AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, is the practice of building a website so that AI answer engines - ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and Claude - cite it when users ask questions. Traditional SEO targets Google's blue-link rankings. AEO targets the answer itself - the summary an AI model generates when a user asks a question in natural language.
When a prospect asks an AI "who is the best law firm in Miami" or "what wealth manager should I use in Boca Raton," the model returns a summary with a handful of sources it trusts. AEO engineers your site to be one of those cited sources. The discipline rewards clarity of answer, trustworthy external signals, and content written around the questions real buyers actually ask, not the queries SEO professionals assume buyers ask. The two are increasingly different, and AEO is how a modern business shows up in the answer layer.