For twenty years, getting found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. That era is changing fast. More and more people now ask AI tools – ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini – for recommendations before they ever open a results page. If those tools don’t know your business exists, you’re invisible to a growing slice of your market. The discipline of fixing that is called AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation.
What is AEO?
AEO is the practice of making your business easy for AI answer engines to understand, trust and recommend. Where traditional SEO aims to win a clickable ranking, AEO aims to make your brand the answer the AI actually gives – by name.
Why it matters now
- A large share of searches are predicted to move to AI assistants over the next few years.
- AI answers often name just two or three businesses – being one of them is enormously valuable.
- Most South African businesses haven’t optimised for this yet, so there’s a real first-mover advantage.
How to get recommended by AI
1. Publish clear, factual, structured content
AI models extract and cite content that’s well organised – clear headings, direct answers, lists and definitions. Vague marketing fluff gets ignored; a clean answer to a real question gets quoted.
2. Use structured data (schema)
Schema markup tells machines exactly what your business does, where it’s based and what you offer. FAQ schema, Organisation schema and LocalBusiness schema all help AI understand and trust you.
3. Be consistent everywhere
AI builds a picture of your brand from across the web. Keep your name, services, location and contact details identical on your site, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles.
4. Build genuine authority and reviews
The same trust signals that help you rank on Google – quality backlinks, real reviews, expert content – also make AI more confident recommending you.
5. Add an llms.txt file
A simple llms.txt file at your domain gives AI crawlers a clean summary of your key pages and offerings. Few businesses have one – adding it is an easy, low-cost edge.
The takeaway
SEO and AEO aren’t competitors – they’re the two halves of being discoverable in 2026. The same foundations that rank you on Google also make you citable by AI. Do both, and you don’t just compete in your niche; you become the answer.
Related reading
- GEO Explained: The New SEO for AI Search
- How to Get Mentioned in Google AI Overviews
- Why Every Business Needs an llms.txt File
Get a free audit and find out whether AI currently recommends your business – and how to make sure it does.
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