How to get into ChatGPT and Perplexity answers (AEO/GEO)

More and more people do not ask a search engine but an AI assistant directly — ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. Instead of a list of links they get a single answer, often with a few cited sources. If you are not among them, the customer never hears about you. Optimising for these answers is called AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

How AI chooses who to cite

The model looks for passages that answer the question directly and unambiguously, can be verified, and have a clear structure. Marketing filler does not help, nor does content where the answer hides in the third paragraph. The opposite helps: the answer up front, concrete facts, and headings that mirror real questions.

What to do with the content

Write answer-first: let the first sentence of a section be the direct answer, the rest expands it. Use headings phrased as the questions people actually type. Give specific numbers, steps and examples instead of generic phrases — those are citable. And link related pages so the model sees the whole site as context.

The technical part people forget

AI crawlers must be able to reach and understand the content. That is the job of structured data, llms.txt and clean technical SEO, which we covered in a separate article. Without them even great content may stay invisible.

Where to start

This is exactly what we handle under AI optimisation — from rewriting content to the technical setup. If you want to see how we use AI in production while keeping quality, read our Context Driven Development approach.