Free course
AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
Get your content cited when people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers. Six short lessons, each with an exercise on your own site and a test that opens the next one.
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What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your content the source that AI tools quote and link when they answer a question. Those tools, called answer engines, include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini and Copilot. Instead of showing a list of links, they write one answer and cite a few pages. AEO works on being one of those pages.
It matters because more questions now end inside the answer. ChatGPT reported 900 million weekly users in February 2026, and in the United States 68% of Google searches ended without a click in the first months of 2026. When Google shows an AI Overview, Seer Interactive found that cited pages get more than twice the clicks of pages that are not cited. The visit, and the trust, go to the sources.
AEO and SEO: what is the difference?
AEO builds on SEO; it does not replace it. A page that search engines cannot find or do not trust is rarely cited, so the basics of SEO still apply. What changes is the goal and the unit of work.
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page high in a list of results | Be quoted and linked inside a written answer |
| Unit | The whole page | The passage that answers one part of a question |
| Target | A keyword | A question and the related questions the engine also searches |
| Signals outside your site | Mainly links | Links, plus mentions, reviews and community discussion |
| Success measure | Rankings and clicks | Citations, mentions and the visits they bring |
In practice you do both. The course shows where they overlap, so you do not duplicate work, and where AEO asks for something SEO alone does not.
What you will be able to do
- Explain how answer engines find, choose and cite their sources.
- Find the questions your audience asks AI assistants, not just the keywords they type.
- Rewrite a page so its answers are easy for an AI to quote, and still read well for people.
- Check that AI crawlers can reach and understand your site.
- Build the mentions and signals elsewhere on the web that make engines trust you.
- Measure how often you are cited, and improve it month after month.
What each lesson covers
- How answer engines choose what to cite. What happens between a question and a cited answer, why ranking alone no longer decides it, and the five traits cited pages share. Exercise: measure your citation baseline across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google.
- Find the questions that matter. How questions asked to an assistant differ from keywords typed into a search box, and where to find the real ones: customer conversations, communities, search features and the assistants themselves. Exercise: build a question map for one topic.
- Write answers worth quoting. Answer first, one idea per section, specific numbers, dates and sources, and passages that make sense on their own. Exercise: rewrite one of your pages and compare it with the original.
- Make your site readable for AI. Crawler access, pages that work without scripts, structured data that matches what the page says, and the technical checks worth doing. Exercise: run the AI readiness check on your site.
- Earn trust beyond your site. Why mentions, reviews, directories and community discussion shape what engines say about you, and how to build them honestly. Exercise: map where your topic is discussed and plan your first three placements.
- Measure and improve. Tracking citations by hand or with tools, reading AI referrals in your analytics, and a monthly routine to keep improving. Exercise: repeat your baseline and plan the next round.
Who it is for
Marketers, founders, freelancers, writers and anyone who runs a website and wants it to show up in AI answers. It suits a small business site as well as a blog or a software product. You need no coding: where a lesson touches something technical, it shows you what to check and what to ask a developer for.
What you need
- A website, or a single page, you can edit.
- Free accounts on ChatGPT and Perplexity, and Google in your browser. No paid tools are required.
- About 30 minutes per lesson, including the exercise, at your own pace.
- The course workbook, a PDF with one sheet per exercise, which you download in lesson 1.
Questions about the course
Is AEO the same as SEO?
No, but they are closely related. SEO aims to rank a page in a list of results; AEO aims to have a passage from your page quoted inside a generated answer. Most good SEO practice helps AEO, because engines still retrieve pages through search. AEO adds work SEO does not cover: answering the full set of questions around a topic, writing passages that stand on their own, and building mentions of your brand across the web.
How long does it take to see results?
There is no fixed timeline, and anyone who promises one is guessing. Changes to your own pages can show up once engines crawl them again, which is often a matter of weeks. Mentions and reputation elsewhere build over months. That is why the course starts with a baseline and ends with a monthly measuring routine: you see the change in your own numbers.
Do I need to pay for any tools?
No. Every exercise works with free accounts and a spreadsheet. Lesson 6 explains what paid citation trackers add, so you can decide later whether one is worth it for you.
Does it work for a small or new website?
Yes, and in some ways it is easier to see progress there. Answer engines often cite specific, well explained pages from smaller sites when they answer a precise question better than a large site does. A new site still needs to be crawlable and trusted, which lessons 4 and 5 cover.
Is the course up to date?
Every lesson shows the date it was last updated. Answer engines change fast, and we revise the lessons when the evidence or the tools change. Figures in the lessons always name their source and date.
What do I get at the end?
The course is free, and so are the workbook and the tests. When you pass the test of every lesson, you can get a certificate of completion with your name, a public verification link and a button to add it to LinkedIn. The certificate costs $9, or is included in the Annual Pass for $20 a year. It shows that you completed the course; it is not an accredited qualification.