BLOG
If you’ve spent any time looking into digital marketing for your small business, you’re likely familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). However, search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, and with the addition of AI search tools like ChatGPT and Google SGE, answer engine optimization (AEO) has emerged as the new innovative SEO strategy.
The key difference between SEO and AEO lies in their goal: While SEO aims for greater visibility across all SERPs, AEO provides direct answers to user queries, hoping to become a featured snippet or source citation when users search for the answer to a question in Google, ChatGPT, and similar platforms.
If you want to stay on the cutting edge of digital marketing and stand out as an authoritative resource in your industry, implementing an AEO strategy is critical. Here are five tips to get you moving in the right direction.
1. Research User Queries
Keyword research is just as vital for AEO as for SEO, if not more so. The only way you can effectively answer user queries is by knowing what users are asking in the first place. This makes keyword research critical for creating an effective strategy.
To find popular queries relevant to your industry, use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. These will help you find popular topics and questions that you can utilize as the basis for your content strategy. When creating your content, incorporate modifiers like “What Is” and “How To” in page titles and headings to make it clear to platforms that you’re offering an answer to a question.
2. Write High-Quality, Value-Adding Content
Just like with SEO, creating high-quality content is critical for AEO. When crawling the internet for the best answer to the user’s query, the answer engine will have hundreds or thousands of relevant answers to choose from. Ultimately, it will choose the result that provides the most value to the reader, whether that’s because the content is the most specifically relevant or the most comprehensive in its answer.
Make sure that your content is well-researched, thorough, and tailored to your target audience. Incorporate keywords, but make sure that they always sound natural and human. The more genuine value that your content delivers to a reader, the more likely it is to be selected as an answer, boosting your AEO results.
3. Add Schema Markup
When optimizing for answer engines, structure is critical. This is where schema markup comes in. Schema markup helps search engines understand the context and meaning of your content, making them more likely to choose your response as a featured snippet.
For AEO purposes, focus on implementing FAQ and HowTo schema where appropriate. These markup types signal to search engines that your content directly addresses user questions, helping you secure a featured snippet or direct answer.
4. Don’t Forget About Voice Search
More than half of all consumers have utilized voice search to find information about local businesses in the last year, making voice search a critical consideration for your AEO strategy. When asking their Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Siri for the answer to a question, people tend to ask longer, more conversational, and more complete questions as compared to what they would type into a search bar.
To account for this, AEO content should focus on natural language patterns and conversational tone. Answers should also be clear and concise; ensure that your content can be easily understood when heard rather than read.
5. Create Thorough, Structured FAQ Pages
FAQ pages are one of the best opportunities for AEO. They naturally align with how answer engines work — presenting clear questions followed by direct answers. When creating an AEO strategy, one of your first steps should be to create or update your website’s FAQ page.
Make sure that your featured questions address the specific concerns of your audience. Many businesses create generic questions that aren’t actually useful or commonly searched, and instead act as thinly-veiled marketing material. Take time to research commonly searched questions in your industry and about your specific business, and then develop a comprehensive FAQ page that covers every possible question your customers might actually have. Answer these questions completely yet concisely, providing genuine value. For a better user experience, structure your FAQ page logically, grouping related questions together.
If you need help increasing your website’s visibility online, look no further than IDG Advertising, Arizona’s premier digital marketing company for small businesses. Our team of SEO analysts and copywriters will work with you to create a bespoke SEO strategy with high-quality content that will boost your rankings and drive local traffic to your business online. To find out more about our SEO marketing services, including AEO, give us a call today at 714-221-4377 or contact us online.
