Is it Time to Add AEO to Your Marketing Plan?

By Carrie Cousins

Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their July 2025 issue.

As search engines are replacing traditional results with artificial intelligence generated results, and as more people are turning to AI engines, such as ChatGPT for search queries, question and answer search has never been bigger.

That’s where AEO comes in.

It’s really just a different way of thinking about search optimization. I like to think of it as an “and” to your existing SEO strategy, helping you maintain current search optimization while adding a little boost with AEO.

When you write content for answer engine optimization, it is posed to answer specific questions that users may have when they use search. It started rising in popularity with voice search, such as Alexa or Siri, but has exploded with AI generators.

AEO is an SEO strategy for this simple fact – it is rooted in the same best practices with the addition of using a question and answer format designed to help users find precisely what they are looking for.

Ok … maybe it is not quite that simple, but you get the general idea.

Think of it like this:

If you search “Why is the sky blue?”

Google will likely offer the first result as an actual answer to the question with citied links. Traditional search results will appear below the AI overview.

Your goal with AEO is to answer this question fully and appropriately so that your content is linked in that AI overview. Additionally, you’d want your content returned as an answer in AI engines if you used them for search in the same way.

This means your job with content is to pose, and answer, the question that users might ask about your product or service.

This does not replace your SEO program or keyword strategy; it pairs with it.

The big difference is that AEO uses more human semantics and language – we ask questions in search very much like we speak – and goes back to using long-tail keywords. (Long-tail keywords are specific search phrases that are longer but have lower search volume. The benefit is they can have higher conversion rates for those that do click through.)

AEO can be beneficial for almost any website, although deployment may be different. There’s a fine line between creating content that people want to dive into and stuffing content for search.

Some of my clients are already using this to their advantage and we can see website source traffic originating from AI generators.

Digital marketing is changing fast right now, and considering AEO as part of your strategy should not be overlooked.

Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.