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AEO Strategy: Part 1

Learn how to implement Answer Engine Optimization in your business with this step-by-step guide covering question research and tracking strategies.

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Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, a leading Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) agency, shared a actionable guide on how to implement AEO in your business.

The framework includes four key stages:

  1. Question Research
  2. Question Tracking
  3. Developing a strategy for each platform
  4. Running experiments

This article covers the first two stages. For stages 3 and 4, check out AEO Strategy: Part 2.

1. Question Research

Question research is similar to keyword research SEO, but for questions.

The goal here is to identify and group the questions your customers are asking.
This stage creates the foundation for the following optimization strategy. Every tactic that follows will be designed to increase your visibility when these questions are asked to Answer Engines.

How to Find Customer Questions

But how do we find the questions customers are asking?

Unlike traditional SEO keywords, those questions aren't easily accessible as the AI platforms don't expose them to the public.(Could change in the future though, once they start implementing ads)

There's a few ways to find them:

1.SEO Search Keywords:
Extrapolate questions from your existing keyword research. For example, if a keyword is "question search tool AEO," the question version could look like "What's the best AEO question search tool?"

2.Customer Interactions:
Mine questions from customer touchpoints. Those touchpoints includes

  • Sales calls
  • Customer reviews and feedback
  • Support tickets
  • Community forums and discussions

Ethan pointed out that building a community is particularly valuable for AEO since AEO has a longer tail than traditional SEO. Through the community, you could discover questions otherwise you missed.

3.Tracking Platforms:
This one is for businesses with more budget. You could potentailly purchase question data from platforms that aggregates search data like Ahrefs, Semrush, and etc.

Once you've compiled 100-200 questions, you're ready to move on to the next stage: question tracking.

2. Question Tracking

Picking a Tracking Tool

There are many tracking tools out there, but in this moment most of them offer similar functionality. The recommendation here is to choose the cheapest one that meets your question tracking needs.

Here is the list of question tacking tools Graphite put together:
AEO Tools // Answer Engine Optimization.

What to Track

There are 2 things you want to be tracking

  1. Who is showing up in the citations?
  2. What type of content is appearing in the citations?

Citation Sources Types

Citation sources fall into two categories:

  • On-Site: Your own website.
  • Off-Site: External sources.

There are 4 groups of off-cite citations that you’ll likely see:

  1. Videos: YouTube, Vimeo, etc
  2. User-Generated Content (UGC): Reddit, Quora, forums, community sites, etc
  3. Affiliate Sites: Dotdash, Meredith, Good Housekeeping, etc
  4. Blogs: Medium, Substack, and independent blogs

By understanding which citation types are appearing for your target questions, you can develop a content strategy that aligns with what AI platforms are prioritizing.