What Does It Take to Be AEO and AI SEO-Optimised?

So when brands ask “what does it really take to be AEO or AI SEO-optimised?”, the honest answer is: True visibility in generative engines requires methodical technical work, layered authority building, and continuous ecosystem management.

To be fully AEO / AI SEO-optimised, your brand must:

• Open your site to AI crawlers and clearly map your content for them.

• Understand which prompts matter most to your customers.

• Optimise your on-site content structure for clarity, depth, and schema.

• Build external authority signals that reinforce credibility across the web.

• Continuously track your visibility footprint across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.

AI Search Changes Faster Than Traditional SEO

AI search is evolving at breakneck speed. In the past year alone, ChatGPT partnered with Etsy and announced upcoming Shopify integrations for its new Instant Checkout feature (OpenAI, 2025). Gemini and Perplexity are pushing similar retail integrations, and Google’s AI Overviews continue to reshape what users see first.

Every few weeks a new model release changes how results appear. According to Reuters (2025), OpenAI’s retail partnerships signal a new commerce channel living inside ChatGPT. This means visibility is no longer limited to blue links, but instead is about being the source that AI confidently cites or recommends.

Yet most “AEO tools” only surface what’s already indexed by Google. They don’t tell you what people are asking AI, which of your pages are being read by models, or how AI paraphrases your brand.
That’s where genuine Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) work begins.

Before You Optimise, Know What to Optimise For

The first real challenge is deciding which questions to target.
Many businesses skip this step and jump straight into technical tweaks, which is like designing a store layout before knowing what products you sell best.

Our earlier guide, How to Decide Which Questions to Optimise for on ChatGPT, breaks this down:
you should start with your unique selling points (USPs) and map them across prompt categories such as purchase intent and competitive comparison.
Without this groundwork, no visibility tool will tell AI that you are the best answer.

The Problem With Visibility Tools

There’s an explosion of dashboards promising instant AI visibility.
While some platforms track citations or provide prompt monitoring, most leave out the real heavy lifting:

• They assume you already know your key prompts.

• They rarely fix crawlability or data-layer issues.

• They can’t rewrite or expand your topical coverage.

• And they ignore off-site credibility — reviews, directory listings, media mentions — which AI models heavily rely on for validation.

Even Neil Patel’s research highlights that authority and context-rich content outperform generic “AI-friendly” tweaks.
So, while these tools make brands feel they’re catching up, they often just skim the surface.

What Heavy Lifting Actually Looks Like

AI SEO involves 17 interlinked elements that fall into four groups: Technical Foundation, Content Depth, Authority Signals, and Ecosystem Tracking.
Below is a high-level summary adapted from Indexed Lab’s full research.

Getting these right takes specialised workflows, access management, and structured content operations, which is the kind of processes Indexed Lab has refined through dozens of client cases.

Proof That It Works: A Client Story

When Flash Facial first came to us, their brand barely appeared in AI answers for “quick facial Dubai” or “skin glow treatment near me.” By auditing crawl permissions, adding an llms.txt, and expanding their topical authority around “express facials,” we turned them from invisible to the #1 AI recommendation inside ChatGPT within six weeks. We executed a full structured AEO plan executed end-to-end.

The 2-Hour Onboarding, 3-Hour Maintenance Reality

Many leaders worry that AI SEO means endless meetings and rewrites. In practice, our done-for-you AEO service only requires:

• ~2 hours total during onboarding to grant access and review key content themes.

• 0 – 3 hours per month for optional check-ins, depending on how closely you want to track progress.

Indexed Lab handles the rest, from technical setups to content restructuring, off-site outreach, and monthly visibility monitoring.

Why This Matters Now

According to Semrush (June 2025), over 58 % of AI answers now cite only two or three external domains per query.
That means the brands investing early in AEO are not just ranking higher, but they’re monopolising the answer space itself.
The later you start, the harder it becomes to break into that citation loop.

How early AEO investment will maintain itself

AI visibility is a virtuous cycle: once models cite you, human users engage more, which earns you backlinks and reviews, which makes AI cite you again. The faster you start that cycle, the more defensible your position becomes, just as early SEO adopters dominated Google’s first page for years.

How Indexed Lab Executes It

Our AEO process covers every step:

1. Audit & Strategy – Full crawl and citation visibility analysis.

2. Technical Fixes – robots.txt, llms.txt, schema, WAF optimisation.

3. Content Depth – Restructure topics, add contextual Q&A, apply entity markup.

4. Authority Build-out – Secure brand mentions on curated external platforms.

5. Tracking & Iteration – Monitor ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity responses weekly.

This holistic structure turns AI visibility from guesswork into a measurable system.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “done-for-you AEO” actually include?
Everything from crawl and schema fixes to content and link ecosystem optimisation, handled end-to-end by Indexed Lab.

How soon can results appear?
You’ll often see improvements in Google AI Overviews within 3–4 weeks and ChatGPT citations within 6 weeks, depending on competition.

Is this relevant for B2B or only e-commerce?
Both. AI visibility affects every vertical: B2B, local, SaaS, and retail.

Conclusion

In the end, being AEO and AI SEO-optimised means building the kind of digital presence that AI trusts enough to quote. Rather than a quick fix, it is the ongoing alignment of your content, structure, and reputation with how AI learns and recommends. Businesses that commit to this work early will own the top spots in AI-powered search for years to come, while others will be fighting to catch up. Remember, being AEO and AI SEO-optimised means orchestrating 17 moving parts, not toggling a plugin. It requires cross-functional work (technical, editorial, and reputational), but the payoff is long-term AI visibility your competitors can’t easily copy.

What should I do next?

If everything sounds too complex and overwhelming, let us at Indexed Lab handle the heavy lifting. You just need to provide your vision and unique selling points, and we will make sure AI knows and recommends your brand. Book your AI SEO audit today.