Answer engine optimisation: be the answer, not the tenth link.

SEO aims to rank a page in a list of results. AEO aims to have your content extracted as the answer itself — in an AI Overview, a featured snippet or a voice response — with your site named as the source. They share most of their foundations, but AEO changes how a page is written and structured, because extraction rewards a self-contained answer placed immediately under a question.

It can change its shape, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Some informational queries that used to produce a click are now answered on the results page. The practical response is to be the cited source for those, which carries authority and still sends qualified visitors, and to make sure your commercial pages are strong for the queries that have always converted. Being absent from the answer is strictly worse than being in it.

There is no submission and no guarantee, and anyone offering one is selling something else. What demonstrably helps is answering the question directly and completely in a self-contained passage near the top of a relevant page, using question-shaped headings, being factually consistent across your site, having schema that matches the visible content, and already being a credible result for the query.

It helps machines parse question and answer pairs, so it is worth having where you genuinely have FAQs. It is not sufficient on its own, and marking up questions nobody asks or answers that do not appear on the page is actively harmful — markup that contradicts visible content is a quality problem, not an optimisation.

By tracking citation rather than only position: whether your pages appear as a source for the questions you targeted, how impressions move relative to clicks, and whether the enquiries arriving have already passed the basic qualifying questions. We set the question set up front so the measurement is against a defined target rather than a general impression.

It works particularly well, because technical queries have specific, verifiable answers and relatively few sources answer them properly. A manufacturer who answers precise specification and compliance questions clearly is often the only credible candidate for extraction, which is a much easier position than competing for a broad commercial term.

No, and schema alone achieves very little. The work is structural and editorial: answering the question completely in a self-contained passage near the top of a relevant page, under a heading phrased the way people ask. Schema helps machines parse what is already there. Marking up questions nobody asks, or answers that do not appear on the page, is actively harmful.

Yes, because it is the same mechanism. Voice assistants read out an extracted answer, so content written to be lifted cleanly performs in both. The practical difference is that voice rewards brevity even more strongly, which is another argument for answering in the first forty words.

Mostly in the order. Conventional B2B writing builds to a conclusion; answer-first writing leads with it and then justifies it. It also demands committing to specifics — numbers, limits, honest caveats — because a vague passage is not worth extracting. Most pages improve for human readers too.

Yes, and specification questions are some of the easiest to win. Compatibility, tolerances, materials, lead times and standards all have definite answers, very few sources answer them properly, and the buyer asking them is close to a purchase decision.