Before You Start

More and more of your future customers are no longer typing a question into Google and scanning ten blue links. They're asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini a question in plain English and taking the answer they get back. This course shows you how to find out what those tools currently say about your business, and how to change it, one small step at a time. You do not need any technical background. If you can copy and paste, you can do every step here.

First, what is “AEO”?

AEO stands for “Answer Engine Optimization.” The older term you've probably heard is SEO, “Search Engine Optimization,” which is the work of getting your website to rank higher in a list of search results. AEO is the same instinct pointed at a new target: getting your business named and cited inside the answer an AI writes. You'll also see people call it GEO (“Generative Engine Optimization”) or LLMO. They all describe the same work, so don't let the alphabet soup slow you down.

The good news for you: AEO is not a separate discipline that throws away everything you know. It builds on the same fundamentals. The difference is what you're optimizing. In SEO you optimize a page so it ranks. In AEO you optimize a paragraph so it can be lifted out and quoted.

Why this is worth your time

Two numbers explain the whole picture. First, fewer people click through now: Pew Research Center tracked real browsing behavior and found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a regular search result on 8% of visits, versus 15% when there was no summary. Traffic you used to get for free is quietly being answered away. Second, and this is the encouraging half: the people who do arrive from an AI answer are unusually serious. Semrush found AI-referred visitors converting at roughly 4.4 times the rate of ordinary organic visitors. Fewer visits, much better visits.

The 5 steps you'll build

• •Learn how AI search actually works: what decides which businesses get named.
• •Measure your baseline: ask the engines about your business and score what comes back.
• •Audit your site: check that AI crawlers can reach you, and grade your key page on how quotable it is.
• •Fix and create: rewrite your pages answer-first and add content built to be cited.
• •Track and correct: fix wrong answers about you, and watch your score month over month.

What you'll need (all free)

• •An account on at least one AI chatbot, and ideally two or three so you can compare: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini all have free tiers.
• •Your own website, and the ability to edit its text (or someone who can edit it for you).
• •Access to your Google Business Profile, if you have a local business. It is the backbone of local AI answers.
• •Optional but useful: Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools, both free.
• •About 2 to 3 hours in total, but you can stop and come back whenever you like; your progress is saved automatically.

One setup step that saves you hours

Before the real work starts, fill in your short “business profile”: your business type, your city, what you sell, and, important for this course, your website address. You only do this once. From then on, every prompt here automatically drops your details into the right places, so you are never staring at a blank box wondering what to type. If you took the lead generation course you may have filled most of this in already; just add your website URL and you're set.

Brand new to AI chatbots?

If you've never really used one, or you're not sure what a “prompt” even is, the “How AI Works” lesson in our Build Your AI Lead Generation Engine course explains it all in plain English, including the two mistakes AI makes most often. It's about ten minutes and it makes everything here easier. Otherwise, carry straight on: the next lesson explains how AI search decides who gets mentioned, which is the foundation for every step after it.