Visibility baseline
Engine-by-engine presence across five priority buyer questions, with the answer context preserved.
AEO audit · Answer Engine Optimization
See where AI answers leave your brand out.
Rather than chasing trends or generic best practices, our research team identifies the 5% of AEO strategies that consistently drive measurable impact, grounded in evidence, not assumptions.
We test the buyer questions that influence purchase decisions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. You receive a visibility baseline, citation analysis and a prioritized plan to become part of the answer.
Send your domain and five priority questions. We’ll reply with the proposed scope and next steps.
4major answer engines reviewed separately
5priority buyer questions supplied by your team
1prioritized roadmap tied to commercial intent
Invisible at noon.
01 · The shift
Search offered links. AI increasingly offers a shortlist, or a verdict.
Buyers ask evaluative questions: the best option for their context, alternatives to a known provider, or how to choose a category. If a brand is missing at that moment, it may never enter the consideration set.
Technical SEO remains essential. AEO adds another layer: clear answers, extractable structure, credible proof, visible ownership and third-party corroboration.
Example audit output
Illustrative structure · not client dataOne buyer question, mapped across every engine.
Buyer questionWe recordThe decision it enables
Best [category] for [context]Presence, position and cited sourcesWhere visibility is being lost
[Product] alternativesCompetitor overlap and narrative gapsWhich comparison pages to build
How to choose [category]Criteria, proof and authority signalsWhat must become cite-worthy
02 · SEO and AEO
AEO does not replace SEO. It builds on it.
Most of what works for SEO works for AEO. Landing pages, use cases, feature pages, clean structure and a site an engine can crawl are the foundation both depend on. What changes is what comes back to the buyer, and what earns the right to be quoted.
What differsSEOAEO
The queryKeywords typed into a boxQuestions asked in conversation, then follow-ups
What comes backA ranked list of linksOne answer, with a few sources cited
What earns authorityLinks from other sitesCitations from video, forums, reviews, affiliates and publishers
The long tailLongLonger, because every follow-up is a new question
What you measureRankings, clicks and sessionsCitation share per engine, and which competitor gets named instead
Weak SEO foundations do not get fixed by AEO. They get exposed by it.
03 · What you receive
A decision-ready audit, not a pile of screenshots.
Every output is designed to answer four questions: where are you absent, why, what should change first, and how will progress be measured?
Citation and competitor map
Which sources shape the answers, which competitors appear, and where their authority comes from.
Content and trust gaps
Missing decision pages, weak proof, structural barriers, authorship gaps and absent corroboration.
Prioritized roadmap
Actions ordered by buyer intent, expected leverage, implementation effort and measurement needs.
04 · How it works
Three steps from uncertainty to a clear next move.
- 01
Frame the decision
You send the domain, commercial context and five buyer questions that matter most.
- 02
Run the audit
We compare answers, citations, competitors and source patterns across the four engines.
- 03
Choose the move
We review the findings together and define what to fix, build or measure first.
05 · What answer engines reward
Five visibility systems. Each one has a practical move.
The audit turns dozens of observations into five themes that can be owned, prioritized and improved.
Discoverability
Are decision pages available for the questions buyers actually ask?
The moveBuild comparisons, alternatives, pricing guidance and buying-criteria pages.
Extractability
Can an engine identify a direct answer, supporting evidence and the relationship between them?
The moveUse explicit headings, answer blocks, structured data and worked examples.
Credibility
Are important claims specific, supportable and attached to visible expertise?
The moveAdd methodology, citations, credentials, reviews and expert validation.
Freshness and ownership
Does the content show who owns it, when it changed and how it remains current?
The moveName authors and reviewers, date the work and create a maintenance loop.
Corroboration
Do independent sources reinforce the story, or does every important claim live only on the brand’s own site?
The moveStrengthen relevant directories, publishers, communities, reviews and partner ecosystems.
06 · The work
AEO gets you cited. SEO gets you found. Most teams need both.
The two share a foundation, so the same team covers both. What differs is what each one wins. Twelve disciplines sit below. You rarely need more than a few, and the diagnosis says which.
AEO
Becoming the answer
Prompt research
The questions your buyers actually put to an engine, taken from your sales calls, support tickets and help center, plus the forums and threads in your category.
Citation-ready content
Which pages to create, on your site and off it, and how to structure them so an engine can lift the answer cleanly. The target is the consensus answer, not one more link.
Brand sentiment
How the engines describe you, and how they rank you next to competitors. Where that description is wrong, thin or out of date, and what improves it.
Technical AEO
The technical work that decides whether you get retrieved at all: structured data, entity markup, internal linking, crawlability and page architecture.
Citation tracking
Measurement across the four engines. Which buyer questions cite you, which cite a competitor, and what moved after each release.
Offsite and community
Generic link building does nothing here. We find the publishers, communities and third-party pages the engines actually pull from for your buyer questions, then pick the few worth pursuing.
SEO
The foundation it stands on
Topic and demand research
The high-intent topics your buyers search for, and the gaps your competitors have not covered yet. Demand you can actually win, not a keyword dump.
Editorial content
Long-form pieces with original research, written by people who know your category. Quality is the moat, not volume.
Technical SEO
Internal linking, schema, page architecture and Core Web Vitals. The unglamorous work that compounds once the content is good.
Recovery after updates
If an algorithm update cut your traffic, we find which signals you lost and rebuild the authority properly. No shortcuts, because shortcuts are what caused it.
Reporting and ROI
Performance by topic, not vanity rankings. Qualified sessions, branded growth and pipeline, so you can see what the work returned.
Programmatic pages
Page programs built on structured data, capturing long-tail demand at scale without letting the quality drop.
One team covers both. You are not sent to another agency for half the work.
07 · Ways to work
Enter where the work is stuck.
The modes are independent. Start with the decision, implementation or operating system your team needs now.
Visibility audit
Establish the baseline, identify the gaps and leave with a direction the team can trust.
Best whenYou need evidence before investing.
Implementation sprint
Design, write and ship the priority pages, proof, structure, schema and ownership signals.
Best whenThe decision is clear but delivery is blocked.
Visibility system
Create the measurement, ownership and freshness workflow, then hand the capability to the team.
Best whenAEO must become repeatable, not campaign-based.
No default retainer. Scoped to one problem. Ongoing support is optional.
08 · Questions
What teams usually ask before starting.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO makes pages discoverable and useful in search. AEO examines whether answer engines understand, trust and cite the brand when buyers ask decision-oriented questions. The work overlaps, but the measurement and source ecosystem are broader.
Which engines are included?
The baseline covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini separately because their answers and citation behavior differ.
What do you need from our team?
A domain, commercial context and five buyer questions. Access to analytics or internal documents is only requested when it materially improves the diagnosis.
Do you implement the recommendations?
Yes. ACTIVATE is the implementation sprint. The audit can also stand alone if an internal team or existing partner will execute the roadmap.
What happens after the audit?
You can stop with the decision, ask alternoon to implement the priorities, or build a repeatable visibility system. No automatic retainer is attached.
The audit
Find out where you’re invisible.
Send the domain and five buyer questions that matter most. We’ll review the context and reply with the proposed scope and next steps.
Prefer email? des@alternoon.com
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