विधि Vidhi

Get your brand into the AI answer (SEO vs AEO)

SEO gets you into the index. AEO gets you into the answer. The guide behind Nikhil’s SEO vs AEO post: what each one measures, the ten things that decide whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity mention you, and the prompts to audit, fix and track it every month.

What you need

  • Your website and how you describe your brand
  • Two or three competitors
  • An assistant with web search turned on
  • One hour a month to track

What you will have

  • You know what AI says about you today
  • Pages that answer buyer questions cleanly
  • One consistent brand story across the web
  • A monthly AI visibility score you can move

SEO vs AEO

  • SEO competes for The top 10 links. Measured by keyword rankings, click-through rate, organic traffic and domain authority.
  • AEO competes for The answer itself in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Measured by citation rate, share of voice, brand sentiment and AI referral traffic.
  • Why both AI still leans on useful, crawlable, trustworthy content. But you can rank well and still be missing from the answer your buyer reads.

The AEO checklist

  • Let AI crawlers in Open robots.txt and check you are not blocking GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended by accident. Decide deliberately which ones you allow.
  • Serve real HTML Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. View your page source: if your headline, prices and FAQs are not in the raw HTML, AI cannot read them. Pre-render or server-render key pages.
  • Answer first Use the buyer's question as the heading and answer it in the first 40 to 60 words. Detail comes after. AI quotes the clean answer, not the clever intro.
  • Add schema Mark up Organization, Product or Service, FAQPage, HowTo and Article with JSON-LD so machines know exactly who you are and what you offer.
  • Publish an llms.txt A short plain-text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that lists your key pages and what each covers. Cheap to add and helps assistants find the right page.
  • Be the same everywhere Use one brand name, one description and one address across your site, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, directories and marketplaces. AI trusts what agrees.
  • Get cited where AI reads Answers lean on Reddit, Quora, YouTube, review sites, news and industry lists. Earn real mentions there: answer questions, collect reviews, pitch stories.
  • Publish original numbers Surveys, benchmarks and price indexes get quoted. One honest data point from your own business beats ten generic blog posts.
  • Show real expertise Named authors with bios, dates, sources and real case studies. Experience, expertise, authority and trust count for AI answers too.
  • Track it monthly Keep a fixed list of 20 buyer questions. Each month ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Log if you appear, who appears instead and which sources they cite. Watch AI referral traffic in GA4.

Prompts 1–4 · Audit what AI says about you

  • What AI says about you Using web search, tell me what you know about [brand] at [website]: what we sell, who we serve, our strengths and complaints. List the sources you used. Flag anything wrong or out of date.
  • Find the buyer questions I sell [product] to [ICP] in [market]. List the 25 questions buyers ask an AI assistant before choosing a provider like us, grouped by awareness, comparison and decision.
  • Who gets recommended instead For each of these questions [paste 10], answer as a buyer's AI assistant would. Then list every brand you would mention and the sources behind each. Where are we missing?
  • Map the sources From the answers above, list the websites, forums, review sites and publications AI relies on in our category. Rank them by influence and suggest how we earn a genuine mention on each.

Prompts 5–8 · Fix it and track it

  • Answer-ready page brief Write a brief for a page that answers [question]: H1 as the question, a 50-word direct answer, a comparison table, FAQs with short answers, the schema types to add and the proof we need.
  • FAQ and schema Turn this page copy [paste] into 8 FAQ pairs with crisp answers under 50 words. Then output valid JSON-LD for FAQPage and Organization using our real details only.
  • Fix my entity Here is how we describe ourselves on our site, LinkedIn, Google Business and two directories: [paste]. Find inconsistencies in name, category, services and location. Write one canonical description in 50 and 150 words.
  • Monthly AI visibility report Here is this month's log of 20 questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity [paste]. Calculate our mention rate and share of voice versus [competitors], show changes since last month and pick three actions.

  1. Step 1: Ask what AI says about you

    10 minutes · Claude with web search

    Run prompt 1 and note every error and every missing fact.

    Using web search, tell me what you know about [brand] at [website]: what we sell, who we serve, our strengths and complaints. List the sources you used. Flag anything wrong or out of date.

  2. Step 2: List 20 buyer questions

    10 minutes · Claude

    These become your fixed tracking set. Do not change them month to month.

  3. Step 3: Fix the foundations

    60 minutes · You and your developer

    Crawlers, real HTML, schema, llms.txt and answer-first pages from the checklist.

  4. Step 4: Earn mentions where AI reads

    60 minutes · You

    Reviews, forums, YouTube, press and industry lists. Real mentions only.

  5. Step 5: Track it every month

    30 minutes · Claude

    Ask the 20 questions in four assistants, log mentions and run prompt 8.

Download the checklist and prompts (PDF)