Rules to Better AEO and GEO - 10 Rules

SEO is rapidly evolving from a list of blue links into an AI-driven, conversational experience. This is often called Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) or Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

The goal is to make your content clear, trustworthy, and easy for search engines and AI tools to understand, cite, and recommend.

If your content is not optimized for generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews, your brand risks being overlooked, even if you still rank well in traditional search.

Regular Google searches can often be the best way for your website to get public exposure. If a page on your website is not indexed, it cannot be searched.

Don't be surprised if Google is already one step ahead of you... its Google bots could have already crawled your site without you knowing. So what's the best way to find out if Google has indexed your web page?

As large language models (LLMs) become integral in processing and generating content, ensuring they access and interpret your website accurately is crucial. Traditional HTML structures, laden with navigation menus, advertisements, and scripts, can hinder LLMs from efficiently extracting meaningful information.

Implementing an llms.txt file addresses this challenge by providing a streamlined, LLM-friendly version of your site's content.

Unsourced assertions ask readers to take your word for it. Phrases like "studies show" or "experts agree" with no link behind them read as filler, and they give search engines and AI answer engines no way to verify what you are saying.

Backing every meaningful claim with a link to a primary or authoritative source, such as official documentation, a standards body, peer-reviewed research, or the original dataset, builds reader trust and directly supports Google's E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

It also matters for discovery. AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews prefer content whose claims are verifiable and well-sourced. Well-cited content is far more likely to be surfaced and cited back as the answer.

Vague marketing claims like "much faster" or "industry-leading" tell the reader nothing they can verify. They read as opinion, not fact, so people discount them and AI answer engines skip right past them.

There is evidence for this. Nielsen Norman Group found that 79% of users scan pages rather than read them word-for-word (Jakob Nielsen, 1997).

A concrete figure like "200ms" survives that scan; a vague "much faster" does not.

Quotations make content easier to consume. They break up long stretches of prose, giving the eye a place to rest and signalling "this part matters". And they hand AI answer engines something they love: a clean, self-contained, attributable statement they can lift and cite - with your page as the source.

You publish great content, but it doesn’t rank, get cited by LLMs, or drive consistent inbound leads. Instead of being seen as an authority, your content feels scattered, useful in isolation, but weak as a system. This is usually because the content isn’t optimized for topical authority.

Outdated content quietly loses visibility. Even pages that once ranked well can decay over time as search engines and AI assistants increasingly prioritise freshness, especially for evolving or time-sensitive topics.

Some searches naturally require up-to-date answers. Often referred to as “Query Deserves Freshness,” this principle rewards recently updated content when users expect current information.

Even for evergreen topics, regular updates improve resilience against algorithm changes.

Anonymous content is a trust problem. When a page has no named author, no bio, and no dates, readers cannot tell who wrote it or whether they know the subject, and neither can the systems that rank and cite content.

Google's quality systems evaluate content through the lens of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust). Its guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content asks "Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?" AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews do the same: they favour and cite content from identifiable, credible authors, and they trust and quote anonymous content far less.

Showing clear authorship is one of the cheapest, highest-impact trust signals you can add. It helps you rank in classic search and makes you far more likely to be named as a source when an AI answers a question.

Data-driven websites play a pivotal role in delivering personalized and dynamic content to users. However, ensuring that search engines can understand and properly index this content can be challenging. Structured data offers a solution by providing a standardized way to describe the content on your website, making it easier for search engines to interpret and display your information in rich and meaningful ways.