AEO is the new SEO
For the last two decades, SEO has been the backbone of digital visibility. If people wanted to find your organisation, your services, or your ideas, they went to Google. They typed a query, scanned a list of links, and clicked through to a website.
That behaviour is changing.
Today, more and more people are turning to chatbots and AI platforms like ChatGPT to get answers, recommendations and summaries. This is often instead of using a traditional search engine at all. Rather than clicking through ten blue links, they’re asking a question and receiving a single, synthesised response.
This shift has profound implications for how organisations need to think about their websites, content, campaigns and digital presence.
Welcome to the era of AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation.
At The Marketing Department, we’ve been adapting to this shift since 2024, building AEO thinking into the way we design websites, structure content and deliver digital projects for our clients.
What is AEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is about making sure your organisation’s information can be found, understood and trusted by AI systems and not just by Google’s traditional ranking algorithms.
Where SEO has historically focused on keywords, backlinks and technical performance to rank pages in search results, AEO is about:
Structuring your content so that AI tools can easily extract clear, authoritative answers
Using language that reflects how real people ask questions
Demonstrating credibility, relevance and trustworthiness in a way that machines can interpret
Making sure your organisation’s narrative, services and expertise are consistently represented across the web
In short: AEO is about ensuring that when someone asks an AI, “Who should I work with for this?” or “What does this organisation do?”, your organisation is part of the answer.
Why this matters now
AI platforms are no longer fringe tools used only by early adopters. They are rapidly becoming part of everyday digital behaviour.
At the same time, many people are growing increasingly frustrated with traditional search engines - especially Google - and the way sponsored links and paid placements now dominate results pages.
Instead of finding the most relevant or trustworthy information quickly, users are often met with:
Multiple ads before any organic result
Heavily commercialised content designed to rank rather than help
A growing sense that discovery is being shaped more by ad budgets than by quality
It’s no coincidence that, in this environment, people are turning to AI tools that promise direct, neutral answers rather than pages of sponsored links.
People are:
Asking ChatGPT for recommendations
Using AI assistants built into browsers and phones
Relying on generative search results instead of scrolling through pages of links
For organisations, this means:
Fewer people may ever reach your website via a traditional search result
More decisions may be influenced by what an AI says about you
Visibility is no longer just about ranking first — it’s about being understood and referenced by machines
If your website and digital footprint aren’t structured in a way that AI systems can parse, interpret and trust, you risk becoming invisible in this new layer of discovery.
SEO isn’t dead (yet!) but it’s no longer enough
This isn’t about abandoning SEO. Technical performance, accessibility, content quality and discoverability still matter enormously.
But they’re no longer the whole story.
The future of digital visibility sits at the intersection of:
SEO (how well you perform in traditional search)
UX (how clearly and coherently you communicate your value)
AEO (how well AI systems can understand and summarise you)
In practice, that means your website and campaigns need to be:
Clear in their messaging
Consistent in their language
Structured around real questions and real needs
Designed to signal authority and credibility
What AEO looks like in practice
When we talk about designing and building with AEO in mind, we’re not talking about gimmicks or shortcuts like plug-ins. What we’re talking about is fundamentally better digital communications.
It means:
Creating content that answers specific, real-world questions
Using plain, precise language instead of vague marketing fluff
Structuring pages logically, with clear hierarchies and signposting
Making your expertise explicit, not implicit
Ensuring your organisation’s story, services and credentials are easy to interpret
It also means thinking beyond your website.
AI systems don’t just look at one page in isolation. They draw on:
Your website
Your social channels
Your press coverage
Your published reports
Your public-facing brand narrative
AEO is about coherence across all of those touchpoints.
Our approach: building for humans and machines
We’ve been building AEO into our work as standard since 2024. It’s not an experiment or a future roadmap item. It’s already part of how we design and deliver websites, campaigns and digital platforms for our clients.
We already design and build digital platforms around clarity, accessibility and strategic communication. AEO is a natural extension of that philosophy. Every website we build, every campaign we run and every piece of content we produce is now developed with three audiences in mind:
The people you want to reach
The decision-makers you want to influence
The AI systems that increasingly mediate how those people find information
That affects how we:
Structure site architecture
Write and organise copy
Design content hierarchies
Frame expertise and credibility
Integrate SEO, UX and messaging into a single, coherent strategy
In other words: we don’t treat AEO as a bolt-on. We bake it into the foundations.
The competitive advantage of acting now
Most organisations are still thinking in terms of yesterday’s digital landscape. They’re investing in websites and campaigns optimised purely for traditional search, without considering how AI platforms are already reshaping discovery and decision-making. This creates a window of opportunity.
Organisations that clarify their narrative, structure their digital presence strategically and optimise for both search engines and answer engine will be better positioned to stay visible, credible and competitive as user behaviour continues to evolve.
Those that don’t risk falling behind - not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because they’re optimising for a world that has already changed.
AEO isn’t a trend. It’s a shift.
Just as SEO transformed how organisations approached the web in the early 2000s, AEO is now transforming how digital visibility works in the age of AI.
The organisations that thrive over the next decade won’t be the ones chasing algorithms. They’ll be the ones investing in clarity, coherence and credibility — in ways that both humans and machines can understand.
Let’s talk about your visibility in the age of AI
If you’re planning a new website, reviewing your digital strategy, or thinking about how your organisation is positioned online, now is the time to factor AEO into the conversation.
We’ve been building AEO into every website build and digital project we deliver for about two years - not as a bolt-on, but as part of the strategic foundations. That means our clients aren’t just optimised for yesterday’s search engines, but for the way discovery and decision-making already work today.
We’d love to talk to you about how we can help future-proof your digital presence, improve your visibility to AI platforms, and keep you one step ahead of your competitors.
