SEO & AEO
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews surface and cite it directly in their answers.
AEO is the successor discipline to SEO for a world where people ask an assistant a question instead of scrolling a list of links. Instead of optimizing only to rank, you optimize to be the source the answer is built from — and, ideally, the brand that gets named.
For financial firms, the tactics are concrete: write answer-first (lead with a clear, self-contained answer), use question-and-answer structure, define your entities precisely, and mark content up with schema.org data so machines can parse it. Authoritative, substantiated content has an edge, because answer engines favor sources they can trust.
AEO and SEO overlap heavily — both reward clarity, authority, and good structure — but AEO puts more weight on extractability and factual precision.
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