Answer Engine Optimisation

AEO agency for ambitious B2B mid-market teams

We build the brand, the website and the AI products that get cited inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews — so the answer your buyer reads on day one is yours.

Book an AEO audit See a live citation dashboard

Why AEO is no longer optional in 2026

In 2024 your buyers searched on Google. In 2025 they tested ChatGPT and Perplexity. In 2026, mid-market B2B buyers begin almost every vendor evaluation inside an AI assistant — 6sense's most recent research puts the figure at 94% of B2B buyers using LLMs during purchase research, and 47% of enterprise tech buyers starting with an AI assistant before they ever open a search engine. Google's own AI Overviews now sit at the top of the SERP for nearly every commercial query, and clicks to the underlying ten blue links are dropping every quarter.

This changes the rules.

Traditional SEO is a competition for the click. Answer Engine Optimisation is a competition for the citation — the moment an AI engine names you in its answer. Most B2B buyers will never click through. They will read the answer, form an opinion, and move on. If your brand is not the answer, you do not exist.

This is the inflection point. The mid-market B2B teams that win the next decade of organic growth are the ones who restructured for AEO in 2026, not the ones who try to retrofit it in 2028. The agencies that get this right will look different from traditional SEO shops: less keyword density, more entity strategy. Less "rank #1", more "be cited by name in five AI engines simultaneously". Less link-building for its own sake, more answer-network building with citation-quality references.

We built BrandingLab for this moment.

The Numbers Behind AEO

Data points that demonstrate why AI Engine Optimisation is no longer optional.

75%

More monthly organic traffic for Webflow customers adopting AI-powered SEO

93%

Of marketing leaders say AEO is critical to their strategy

25%

Of practitioners fully understand how to execute AEO — the gap we close

14x

Traffic increase for enterprises after switching to an AEO-first approach

What "winning AEO" actually looks like

We define AEO success by the things that change behaviour inside a buying committee — not by metrics that look good in a deck.

Citations in AI answers, not just rankings on a SERP

When your buyer asks ChatGPT "what's the best [your category] platform for a mid-market [their industry] team?", your brand should appear in the answer by name. We measure citation share — the percentage of relevant AI answers that name you, in which position, with what context, and how often. We track it across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on a weekly cadence and report it as the headline number for every retainer.

Mentions in research summaries that close enterprise deals

Mid-market and enterprise buyers run an "AI deep research" pass before booking demos. Perplexity's Pro Search, ChatGPT's Deep Research, and Claude's research mode all produce 1,500–4,000 word vendor briefings. We optimise specifically for inclusion in those long-form summaries, where being cited as the canonical reference for a sub-topic is more valuable than ranking for the head term.

Visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews

We do not optimise for one AI engine. Each engine has a different retrieval pattern, a different content preference, a different freshness window, and a different bias toward certain source types. We map your content surface area to all five major engines and build a coverage strategy that compounds across them.

Our 9 AEO service capabilities

Every retainer pulls from these nine capabilities. Foundation tier covers 1–4. Growth adds 5–7. Enterprise covers all nine continuously, plus original research and AI-product integration.

AI-readable content architecture

We restructure your content so an LLM can extract a defensible answer from any page in two passes — semantic chunking, explicit summary leads, contained answers (every section answers a single question with quotable specificity), and zero ambiguity in what the page is about. Most B2B websites are written for skimming humans; AI engines need the opposite. We rewrite at the document, section and sentence level.

Entity, knowledge-graph and brand authority

LLMs do not index pages — they index entities. We define your brand as a clearly-bounded entity in their knowledge graphs: who you are, what you sell, who your customers are, what you are not, who your founders are, where you operate, what you have published. We claim and align Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase, G2, Gartner Peer Insights, Capterra, LinkedIn, your founders' personal entities, and the schema that ties it together. The objective is unambiguous brand recognition the moment your name surfaces in a query.

Schema and structured data engineered for AI extraction

Schema is not a checkbox. We design schema as the contract between your content and the AI engines that will quote it. Organization, Service, Product, FAQPage, HowTo, Article, BreadcrumbList, WebSite, SearchAction, Person for founder and team profiles, Review and AggregateRating where ethical, and the recently-formalised LearningResource and DefinedTerm types for glossaries. We code the schema in initial server-rendered HTML, never in client-side JavaScript, because most AI crawlers do not execute JS.

Conversational query research and prompt mapping

Traditional keyword research returns single phrases — "best CRM for SaaS". AI query research returns prompts — "we're a 200-person Series B SaaS company, what CRM should we evaluate vs HubSpot if we care about quote-to-cash automation?". We sit on the live AI engines, harvest the natural language buyers actually use, cluster prompts into intent groups, and map each cluster to a target page. Every page we ship answers the prompt explicitly within the first 100 words.

AEO-grade technical SEO

Robots.txt allow-listed for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended. Server-side rendered HTML on every URL because AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. Crawlable, fast, error-free. Canonicals correctly self-referential. Hreflang for multi-region brands. Sitemap freshness and reliable lastmod values. Core Web Vitals in the green. Most B2B sites fail one or more of these — fixing them is invisible to humans and transformative to AI engines.

Citation building, digital PR and answer-network development

LLMs trust citations. We earn citations on the source types they trust most — industry publications, university and government domains, vendor-neutral comparison sites, expert-authored newsletters with verifiable authorship, and curated Wikipedia references where your subject matter is genuinely encyclopaedic. This is not link-building from 2018. It is "answer-network development": getting your brand cited as a reference on the pages AI engines pull from when they answer questions about your category.

AI Overviews and SERP feature capture

Google's AI Overviews now occupy ~50% of vertical screen real estate above the fold for commercial queries. We engineer specifically for AI Overview inclusion — concise definitional leads, FAQ markup, ordered-list structures, demonstrated E-E-A-T signals, and visible author bylines with verifiable credentials. We treat featured snippets, People Also Ask, image packs and knowledge panels as a single integrated property, not separate tactics.

AEO-aligned content production

Most agency content is written for a human reader and lightly optimised for SEO. We write specifically for AEO: explicit summary leads that an LLM can quote verbatim, defensive specificity (numbers, dates, named sources), tight section structure, glossary-grade definitions, and an implicit FAQ pattern even on pages that don't carry FAQ schema. Our content lead is a former enterprise B2B journalist; our reviewers are subject-matter experts in your category.

AEO measurement, monitoring and reporting

We built a proprietary citation-monitoring layer (the same one you can preview on this page) that tracks brand mentions, citation share, sentiment, and source positions across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews on a weekly cadence. Every retainer client gets a live dashboard, a weekly report, and a monthly strategy session reading the data against pipeline.

How we work — a 90-day AEO programme

Every engagement starts with the same shape — audit, fix the foundations, build for citations, then move into a continuous retainer. The 90-day programme below is the standard onboarding for our Growth and Enterprise tiers. Foundation tier compresses it into 60 days.

Days 1–14

AEO audit and citation baseline

We run a full AEO audit (the same audit we sell standalone at /audit), map your current citation footprint across the five major AI engines, identify the technical and structural fixes that will unblock indexation, and benchmark you against three named competitors. Deliverables: a 40-page audit deck, a 90-day prioritised roadmap, and a baseline citation dashboard that becomes your retainer reporting layer.

Days 15–45

Foundation fixes

Schema implementation, robots.txt corrections, canonicals, sitemap rebuild, content architecture restructuring on the top 25 pages, entity claims and alignment across Wikidata / Crunchbase / G2 / industry directories, server-rendered HTML where you currently rely on client-side JavaScript. This is the unglamorous structural work that everything else depends on. We typically clear 80–120 distinct items in this window.

Days 46–90

Content, citations and feature capture

Net-new content — pillar pages, glossary entries, comparison pages, "alternative to" pages, original research where appropriate, and FAQ structures across the top 30 commercial pages. Citation building begins: we secure 5–15 high-quality references on AI-trusted sources, depending on tier. AI Overview and SERP feature capture pushes go live for the priority 20 commercial keywords.

Day 90 onwards

Continuous AEO retainer

The retainer compounds. New content, new citations, new entity reinforcement, ongoing technical hygiene, monthly competitor citation tracking, and quarterly strategy resets. Most of our clients see citation-share inflection between months 4 and 7.

Where we differ from typical SEO agencies

Most "AEO agencies" in 2026 are SEO agencies that added "answer engine" to their service list and changed nothing else operationally. We were built differently.

We can fix the site, not just write briefs

We are a Webflow Partner and an AI-native React studio. When the audit surfaces a rendering problem, a schema gap, or an architecture failure, our team ships the fix. We don't hand a 60-page deck to your engineering team and disappear. This is the single most common failure point in AEO programmes — recommendations that never ship.

We build the AI products your AEO strategy points to

When a buyer reads an AI answer that names you and clicks through, the experience on the other side should match the promise. We build copilots, RAG-powered search, and agentic interfaces directly into mid-market B2B sites. AEO without an AI-native experience to land in is a half-finished story.

We measure citation share, not vanity rankings

You will never see a screenshot of position 4 on a long-tail keyword in our reports. You will see citation share across five AI engines, mapped to pipeline.

We work with mid-market B2B teams, not enterprise SEO portfolios

Our average client has $6m–$95m revenue and a 1–4 person marketing function. We are a strategic partner, not a vendor in a vendor stack. You will know our entire team by name within the first month.

We publish what we ship

Our blog is a working notebook of our own AEO experiments — what got cited, what didn't, why. Every framework we sell has been tested on our own brand first. We are still small enough that this is true.

AEO retainer pricing

We publish ranges, not opaque "let's talk" placeholders, because it is one of the most common things buyers ask AI engines when comparing vendors and we want to be in that answer. Final pricing depends on category complexity, content velocity, and citation-build target.

Foundation

from $5,000/mo

For mid-market teams running their first formal AEO programme. Includes capabilities 1–4 (architecture, entity, schema, prompt mapping), bi-weekly check-ins, monthly reporting, citation dashboard, and 6–10 hours of content production per month.

Best fit: A marketing team that has the basics in place and wants to professionalise the AEO layer.

Growth

from $10,000/mo

Adds capabilities 5–7 (technical SEO, citation building, AI Overview capture). Weekly check-ins, weekly reporting, 15–25 hours of content production, and 3–5 citation placements per quarter.

Best fit: A Series B-to-D B2B SaaS or services brand that wants to be the cited answer in its category within 12 months.

Enterprise

from $20,000/mo

Adds capabilities 8–9 (full content programme + citation monitoring) plus original research, multi-region rollout, AI-product integration, and a named senior strategist. 40+ hours of content production, 8–12 citation placements per quarter, monthly executive readouts.

Best fit: Market leaders defending their territory or challengers building a multi-year category position.

Project pricing. We also run AEO audits standalone ($4,500), full Webflow + AEO rebuilds ($30,000–$95,000), and AI-product builds (copilots, RAG, agents) on a separate scope. Most clients combine a rebuild with the first 90 days of a retainer.

Who we work with

We work best with mid-market B2B teams in technically credible categories — SaaS, fintech, healthtech, professional services, deeptech, B2B media. Our sweet spot is a brand with a real product, a real point of view, and a marketing team that wants to compound something durable rather than chase the next channel.

We do not work with: e-commerce DTC brands (different playbook); pure-affiliate sites; or brands operating in regulated categories where AI engines have flagged us off the source list (a small but real list — we'll tell you in the first call if you're on it).

A small, deliberate selection of recent work is at /work. We publish case studies in depth as clients allow.

Frequently asked questions

SEO optimises for clicks from the search results page. AEO optimises for citations inside the AI answer — the named mention of your brand inside ChatGPT's response, Claude's research summary, Perplexity's answer, or Google's AI Overview. SEO and AEO share a foundation (technical hygiene, content quality, authority signals) but the optimisation surface is different. You need both, weighted toward AEO as click-through rates from traditional SERPs continue to compress.

AEO has a faster citation cycle than traditional SEO has a ranking cycle. Most clients see initial citation pickups in the first 60 days as schema and entity work flow through. Material citation-share growth shows up in months 4–7. By month 9–12 a well-run AEO programme should be the visible answer for a defined cluster of category queries.

ChatGPT (including Search and Deep Research), Claude (including research mode), Perplexity (including Pro Search), Gemini (including in Google products), and Google AI Overviews. We monitor Bing Copilot and Apple Intelligence opportunistically; their share of B2B buyer behaviour remains small at the time of writing but is moving.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The audit will tell us. The most common blocker we see is a client-side JavaScript site (typical of low-code builders or React apps without server-side rendering) where AI crawlers cannot read the content. If that's your situation, the fastest route is a Webflow rebuild or an SSR migration, both of which we run in-house. If your site is already crawlable, we work with what's there.

No, and you should be wary of any agency that does. We commit to the inputs — schema and architecture, technical fixes, content quality, citation outreach volume, and a defined number of citation placements per quarter at Growth and Enterprise tiers — and we report transparently on the outputs. Citation share is governed by market dynamics we don't fully control; we move it through compounding weekly work.

Citation share across the five major AI engines is the headline metric. Beneath it: citation rank position, sentiment, source diversity, and the share of category prompts in which you appear. We map each of these to pipeline movement (sales-qualified opportunities, won-deal mentions of "I read about you in ChatGPT") on a monthly cadence.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is the most established term. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes used to mean specifically optimising for generative-summary engines like Google AI Overviews. AIO (AI Optimisation) is the broadest umbrella. Different agencies use different terms; they are converging in practice. We use AEO because it has the clearest buyer recognition.

Yes. About 60% of our retainer clients are UK-based; the rest are spread across the EU, Israel, North America and South Africa. We are an English-first agency and work in English-speaking markets primarily.

Yes. Our standalone AEO audit is $4,500 and includes a 40-page deck, a 90-day prioritised roadmap, a baseline citation report across the five major AI engines, and a 60-minute findings session. It's a useful entry point if you want to test working with us before committing to a retainer.

Through editorial relationships with B2B publications in the categories we work in, through original research worth referencing, through founder thought leadership placed via PR partners, and through clean entity claims on the directory and review sites that AI engines weight. We don't buy links and we don't run guest-post networks.

It will, repeatedly. The fundamentals we optimise for — clean entity definition, citation-worthy authority, AI-readable content architecture — are durable across whichever specific engine wins. Tactics evolve quarterly; the strategy compounds. We re-baseline our methodology every 90 days and openly publish what we've changed.

Yes — this is where we differ from most AEO agencies. We build copilots, RAG-powered site search, and agentic flows directly into B2B websites. Many of our retainer clients run an AEO programme alongside an AI-product engagement; the two compound.

Get an AEO audit

The fastest way to find out where you stand is to run the audit.

A full AEO audit covering content, schema, technical SEO, entity strategy and citation footprint

A baseline citation report across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews

A 90-day prioritised roadmap

A 60-minute findings session with a senior strategist

$4,500. Fixed price. Two-week turnaround.

Book the audit Request a quote