What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and Why Should Businesses Care?
You might’ve heard about SEO, but what is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization is nothing but optimizing your content for searches that are in the form of questions so that your content provides the right answers to the users without them having to click on a link and be directed to a website. Your content will appear in the answer box of the search engine results page (SERP) or as a featured snippet, which is displayed under the website links.
Here’s why businesses should care about AEO:
Focusing on AEO should be included in your digital marketing strategy since there has been a shift in the way of how and where users are searching for their queries.
Normally, a user may search for their questions on Google, but now, they may ask Alexa, Siri, ChatGPT, and other AI-based devices or platforms, which give them answers instead of links to websites.
Today, users expect quick results and they are more focused on getting answers instead of having to spend their time searching an entire webpage.
This is why businesses need to focus on AEO if they want to be the source of answers to the users’ questions.
AEO Stats That Are Hard to Ignore
- 50% of people use voice search for information about products, which is a focus area for e-commerce businesses.
- In 2025, almost 50% of the total searches will be voice-based using assistants like Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, etc.
- A study by Hubspot showed that adding featured snippets increases the CTR by 114%, which businesses can use to optimize their content for search queries.
- 60% of searches on Google were zero-click searches, meaning that users got their answers through AI-driven search engines results without having to go to a website.
What is SEO, and How Does AEO Differ From It?
Search Engine Optimization is optimizing your website with various strategies to appear first in search results.
Let’s see AEO vs SEO in detail:
SEO | AEO |
Provides direct traffic to your website through clicks. | Provides answers to users through search queries. |
Adding the right keywords and acquiring backlinks to increase SEO rankings and domain authority. | Using featured snippets or structured data and context-based answers for searches. |
Users are directed to links to various websites. | Users are directly given answers in the search results. |
Various Kinds of AEOs
- Search Engines : Traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, etc., provide mostly links to websites but can also summarize your content using AI to give direct answers.
- Voice Assistants : Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Cortana, Siri, etc., are used for voice search optimization, which also focuses on providing answers to users instead of website links.
- E-Commerce Platforms : Amazon, Etsy, etc., which are some of the largest online stores for various products also act as search engines that can be optimized for AEO with FAQs, product details, etc.
- Social Media Platforms : TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest act as social media search engines that use hashtags, and tags to help users find answers for their questions.
Strategies for Business to Successfully Implement AEO
- Featured snippets : Focus on appearing on Google featured snippets by using short answers, tables, lists, bullet points, and FAQ sections.
- Voice searches : Optimize your content for voice searches, and include keywords that are natural sounding and long-tail questions.
- QnAs : Create a separate section for QnAs with direct answers to search queries. Tools like AnswerThePublic are great for finding questions related to your niche.
- Schema markup : Use Google’s structured data/schema markup to tell search engines about what your content means, and use the Rich Results Testing Tool for error-free schemas.
- Entity-based search : Rather than keywords, focus more on entities like concepts, places, people, etc., to provide relevant results using Google’s Knowledge Graph.
- Passage indexing : For longer content on your website, write clear and short answers within subheadings that include the answers to what users are looking for.
Limitations of AEO
- Zero-click searches: Answers on the search results page do not lead to clicks, which results in more zero-click searches and less website clicks.
- Limited branding : Users might just read the answers and not experience your branding on your website.
- Competition for featured snippets : Limited featured snippets mean more competition to appear on the search results.
