Using AIO & AEO To Rank Your Website Higher

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you must have heard about the not so pleasant but multiple algorithm changes from Google which have fundamentally changed the ways people discover businesses by interacting with content. While Traditional SEO has been pronounced dead by many, needless to say, the AI Overviews and LLMs on Booster with Search capability have drastically shifted how websites get discovered by people in the Wild World Wide Web. Clients of Method who entrust us with their SEO campaigns were quite astonished to see ChatGPT Search as one of the sources for traffic acquisition in Looker Studio last fortnight review. While we had made the changes which were needed for their website to get featured on AI Overviews and LLM Searches, we had to explain to them exactly what it meant and how it would affect their SEO and site discoverability despite drop in clicks and traction. 

The Rise Of AIO & AEO Over SEO: What Caused This Meteoric Fall Of SEO

Back in 2022 when ChatGPT started gaining mainstream momentum, it was inevitable and absolutely unsurprising that people wanted their LLMs to be able to search the internet and get back to them with analysis or information in general. What followed was the first exploration of tool calling by LLMs and how effectively they were able to do it. But the entire game changed with Perplexity’s blockbuster entry which not only gave birth to Answer Engine Optimization(AEO) but also forced giants like Google to accelerate their AI Overview testing and deployment plans. 

With the traditional SEO’s focus being on ranking higher in search results, the sudden shift to contextual and conversational search behaviour has had a deep impact on almost everyone around the world with a global hue and cry about decrease in traffic, Zero-Clicks and the complaints of business owners who are unwilling to let LLMs go through their website. The way LLMs function in the search sphere is highly contextual and semantic. LLMs do not go for keywords but rather they go for a comprehensive yet concise solution to the question posed by user and check the same against different websites before taking a call on the ranking of the websites in consideration and being featured in the answers-through AI Overviews or Answer Engine Optimisations

What exactly changed? 

The way people interact with world wide web underwent a change post the introduction of the world to ChatGPT, a wide range web app which lets users interact with machines using Natural Language Processing. While we do not know if it was intentional or the byproduct of user behaviour, people started using the likes of ChatGPT, Claude even Groq for asking questions which they would normally have keyed in the Google Search bar on their phones. This sudden shift in user search behaviour brought about another change in user behaviour which has led to the rise of AIO & AEO in general. People fundamentally shifted from short 2-3 words queries to longer more conversational kind of interactions with LLMs. 

AIO(AI Overview) vs AEO(Answer Engine Optimisation) : Which New SEO Tactic To Apply For Increase In Traffic To Website

Google’s AI powered search and summarisation feature which didn’t only bring AI to search but also curated new search experiences for users. The AIO feature basically makes use of AI to search through different website content and come up with an answer to the question posed by user. With the gradual shift of people from Googling everything to ChatGPTing it all has long forewarned about shift in search experience for which Google had been preparing for sometime now.Having to move from a click focused strategy which basically set the game for keywords to outshine others to having to change the strategy to make it more conversation friendly apart from being factual has been a journey for many. AI Overviews appear in over 68% local search queries and while the way users are searching is changing rapidly, the most common hybrid still remains looking for both info and local service if applicable. Google’s latest algorithm changes have significantly focused on optimising your website content for being treated as the best answer to query by user. Optimising for AI Overview involves multiple steps which we have outlined later along the piece but consider AI Overview as how humans search, read, get answers and move on.

Answer Engine Optimisation is based on the same principle as above i.e. optimising your content for AI powered search platforms which directly provide answers to user queries instead of just listing links. It focuses on making your content the answer that the AI powered search engines deliver to users, be it through featured snippets, voice assistant responses or AI-powered chat results. Majorly in prominence due to Perplexity, AEO has undertaken the objective to position content as the definitive answer to specific questions. And not just for perplexity, any LLM connected with search feature is good game for content to be presented through conversational formats even after a rephrase from AI. With a goal to provide best direct answer to satisfy query, AEO employs an answer-focused content type, explicitly shifting the focus for pages from being focused on keywords to conversation providing a complete answer to the query. 

AEO differs fundamentally from SEO in a lot of senses, be it the platform where AEO is useful for being featured as a part of answer on the likes of ChatGPT, Perplexity AI and Microsoft Copilot, SEO is still highly relevant when you want to rank your page higher on search engines like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. Similarly when it comes to user targeting AEO goes for conversational questions instead of the keyword dominant search for SEO. The metrics for measuring campaign performance when doing AEO is to know the number of mentions by LLMs, Citations, placements of your website in answer, referral traffic from LLMs with Search, Conversions. Whereas SEO focuses on Domain Authority, Page Rankings, Impressions, Traffic & conversions.

How Does AEO Work Exactly ?

With the evolution of search engines to answer engines, the advanced artificial intelligence models which have powered this evolution still have some basic mechanisms of how the Answer Engine Optimization works. 

• Natural Language Processing(NLP)- During our recent tryst with Perplexity AI we saw how answer engines use NLP to interpret context as well as intent  behind every query as a comprehensive signal instead of just matching keywords.
• Role Of AI & Machine Learning- Answer engines are nothing but ML models trained on vast datasets. With Google using models like BERT & MUM while Bing integrating OpenAI’s GPT4 into Copilot. These AI models have been trained on huge portions of the web, learning language patterns and differentiating the factual information to generate wholesome answers
• Structured Data & Knowledge Graphs- Unstructured data is ike kryptonite for AEO because these engines often rely on structured data be it Google’s Knowledge Graph aggregating facts from trusted sources to direct queries. By adding schema markup to your site, be it for FAQs or Q&As, how-tos, products etc, you simply increase the chances that search engines interpret and directly present your content as an answer

Optimising For AI Overviews- Google’s Own Guidelines

With the recent releases, Google has clarified quite some things around what one needs to do in order to be able to be shown a the top answer. While post the rise of AIO and AEO, websites have seen a decrease in the traffic and clicks but this has been compensated with the rise in conversion of high intent based leads. Clients at Method for whom we handle SEO were worried about not being shown in AI Overview but we shared a few anecdotes received directly from an insider- John Mueller, who’s a senior in Google and interacts with people through reddit and other social media to provide not just his views but also clarity on how to approach AIO and other LLMs with search. Mueller emphasized the need for : 

• High quality content- The quality of content remains high as a requirement because Google says creating unique, non-commodity content is still foundation for success in all search formats including AI. Both him and Method suggest focusing on content that meets user needs instead of trying to trick the algorithm. AI Search users are more likely to follow-up with questions after specific questions have been asked. Basically detailed content works especially in new search environments.
• Technical Requirements & Page Experience- While good content is a pillar for quality analysis and ranking, Google has stressed on the importance of technical access which includes that you ensure Googlebot isn’t blocked on website, page loads correctly and all web pages as well as content can be indexed. 
• Managing Content Visibility In AI Experiences- There are certain controls which work for AI search and all you have to do is choose as publisher which tag to control the appearance of content in the form of nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-nosnippet and noindex as more restrictions will limit visibility in AI results
• Multimedia Content for Multimodal Search- Google stresses upon the growing importance of images and videos which improve Google’s AI responses with multimodal search where one can upload images and ask questions about them. Google recommends adding high-quality unique visuals to support your text content
• Reframing Success Metrics- It is no more a secret that the change in user behaviour has also prompted a change in metrics being considered for success. While Google suggests AI results provide better context about topics, what it means is that while the number of clicks may decrease, the number of engaged website visitor increases. Just like Method, Mueller from Google also suggests looking beyond just clicks as success metric and focusing on more meaningful growth metrics like sales, signup and engagement. 

Navigating The Zero-Clicks Conundrum 

With answer engines and AI overviews going more mainstream this year, we have seen a trend which is echoed by people worldwide that there is a complete fall in the number of clicks received. Even a few of our clients gave us frightened calls in the middle of night asking where are the clicks and traffic? But just like we assured them about what Zero-Clicks basically means, we are also going to explain it to you so you can heave a sigh of relief. 

Our SEO activities in the last 6 months have shown a significant shift of search behaviour from keyword heavy to context heavy. This transition hasn’t been overnight but something people are just taking a note of due to decrease in traffic. Due to the conversational nature of LLMs interacting with humans, be it Answer Engines or AI Overviews on Search Engines, many websites are seeing a slump in clicks despite being featured as the best answer to query. 

What our clients see as just Zero-Clicks, we dissect it to show them how the average engagement rate has seen a climb and while the numbers are low, intent of those few coming in is so high, conversion is inevitable. So despite a decrease in traffic, we have seen websites compensating for it with more engaged users 

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