AEO · be the citation

Answer Engine Optimization

When buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude about your category, your brand should be the answer — and the citation should link back to you. We make that happen on purpose, not by accident.

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Glyph ◆

Cadence monthly

Starting $14k / month · 30-day notice

Ownership You, day one

01 · What you get

Six things in every engagement.

Not a checklist of deliverables. Things that show up because we work the way we work.

Cite-able content architecture

We rebuild your top pages around the answer shape AI surfaces actually pull from: clear claims, sources, definitions, and structured Q&A.

llms.txt + schema layer

A llms.txt that names your canonical pages, plus JSON-LD schema for Articles, FAQs, HowTos, and Products. Machines stop guessing what your pages mean.

Visibility tracking that's real

We run prompt-based probes weekly across the four major answer engines and report which queries surface you, where you sit in the citation list, and what moved.

Source authority loop

We get you cited by the sources that get cited by the AI: G2, Wikipedia, industry reports, the right Reddit threads. Earned, not bought.

Prompt-coverage planning

We map the 200 prompts your buyers will actually type, then prioritise the 30 where being the answer changes pipeline. The rest can wait.

Hand off if you want

Once the engine is running, your team can drive it. We document the playbook so the cadence doesn't die when our retainer ends.

02 · How it runs

A typical engagement, laid out.

Every engagement varies. The shape stays the same.

week 0–2
AEO audit

Current visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude. Citation gap analysis. Content + schema teardown. Priority map of prompts that move pipeline.
month 1
Foundation

llms.txt, schema rollout, top-20 pages rebuilt around answer shapes, source authority outreach plan.
month 2+
Cadence

Weekly: new answer pages, prompt-coverage tracking, source outreach, citation pickup. Monthly: written report tied to pipeline.
quarterly
Re-rank

AI surfaces change fast. We re-audit each quarter and re-prioritise the prompts. The playbook evolves with the engines.

03 · Sample SOW

What we'd write down before we started.

A real-shaped excerpt. Names changed. Numbers honest.

SOW · sample-aeo.txt ● fixed price

engagement aeo.retainer = {
  outcome:  'be the cited answer in our category',
  surfaces: ['ChatGPT', 'Perplexity', 'Gemini', 'Claude'],
  team:     ['@maya (lead)', '@dev', '@arjun (writer)'],
  cadence:  'monthly · 30-day notice',
  output:   '4 answer pages/mo · weekly probes · monthly report',
  price:    '$14,000 / month',
}

04 · What we won't take on

The honest list.

Saving us both a bad-fit call.

Promises we'll get you cited by a specific name. We can't guarantee what the models do.
Black-hat prompt-injection tricks. They get caught and they hurt your brand.
AI-generated content at scale. We write less, but it actually ranks.
Categories with under 100 monthly prompts — the math doesn't work yet.

05 · Common questions

The ones we hear on most discovery calls.

Is AEO the same as SEO?

Overlapping but distinct. SEO optimises for ten blue links; AEO optimises for being the cited answer inside a generated response. We do both — together is usually best.

How do you measure success?

Citation share-of-voice per prompt, qualified pipeline attribution, and (where the engines support it) referral traffic from AI surfaces.

How long until we see results?

90 days to see real movement in citations. 6 months to see pipeline. Anyone selling you faster is selling you something else.

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Start with Answer Engine Optimization.

A 30-minute call. A written discovery doc in a week. Fixed-price SOW by day 10.

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