Ever wonder why the same few brands keep showing up when you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity a question? It’s not luck — it’s strategy. In this article, we’ll break down answer engine optimization strategies that can help your brand earn more mentions and citations in AI search.
The brands dominating AI results have learned how to make language models see, trust, and prioritize their content. They’re no longer optimizing just for Google, but also for AI systems that decide which answers to surface.
In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how they do it: how they structure content for AI understanding, build the right credibility signals, and stay consistently cited across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
TL;DR: How to Get Cited in AI Search Results
AI search is changing how people discover brands, and AEO is the only way to stay visible. Instead of chasing keywords, focus on context-driven, well-structured, and multimodal content that AI can easily retrieve and cite.
To get cited in AI answers and increase your AEO visibility:
- Keep your site crawlable
- Refresh pages often, and build brand mentions both on-and off-site.
- Track how LLMs reference your brand with tools like Keyword.com, so you can steer the narrative and continue to appear in AI conversations.
What Exactly is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
AEO (or GEO/LLMO, as some might call it) is the act of creating and organizing your content in a way that makes it easy for AI search systems to find, retrieve, and cite it in relevant user conversations.
Unlike SEO, where search engines rank your content based on keyword relevance, AI search systems only link to your content when it is relevant to the user’s conversation.
Is AEO the Same as SEO?
No, SEO and AEO are not the same. SEO focuses on ranking web pages in search engines like Google, while AEO focuses on getting your brand or content cited, mentioned, or summarized accurately in AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini.
In short, SEO optimizes for links and clicks; AEO optimizes for answers and visibility. Here are a few more differences between the two concepts.
| Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) | Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |
|---|---|
| Ranks pages on search engines. | Cites websites or brands in user responses. |
| Requires keyword-based content. | Requires content with contextual clues. |
| Credibility is signaled via brand mentions. | Credibility is signaled via backlinks. |
| Focuses more on text-based content. | Requires multi-modal content. |
| Success metrics include organic traffic, clickthroughs, time on page, etc | Success metrics include mentions, citations, share of voice, etc |
Now that you know what AEO is and how it works, let’s discuss the AEO strategies that have helped — and are still helping — top brands win citations from LLMs.
9 Strategies Top Brands Use to Keep Getting Cited in AI-Powered Search Systems
Here are nine simple but effective strategies to help you increase your visibility in AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
1. Create Content for ICP Questions, Not Just Keywords.
People search on Google but converse with AI search systems.
If you need a keyword tracking tool and decide to ask Google, you’d probably type something like “best keyword tracking tool”. However, if you switch to Claude, your request will become more detailed and nuanced, such as “I’m new to SEO. What keyword tracking tool will be easiest to use?”
Because AI tools do multi-step query research, you can add context and details you would otherwise skip using a search engine and get a richer response. This fundamental difference in AI search querying makes keyword-based content not so useful for AEO.
So, to increase your chances of being cited for context-based queries, create content that aligns with how your ICPs question AI tools. Here’s how HeyReach’s team did it.
1. Deep Audience Research
HeyReach’s success with AEO is largely due to its marketing team’s deep understanding of its ICPs and their struggles.
According to Bojana, HeyReach’s Content Lead, their messaging and content are laser-focused because “we know our ICP and we know the exact specific set of challenges they can solve with us. We talk only to them about these things through our messaging — website copy, content, newsletter, LinkedIn content”.
If your brand doesn’t have a dedicated audience research document or you’re new to the team, you should find out your ICP’s challenges by:
- Digging into sales calls transcripts to find recurring concerns.
- Reading LinkedIn posts and comments from users and prospects to get a pulse of trendy topics.
- Lurking on industry subreddits to find hidden challenges.
- Going through customer onboarding and churn reports, to know what motivates customers to sign up or close their accounts.
2. Create Contextual Content
For example, HeyReach’s audience includes outbound sales representatives who struggle with managing LinkedIn messages as they scale their outreach.
To solve this, HeyReach’s marketing team published a detailed LinkedIn client management guide.
Now, when ChatGPT was asked to recommend tools that solve this problem, HeyReach was the first tool on its list.
And, when we made a source request, ChatGPT linked straight to that guide.
If an ICP were behind this conversation, they would likely receive these recommendations and then search for HeyReach on Google or click to read the guide.
Here’s how to implement this strategy for your content:
i. Use the one-for-one technique: focus each content piece on one ICP and one product use case. For example, create an SEO acceleration guide tailored to one-person marketing teams, rather than one for all marketers.
ii. Add a descriptive title: let your title show the problem that the content piece solves and, preferably, who it solves it for. E.g., “How rank trackers can help agencies improve organic search presence”, instead of “How rank trackers work.”
iii. Use the lingo your audience understands: include specific words your audience uses, and industry mannerisms to signal authority and niche knowledge. This section of our seasonal SEO checklist blog post does just that.
Phrases like “pulling in traffic like a magnet” and painting a scenario that commonly occurs in the SEO industry signal to the reader and AI bots that we possess more than surface-level niche knowledge.
3. Explore Query Fan-Out
Query fan-out is a technique used by AI search systems to break down a query into multiple related subtopics to provide a more comprehensive answer.
This is why, when someone types “What is SEO?” into Google, AI Overview provides not only the definition, but also the benefits, main components, and key aspects.
As a result, users get a more detailed explanation. And you get more LLM citation opportunities, as those additional subtopics can be referenced in LLM results from different sources.
For example, HeyReach created multiple expert-led guides and product pages on LinkedIn outbound automation for one of its ICPs: agency owners.
This broad approach ensures that almost every AI conversation around starting or scaling LinkedIn outbound for agencies cites one HeyReach piece or the other.
For instance, when ChatGPT was asked for a particular type of LinkedIn automation tool, it mentioned HeyReach.
Then, when we followed that request up with another nuanced ask, HeyReach showed up again. This time in two different places.
This means one thing: if you want to appear more frequently in your ICPs’ AI conversations, you need to explore query fan-out and write content around the subtopics of each ICP challenge.
How to Find Related Queries for Query Fan-Out
i. Check “steps” or “show thinking” in Perplexity or Gemini, respectively: in Perplexity, after entering your search prompt, click on “steps.”
For Gemini, click on “show thinking.”
ii. Check “related topics” in Perplexity: scroll to the end of your Perplexity response.
iii. Ask ChatGPT and Claude to show Query fan-outs: after a response, ask “how did you fan out this query?” or “can you list the query fan-out for this question?”
iv. Use tools like Qforia or this search query extractor for ChatGPT.
When you enter a prompt into either, it simulates synthetic search queries the LLM used for that response and its thought process while running the search.
2. Prioritize Content Architecture
When an AI system runs a query, it checks its database first, then scours the web for context. However, it only pulls from content that’s well-structured and easy to quote. If your content isn’t scannable or built in clean blocks that are easily retrievable, you won’t even make the shortlist.
Inflow, an SEO agency, helped its client, EarthKind, secure mentions and links in AIO by restructuring their content for AI search.
Here’s how to structure your content for AI citations
Clear Formatting
LLMs can crawl and surface answers in a few seconds. Your content must be clear enough for them to understand in that short time.
Inflow made sure every content piece had clear formatting by adding:
- Clear headings and subheadings using H1 to H4 header tags, so subtopics are clear and easy to retrieve.
- Numbers or bullet points so that AI bots can scan lists quickly.
- White space to break up content blocks
Internal Linking
Internal links are like maps that guide readers and AI bots as they navigate your website. By adding internal links to your content pages, you increase their chances of being found and cited by LLMs.
When reviewing and updating your internal links for AEO, you must:
- Prioritize content pages that tackle ICP challenges
- Ensure there are no isolated pages (pages not linked to from any other page)
This helps create a well-connected website while ensuring the challenge-based content pieces you’ve created earlier can be easily found and cited.
Schema Markups/Structured Data
To help LLMs quickly determine the category of each content page, implement schema markups such as FAQPage, QAPage, HowToPage, Article, and Image. That way, when users ask AI tools for very specific recommendations, your structured data can quickly signal which content page would be perfect to cite from.
To add schema markup:
- Choose your schema type: go to schema.org and pick the type (e.g., Article, Product, FAQ, LocalBusiness) that fits your page.
- Generate the markup: use a tool like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or Merkle’s Schema Generator.
- Add it to your page: copy the generated JSON-LD code and paste it inside the section (or just before ) of your HTML.
- Validate your markup: use Google’s Rich Results Test or Schema.org validator to check for errors.
- Monitor in Google Search Console: go to “Enhancements” to confirm Google is detecting and applying your structured data.
Many types of Schema markups exist. But numerous SEO experts — and even Google — recommend the JSON-LD type because it’s simple and easy to manage.
While answering a Google office-hours hangout question, John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, said: “We currently prefer JSON-LD markup. I think most of the new structured data that is kind of coming out is for JSON-LD first. So that’s what we prefer.”
After implementing your schema markups, regularly audit them to ensure they stay in sync with your content.
Note: While schema markups help LLMs interpret your content pages better, there is no solid data to support that they improve AI visibility. When Molly Katz studied 100 healthcare websites, she found that sites with schemas had only slightly more mentions than those without.
That said, AEO is an emerging field. You should test different strategies that can help LLMs understand and retrieve your content more effectively, as they could become vital citation factors in the future.
Content Chunking
Content chunking for AI search engines means structuring your content so that AI models (like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity) can easily identify, retrieve, and quote the right section of your page when generating answers.
To chunk your content, put the most important information upfront (the inverted pyramid technique), make your paragraphs concise, and ensure each section clearly tells the reader what, why, how, and the result.
Like this section from our guide on winning back lost SEO clients.
3. Cover Ideas Across Multiple Content Formats
AI assistants, especially newer models, crawl, retrieve, and cite multiple content formats like text, images, voice, and video. Creating content in different formats increases the chances of being cited, but also the number of times it is cited.
For example, Instantly.ai, an email outreach software, leveraged this strategy to create a comprehensive web of text, video, and image content centered on cold emailing.
So, it’s no surprise when we asked ChatGPT for resources on finding email addresses, Instantly.ai earned three citations with links to a blog post, a YouTube video, and a cold emailing course.
You can achieve the same by:
Creating multimodal content
Cover each topic with not only text-based content, but also videos, infographics, and social posts. If you already have one content format, such as blog articles, podcasts, or webinars, consider repurposing it into other formats.
Widely distributing your multimodal content
Don’t stop at brand-owned spaces like your blog, community, or newsletter. AI models learn from the entire web, not just your site. That means social media posts, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and even podcast transcripts can all contribute to how large language models perceive your brand and expertise.
Using alt texts and Schema markups to aid AI crawling
Adding descriptive alt text helps both search engines and large language models accurately interpret your visuals. Instead of generic labels like “chart” or “screenshot,” use natural, keyword-rich descriptions that explain what the image shows and why it matters.
Then, reinforce this context with structured data such as ImageObject, VideoObject, or HowTo schema. This tells AI crawlers exactly what type of content they’re dealing with—whether it’s an instructional visual, a product demonstration, or a data visualization—and where to find supporting information (captions, transcripts, or context).
4. Invest in Commonly Cited Content Types
Not every AI query leads to a web crawl. If an AI assistant already has enough information in its internal database to answer confidently, it won’t bother fetching or citing external sources.
That means if you’re targeting topics where AI systems rarely cite anyone — like widely known definitions or basic how-tos — you’re unlikely to earn visibility. To increase your chances of being referenced, focus on queries and formats that typically trigger citations:
i. Statistics or data round-ups
ii. Original research and research-based pieces
iii. Comprehensive tool comparisons, best x pieces, and competitor alternatives pieces
iv. Coined frameworks and expert-backed industry predictions and opinions
These content types and formats are evergreen sources of AI citations — the kind that keep your brand showing up in AI results over time, much like Modash.
As Ryan Prior, Head of Marketing at Modash, explained on LinkedIn:
In our content marketing strategy, we are making big bets on original research. AI commodifies a lot of educational or ‘how-to’ content. Original research is one format that continues to be well worth investing in.
5. Make Your Site Easy to Find and Crawl
If LLMs can’t find your content or hit blocks that prevent them from crawling it, you would have zero AI visibility even if you craft the best content.
This was what Keentel Engineering was experiencing before Dexora Digital, an SEO agency, stepped in with an AI technical SEO update.
The goal of this update? Make Keentel Engineering’s content easy for AI assistants to find and crawl. Within weeks, the update paid off — their content earned citations in ChatGPT and AIO.
Here’s what you can learn from this update:
- Proper Robots.txt usage: check your Robots.txt file to confirm you aren’t blocking AI assistants you want citations from. Remove the /disallow/directive if this is the case.
- Fast website loading: optimize your Core Web Vitals and website loading speed so AI bots don’t abandon crawling when they land on your site. Do this by compressing images/other visual content and removing render-blocking CSS. Cloudflare recommends a website loading speed of not more than 2 seconds.
- HTML structure: most AI bots can’t render JavaScript (yet), so build website pages using HTML. If you already use JavaScript, consider using server-side rendering (e.g., Next.js) or dynamic rendering (e.g., Prerender.io) to convert the JavaScript into HTML, enabling AI bots to crawl.
- Mobile friendliness: mobile-friendly websites have easy navigation, fast load times, and easily accessible content, which signals to AI bots that your content is beneficial. Moreover, mobile is also where most voice searches happen. Having a mobile-friendly site puts you in the best position for voice search citations.
6. Ramp Up Off-Site Brand Mentions
Brand mentions outside your website don’t directly affect SEO rankings—but for AEO, they’re crucial. The more your brand is cited across trusted external sources, the more likely AI systems are to recognize, recall, and recommend it in responses.
When Benjamin Thornton, Head of Growth at Keyword.com, ran a simple AEO study, he found “there’s a strong correlation between the number of citations (off-site) and a higher brand mention rate in AI search outputs.”
This finding tracks with SEO agency, Passionfruit’s explanation (paraphrased). According to them, “Because AI engines care more about entity-level relevance, brand mentions are what they look at when deciding whether to cite a brand.”
This is why Keyword.com is focused on increasing the number of times our brand name is mentioned off-site to boost AI mentions. We’re doing this by:
- Showing up in industry conversations, in communities, forums, Reddit, and social media.
- Creating valuable resources, e.g, YouTube videos, podcasts, blog articles, etc., to drive shares and mentions.
- Creating thought-leadership content on Medium and so much more.
You can also ramp up your off-site brand mentions by:
- Contributing guest posts to frequently-cited industry sites.
- Running a link-building campaign targeting top industry websites.
- Hosting webinars and industry events to drive brand mentions.
- Partnering with niche influencers to write about your brand on social media.
7. Refresh Content Often
If you only hit the content refresh button when you’re facing major traffic losses, you need to rethink that strategy in the age of AI search.
According to a recent study by AirOps, over 70% of the pages cited by ChatGPT have been updated in the past 12 months, with more than one-third (35.2%) of cited pages updated in the last three months alone.
This, as Oshen Davidson, Content Engineer at AirOps, explained in the research report, means that “Brands earning citations in ChatGPT aren’t just publishing once — they’re actively maintaining and updating their pages.”
To prevent your content pieces from being overshadowed by newer competitor content, incorporate content refreshes into your SEO efforts before metrics indicate it’s necessary.
Refreshes are especially useful when your experts’ views change on brand-relevant topics. As you update, keep in mind the content structures AI answer engines prefer, so your refreshed pieces continue to earn citations.
8. Track Important AI Search Metrics
The only way to determine which of your AEO efforts is effective and which needs iteration is to track relevant AI search metrics.
After the team at Boxena Digital executed the AI content restructure we discussed earlier, they didn’t just “set it and forget it”. Instead, they conducted daily keyword tracking to monitor key metrics.
This way, they were able to “optimize and expand on every effort using feedback loops” leading to a 28x increase in visibility score for that brand.
Depending on your specific AEO goals, you can track metrics like:
- Brand mentions: the number of times your brand is mentioned in AI responses, either with a link to your content or without.
- AI linked references: the number of times AI cites your brand with a link to your content.
- AIO visibility: how often your content shows up in Google’s AIO.
- Prompts: the prompts or queries that trigger your brand mentions.
- AI share of voice: how often you are mentioned compared to your competitors.
- AI citations link destination: the aspects of your website that AI links to the most.
- Brand sentiment: how AI systems understand and perceive your brand.
It’s important to choose an LLM monitoring tool like Keyword.com that’s powerful enough to track numerous metrics across multiple AI platforms.
Keyword.com can track all the metrics above and more for Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Mistral, Bing, etc. Sign up for a 14-day trial to test these features.
9. Monitor AI Sentiment
If you’ve done well in SEO, chances are your brand is already showing up in AI conversations — even if you’ve never optimized for it. Large language models were trained on publicly available web content, which likely includes your articles, product pages, and off-site mentions.
But here’s the catch: you don’t control how AI describes you. LLMs can misrepresent your product, mix you up with competitors, or surface outdated narratives. When that happens, it doesn’t just hurt visibility — it erodes trust. Imagine a potential customer asking ChatGPT for the best rank tracker and seeing your name used incorrectly or not at all.
That’s why monitoring AI sentiment is crucial. It helps you understand how AI systems perceive your brand — positively, negatively, or neutrally — and where those perceptions come from. Tracking this over time allows you to:
- Detect misinformation early before it spreads across platforms.
- Spot narrative gaps where your competitors are better represented.
- Shape your brand story with updated, consistent content that LLMs can learn from.
This allows any misconception or incorrect brand sentiment to be corrected, rather than going unchecked.
Win at AI Search With Keyword.com
AEO is a new but growing field, and brands like Keyword.com are accelerating the growth pace with innovative tools and multi-expert resources.
Keyword.com’s AI rank tracker serves as a compass to guide your AEO efforts by arming you with unmatched AI visibility across all major AI platforms.
This allows you to see how your AI citations shift as you implement the strategies we’ve discussed in this article.
Want to take our AI brand monitoring tool for a spin? Get started for only $24.50 per month.