fundamentals done well – clear answers, clean structure, real authority, and content written the way people actually ask questions.
It builds on good SEO. It doesn’t replace it.
If your site is already structured well and earns trust, AEO is the layer that makes it legible to the engines handing out answers. If it isn’t, we start there. Either way, no jargon, no smoke, and no promises we can’t keep about ranking number one in ChatGPT by Friday.
We work with businesses that want to stay visible as search shifts under their feet, and would rather get ahead of it than scramble later.
How AI decides who to quote
AI engines don’t pick sources at random. They favour content they can read cleanly, trust, and lift a clear answer from. Get these four right and your odds of being cited climb.
Give a clear, direct answer to the question, high up the page
Structure content so machines can read and lift it – headings, lists, schema
Build the trust signals (E-E-A-T) that make AI confident citing you
Match the real questions people ask, in their words, not yours
Two steps, in the right order.
AEO works the same way our SEO does: discovery first, then implementation. You don’t optimise blind.
AEO Step 1 is the audit. R3,950. We test where you currently stand across the AI engines, map the questions worth winning, see who is getting cited instead of you, and check whether your site is even readable to these tools. You finish with a clear picture and a plan.
AEO Step 2 is the work. R5,500. We build the schema, restructure the content, write the answers and FAQs, strengthen your authority signals, and set up tracking so you can watch the citations land. Then we report on what moved.
Start with Step 1. If you have already had AEO discovery done, we can pick up at Step 2.
What we can help with.
Most of this comes bundled into AEO Step 1 and Step 2 – but here is every piece, so you can see exactly what the work involves.
Before we change anything, we find out where you stand with AI. These are the discovery units – they tell us what to fix and in what order. Most are bundled into AEO Step 1.
AI Visibility Baseline
Part of AEO Step 1
Every AEO engagement starts here. We test how your business currently shows up across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot – where you are mentioned, where you are cited, where the information is wrong, and which competitors appear instead. Delivered as a clear baseline you can measure all future progress against.
Query & Prompt Universe Map
Part of AEO Step 1
The questions your customers actually put to AI tools, in their own words, mapped to your business and your market. This is the target list: the prompts worth being the answer to, grouped so we know what to build and in what order.
Citation & Competitor Gap Analysis
Up to 5 competitors
Which competitors the AI engines cite, for which questions, and exactly where the open gaps are. Shows you the questions you could realistically own with the right content and structure, rather than guessing.
Technical & Schema Readiness Audit
Scoped to site size
A check of whether AI crawlers can actually read your site – your current schema markup, content structure, and technical setup. We find what is blocking the engines from understanding and citing your content, and deliver it as a prioritised fix list.
Content Extractability Audit
A review of whether your key pages are written so AI can quote them: answer-first intros, question-style headings, concise factual statements, and FAQ coverage. We flag exactly what to rework so your content becomes liftable.
E-E-A-T & Authority Signal Audit
AI leans heavily on trust. We review your author bios, About page, citations, sources and reviews – the signals that make an engine confident enough to cite you – and show you where you are thin and what to strengthen.
The structural work that makes your content legible to machines. Most of this sits inside AEO Step 2.
Schema Markup Build & Deploy
Part of AEO Step 2
Structured data tells AI exactly what your content is, and is one of the strongest signals for getting pulled into answers. We build and deploy FAQ, Article, Organisation and Local Business schema, plus HowTo where it fits, so the engines can read your site with no guesswork.
Content Restructure for Extraction
Priority pages
We rework your priority pages answer-first: a clear, quotable response near the top, question-style headings, and short factual summaries an AI can lift cleanly. Same information, reshaped so a machine can use it without hunting.
FAQ Content Build
We write and expand FAQ sections that match the real questions from your query map. FAQs are some of the most-cited content in AI answers, and paired with schema they are one of the fastest routes to getting picked up.
The content and trust work that earns the citation. New pages, stronger signals, a clearer identity.
Answer-Target Page
New page
A new page built specifically to be the answer for a priority question – question and keyword research, copy written to be quoted, and structure and schema baked in from the start. The cornerstone piece for a question you want to own.
E-E-A-T Signal Build
We strengthen the trust signals AI relies on: proper author bios, a credible About page, cited sources, and visible expertise. This is the difference between content an AI reads and content it trusts enough to quote.
Entity & Knowledge Graph Tidy
We make sure the engines understand who you are: consistent business name, address and details everywhere, clean Organisation markup, and alignment with your Google Business Profile. A clear entity is an easy entity to cite.
For businesses that want to show up when people ask AI for something near them, or out loud.
Local AEO
When someone asks an AI tool for a service in your area, we want it naming you. We align your local signals, Google Business Profile and location content so the engines connect your business to the places you actually serve.
Voice Search Optimisation
Most voice searches are local and phrased as full questions. We structure your content for the conversational, spoken queries people use with assistants, so you are the answer that gets read back out loud.
Knowing whether it is working. Measurable, transparent, and tied back to your business.
AI Citation Tracking Setup
Part of AEO Step 2
You can’t improve what you can’t see. We set up the tools and saved prompts to monitor whether, and where, AI tools are citing your business across the main engines, then hand it over so you can keep watching it yourself.
AEO Progress Report
A clear summary of how your AI visibility has moved: new citations won, where you are showing up, what changed since the baseline, and what we would tackle next. No data dump, just what matters.
Unlike SEO, AEO does not yet have a clean, built-in analytics dashboard. Google Search Console tells you what… When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity “who does good web design in Johannesburg?”, the answer comes from somewhere.… “Hey Google, find a web designer near me.” Voice search is no longer a novelty. Voice queries now…
How to Track Whether AI Tools Are Citing Your Business
Local AEO: How SA Small Businesses Can Show Up in AI Answers
Voice Search Optimisation for Small Businesses
Ready to be the answer?
Whether you want the full picture first or you are ready to get cited, let’s talk about where your business stands as search moves to AI.
