AEO Guide: How to Get Your Business Cited by AI Search Engines

Traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about ranking your website in a list of 10 blue links. You compete to appear above 9 other results. Users scan the list and decide which link to click.

AEO targets a fundamentally different outcome. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity “Who is the best plumber in Austin TX?”, the AI does not show a ranked list. It reads dozens of pages, synthesizes an answer, and cites one or two sources directly. Being cited in that answer is worth more than any individual ranked position — the user is told, by an AI they trust, that your business is the answer.

The tactics that drive SEO and AEO overlap significantly — quality content, local signals, authority. But AEO places greater weight on three specific elements: structured data (schema markup), direct declarative answers, and geographic specificity. Pages that excel at these three things get cited. Pages that do not, regardless of their organic ranking, often get skipped entirely by AI citation engines.

Local service queries are among the most common prompts submitted to AI search engines. “Best roofing company in Frisco TX”, “HVAC repair near me in Dallas”, “personal injury attorney in Austin” — these are exactly the queries that homeowners and clients type into ChatGPT and Perplexity every day.

Google AI Mode is now displayed for an estimated 30-40% of all searches. ChatGPT processes over 100 million queries daily. Perplexity has grown by over 1,000% in daily active users since 2023. Studies show that 25-35% of users who receive an AI-generated answer do not click through to any website at all — the AI answer was sufficient.

For local businesses, this means a growing share of potential customers are deciding which business to contact based entirely on what an AI told them — before ever visiting your website. If your business is not being cited, a competitor who has optimized for AI citation is capturing that decision.

Writing for AI citation is not about keyword density or backlinks. It is about clarity, specificity, and structure. The practical rules:

• 1Start every answer with a direct, factual sentence. No hedging, no "it depends", no "great question." If someone asks how much a service costs in your city, the first sentence should be the number.
• 2Include your city and state in every key answer. AI engines are location-aware. "In Austin, TX, HVAC replacement typically costs $4,500 to $8,000" is more citable than "HVAC replacement costs $4,500 to $8,000 nationally."
• 3Reference local authorities. Permit offices, licensing boards, local regulations. These signals tell AI that the content reflects real local knowledge, not generic national information.
• 4Use FAQ format throughout your site. Questions and answers are the native format of AI search. Every service page should have a dedicated FAQ section with at least 5 question-answer pairs.
• 5Eliminate marketing language from factual content. Superlatives ("best", "leading", "top-rated") and marketing copy reduce citation probability. AI engines prefer neutral, factual language.
• 6Keep answers under 150 words each. AI engines extract specific passages for citation. Long, meandering paragraphs are harder to cite cleanly. Short, precise answers are preferred.

If you implement one AEO change today, make it FAQPage schema. This JSON-LD block explicitly maps your questions and answers into a format that AI engines are trained to extract and cite. Here is what a properly structured FAQPage schema looks like:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How much does a roof replacement cost in Frisco, TX?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "In Frisco, TX, a full roof replacement typically costs $9,000 to $14,000 for a standard 2,000 sq ft home using architectural shingles. The Frisco labor market commands an 8-12% premium over the DFW average due to high contractor demand from rapid residential development."
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Key requirements for effective FAQPage schema: answers must be complete (not truncated), answers must start with a direct declarative sentence, and the question text must match the natural language query a user would actually type. “How much does a roof replacement cost in Frisco, TX?” is a real query. “Roof Replacement FAQ” is not.

Pair FAQPage schema with SpeakableSpecification to explicitly mark which text is suitable for AI voice and citation extraction. Add a speakable block to your WebPage schema pointing to the CSS selectors that contain your FAQ answers and introductory paragraphs.

Every ProvenQuote city page is built to meet AI citation standards from day one. When you lease a market, you are not just getting leads — you are associating your business with a structured, AI-indexed web presence that is already doing AEO work on your behalf.

Each ProvenQuote city page includes:

• ✓FAQPage JSON-LD schema with city-localized answers — every answer includes the specific city, local pricing data, permit office name, and regional weather context
• ✓LocalBusiness or Organization schema with GeoCircle areaServed using actual lat/lng coordinates — not just a city name
• ✓WebPage schema with SpeakableSpecification pointing to FAQ answers, pricing data, and the introductory paragraph
• ✓BreadcrumbList schema establishing the page's position in the site hierarchy for AI context
• ✓All AI crawlers explicitly allowed in robots.txt — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and 5 others
• ✓llms.txt file providing AI systems with a structured index of all content sections and their purpose

When someone asks ChatGPT “best roofer in Frisco TX”, ProvenQuote's Frisco roofing page is structured to be cited. If your business has leased that market, your business name appears in that city page — and benefits from that citation.