Optimising a site so AI answer engines (Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude) use it as a cited source when they generate an answer. It overlaps heavily with normal SEO, because most of these engines still read the same index. What changes is the goal. You are trying to get quoted, not ranked.

Is AI SEO different from SEO?

The foundations are the same: crawlable pages, clear structure, genuine authority. The differences are in emphasis. Answer engines reward a direct answer stated early, concrete specifics like prices and timelines, clean schema markup, and corroboration from third-party sources. They ignore a lot of what classic SEO optimised for, like exact keyword density.

What does an AI SEO agency actually do?

Content restructured so answers are extractable, schema markup, an llms.txt file, third-party presence so the engines see the same facts in more than one place, and tracking of whether the brand gets cited. Ask any provider to show you which questions they will target and how they will measure a citation, because there is no ranking dashboard for this yet.

How do you track AI search visibility?

Manually, for now. You pick the questions your buyers ask, put them to each engine on a schedule, and log whether you were named and what was said. Some paid tools automate the polling, but they are all sampling the same way. There is no equivalent of Search Console for generated answers.

How long does AI SEO take to work?

Weeks for engines that browse live, longer for anything answered from a training snapshot. A page that changes today can be quoted by a live-browsing query almost immediately, while a cached description of your brand may persist for months. Nobody can force that refresh.

What "AI SEO" actually means, and what an AI SEO agency does

AI search is answering questions instead of listing links. Here is what generative engine optimization involves, how it differs from SEO, and what to expect from anyone selling it.

Search is changing shape. Instead of ten blue links, a growing share of questions get answered directly, by Google's AI Overviews, by ChatGPT, by Perplexity, by Claude. The answer arrives assembled, with a few citations underneath.

That changes the goal. Ranking third for a term is worth much less if the person never scrolls to the results, and worth quite a lot if you are the source the answer was built from.

This is what people mean by AI SEO, or GEO, short for generative engine optimization. Here is what is actually involved, minus the mystique.

It is not a separate discipline

The uncomfortable truth for anyone selling AI SEO as a new speciality: most of it is SEO done properly.

Answer engines mostly read the same web everyone else does. ChatGPT's search is built on Bing's index. Google's AI Overviews sit on Google's index. If your pages are slow, thin, uncrawlable or unremarkable, no amount of AI-specific tactics will help, because the engine never had a good reason to pick you up in the first place.

What genuinely differs is emphasis. Four things matter much more than they used to.

1. Answer the question in the first 40 words

An engine extracting an answer takes the shortest passage that resolves the question. If your page opens with two paragraphs of preamble about how the digital landscape is evolving, there is nothing to extract.

Write H2s as the actual question someone types. Put the direct answer immediately underneath, before any elaboration. Then elaborate.

This is also just better writing, which is a recurring theme.

2. Be specific, especially about money

Vague pages do not get quoted, because there is nothing quotable in them.

"Pricing depends on your needs" cannot appear in a generated answer. "$200 a month for 12 videos" can. Same for timelines, counts, and any concrete constraint. Engines reach for specifics because specifics are what the asker wanted.

This is why we publish our prices on the pricing section rather than hiding them behind a form. It is a conversion decision first, but it is a citation decision too.

3. Structure the page for a machine that is skimming

Real headings, in a sensible hierarchy
Short paragraphs
Genuine lists and tables rather than lists faked with line breaks
FAQPage schema on your FAQ, Article with author and dates on posts, Organization with sameAs links to your profiles
An llms.txt at the root, describing plainly what the site offers

None of this is exotic. Most sites simply do not bother.

4. Get mentioned somewhere that isn't your own site

This is the part most people skip, and it is doing more work than the rest combined.

Answer engines gain confidence from corroboration. If your site says you do X, and three other independent sources also say you do X, the engine will state it. If only your own site says it, the engine hedges or omits you.

So: real reviews on Google and Trustpilot, listings in the directories your industry actually uses, genuine participation where your buyers ask questions. Consistent name, description and contact details everywhere, because mismatches read as uncertainty.

What to expect from someone selling this

Reasonable questions to ask any provider:

Which questions are we targeting? They should have a list, tied to what your buyers actually ask.
How will you measure a citation? There is no dashboard. The honest answer involves putting those questions to each engine on a schedule and logging the results.
What are you changing on the site? Structure, schema, specificity. If the answer is only "content", ask what about the content.
What are you doing off-site? If nothing, they are ignoring the highest-leverage part.

And one answer that should end the conversation: anyone guaranteeing you a citation is guaranteeing something they do not control. There is no submission process, no paid placement, and no lever to pull. You can make yourself the obvious source and wait.

The honest timeline

Live-browsing queries. A page you change today can be quoted within days.
Google's AI Overviews. These follow the classic index, so weeks.
Anything answered from a training snapshot. Months, and there is no way to force it.

That last one catches people out. If an engine has already formed a view of your business, changing your site starts the clock on correcting it, but does not correct it instantly.

Why this window is unusual

Very few businesses have built pages specifically to be the cited source. The terms are cheap to compete for right now in a way that classic SEO terms stopped being about fifteen years ago.

That will not last. It rarely does.