AIEO stands for AI Engine Optimisation. It is the work of making your pages easy for AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and similar tools — to understand, trust and quote. It sits on top of SEO. It does not replace it.
There is a lot of noise around this. Some of it is useful. Some of it is people selling certainty that does not exist. This note is the one-page version: what we can promise, what we cannot, and what the work actually looks like month to month.
The short version
- We cannot force a citation. Nobody can.
- We cannot promise a date, a position or a “share of answer” figure.
- We can make your page a clearer, more quotable source on the questions your buyers ask.
- We can check the engines every month with the same real buyer questions and tell you plainly what we see.
What we cannot promise
A citation
Answer engines choose their own sources. They weigh pages they can read, pages that already rank, and names they see mentioned elsewhere. We do not control that choice, and neither does anyone selling a guarantee. If someone promises that ChatGPT will recommend you by a certain date, ask them how. The honest answer is that they cannot know.
That answers stay the same
Ask the same question twice and you can get two different answers. Models are updated, sources change, and the wording of the question matters. A citation this month is not a permanent fixture. That is why we check monthly rather than taking one screenshot and calling it done.
That ads buy the answer
ChatGPT Ads are live in the UK, but they sit under the answer as a labelled sponsored card. Paying for them does not put your company inside the organic answer. That is a separate, paid test, covered on our ChatGPT Ads page.
A code trick
You will see offers to “code your site so ChatGPT cites you”. Clean markup and structured data help engines read a page. They are not a contract, and we will not sell them as one.
What we actually do
The work is mostly careful, unglamorous page work. For each important page, we look at five things.
Answer first
The first screen should say what you do and answer the buyer’s question directly. If the useful sentence is buried under three paragraphs about passion and values, an engine has to dig for it, and often it will not.
A named, consistent entity
Your company name, products and town should be written the same way on your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories that matter. Call yourself two different things and engines have to guess whether they are the same business. Consistency makes you easier to describe accurately.
Facts an engine can lift
Models, specifications, materials, limits, lead-time ranges, service areas, published prices where you have them, and what you will not do. Specific, checkable facts look like a primary source. “Industry-leading solutions” does not.
Clean, readable pages
One job per URL. Real FAQs in the words buyers use, marked up so machines can read them. Structured data that says who you are and where you trade. Text in HTML rather than hidden in images or PDFs. We also check that your robots settings are not blocking the crawlers you want reading the site.
Honest links between pages
Related products, services and FAQs linked together, so people and crawlers can move from the question to the next step without dead ends.
What the first month looks like
Month one is mostly reading. We take the pages that matter commercially — usually the homepage, two or three service or product pages and the contact page — and run the buyer questions against them. Then we write down what an engine would need to answer each question from your site alone, and what is missing. Most of the fixes are small: a clearer first paragraph, a spec table in HTML instead of a PDF, an FAQ that uses the buyer’s words, the same company name in the footer as on Google. Bigger jobs, such as a missing capability page, get scoped and priced before anything is written.
How we check
At the start we agree a short list of real buyer questions with you — the kind your sales team hears every week. Each month we ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google the same questions and note three things: whether you appear, who appears instead, and what those sources say that your page does not. That last point is usually where the next month’s work comes from.
We report what we see. We do not turn it into an invented score or a chart that looks better than the facts.
Why the rest of the web matters
This is the part most AIEO pitches skip. Engines tend to lean on pages that already rank and on names other sources mention. A clear page is necessary, but it is not always enough. If almost nothing outside your own site mentions your business, engines have little to confirm what you say.
We cannot manufacture those mentions, and we will not buy link schemes. What we can do is help you get the honest basics right: a verified Google Business Profile, consistent listings, a trade body or chamber entry where you are genuinely a member, and real reviews from real customers. That is slow. It is also the part that lasts. For a local example of how this plays out, see SEO for Hinckley and Earl Shilton manufacturers.
Where AIEO sits with SEO and PPC
AIEO is a child of SEO. Technical SEO and clear on-page work come first, because an engine cannot quote a page it cannot find or read. Paid search sits alongside both: it catches demand now, and its search terms show which questions are worth answering on the page. The full organic service, including the starting band, is on our SEO page. The plain-English explainer is on the AIEO page.
What it costs
There are two ways in. A short written look: one URL and three buyer questions, with eight to ten plain-English pointers. We do one of those a week. Or the work itself, as part of SEO & AIEO from £1,250 / month, or as a project from £2,450. Scope comes first; the band is a floor, not a one-size package.
Get in touch
Send one URL and the three questions your buyers actually ask. We will tell you whether the page is quotable today and what would change that. If the honest answer is that the work is not worth it yet, we will say so.
Direct: the contact form · 01455 242326 · AIEO · SEO & AIEO · Contact