Provide clear attribution and causality data for AEO/Gen AI performance

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Is the New SEO https://lnkd.in/dFsnEG9C How LLMs Work * ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other chat surfaces now use search to power answers. AI chat is converging with search. * This means that optimizing for answers (AEO) is an evolution of optimizing for search (SEO), and the principles of SEO largely apply to AEO. AEO Topics * SEO Topics in search are a cluster of keywords that a single page targets - targeting by individual keywords is a thing of the past * AEO topics in AI chat are a cluster of *questions* that a single page targets, so rather than targeting single questions, you should target many similar questions with a single page * "Question Research" is the new keyword research. The Long Tail of AEO Questions * In SEO, there are head, mid, and long-tail keywords. * In AEO, there are head, mid, and long-tail questions. * Head questions tend to show publishers and summarize multiple search results. * Earned: Unlike in SEO, it's hard to win a head question with a single page on your site. Instead, optimizing head questions focuses on being mentioned by citations (earned). * Owned: For mid and long-tail questions, destination sites often rank. For these questions, you can optimize by adding pages to your site as you do with SEO. * Further, chat is built for long multi-step conversations with many questions vs. search, which tends to have a small number of searches to fulfill intent. The 5% of AEO * In SEO, most work is wasted, but a few things cause a significant impact. * In AEO, the same will be true. Most AEO work will be a waste, but a small set of strategies have an outsized impact. * To identify The 5% of AEO, test and evaluate ideas and reproduce results. Don't just focus on blog posts and case studies. * At Graphite, we have not yet reproduced impact in AEO multiple times, so we do not know The 5% of AEO. But, given our analysis and experience with SEO, this is what we expect to be most impactful. * New Pages — Create landing pages for AEO topics you haven’t covered yet. * Content Enhancement — Find AEO topics where you have existing landing pages, assess whether these pages have content gaps or important unanswered questions, then add content that fills these gaps. * Citation Optimization — Identify the most cited URLs for AEO topics with the most opportunity, then find a way to persuade those citations promote your product or brand. Beware of Fake AEO Case Studies * After 20 years of SEO, people still do things that don't work. This is in part due to fake case studies, misleading studies, and false information. * The same will be true for AEO. Beware of fake AEO case studies and validate which strategies drive impact yourself. Request As you evaluate and reproduce impactful strategies, share what works and what doesn’t so we can all learn together. As we find what drives impact in AEO at Graphite, we will share our learnings.