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AEO

What is Answer Engine Optimisation?

People used to search Google. Now they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews. The answers those tools give don’t come from the same signals that rank you on Google — they pull from structured data, AI-readable content patterns, and a small number of trusted sources per topic.

Answer Engine Optimisation is the work that gets your business named in those AI answers, not just lost on page seven of Google.

What I do

  • AI-friendly site structure — Schema markup (Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Article, HowTo, BreadcrumbList, Speakable) so AI engines can parse who you are, what you do, and which questions you answer. Built into the theme so every page inherits it.
  • llms.txt file — A standardised, structured index of your site’s content written for AI crawlers. Emerging convention, low cost, signals readiness.
  • AI crawler access — robots.txt configured per your stance on training models (OpenAI’s GPTBot, Anthropic’s ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Perplexity) — clear opt-in or opt-out, no accidental blocking.
  • Question-shaped content — FAQ pages, how-to articles, and service pages written so AI engines can lift specific Q&A pairs verbatim. The same content still works for human readers — it just reads cleaner.
  • Citation hygiene — clear source attribution, author bylines with datePublished, easy-to-extract facts and figures. AI engines prefer content they can confidently cite back.
  • Entity disambiguation — sameAs links to Wikidata, LinkedIn, and authoritative directories. Hub-and-spoke topic clusters so AI engines learn the relationships between your pages, not just their content.

How it fits with SEO

SEO and AEO overlap but aren’t the same thing. SEO gets you ranked on Google’s blue links. AEO gets you mentioned in the AI summary above them. Both matter, both compound. Most of the AEO work happens to also improve regular SEO — schema and structured content are universally good — but the planning, content choices, and measurement are different.

If you’re already on an SEO retainer, AEO is already included. If you’re starting fresh, an AEO-first audit is a sensible entry point.

Ways to work together

There are two ways to engage, and whichever suits you best is scoped and quoted in a clear written proposal before anything starts:

  • AEO Audit + Plan — a one-off project. A standalone modernisation: full AEO audit across 25 checks (6 categories, A–F grade per category), schema implementation, llms.txt deployment, content-shape rewrites for the top 5 pages, AI crawler review, topic cluster map, and a 12-action plan you can hand to whoever maintains your site. Includes a 30-minute walkthrough call.
  • Folded into an SEO retainer. All three SEO tiers include AEO maintenance — SEO Essentials includes bi-annual AEO audits, SEO Growth includes quarterly audits plus monthly entity research, and SEO Pro includes monthly audits plus advanced schema engineering. Schema and llms.txt maintenance is ongoing across every tier as content grows.

Bundle: take the AEO Audit + Plan together with the SEO Audit + Plan for a reduced combined fee. The full modernisation for a site that wants both ranked and cited.

Where to start

Drop your details below or start a project — we’ll look at where you currently appear in AI search and what’s blocking it.

AEO is user experience applied to the newest moment in the journey — when your customer asks an AI a question and your business either is the answer or isn’t in the room. Making yourself quotable to machines is simply the next form of being findable by people; see user experience at every level for how it connects.

AEO work.

A small selection of aeo projects.

Fulham BM brand shown across devices — the logo suite on a desktop screen and the building and property maintenance homepage on a laptop Marketing and SEO for a local business — brand, website, SEO, AEO and print for a Fulham building company Doubling the number of booked estimates for a house painting company Marketing · Google Ads Doubling the number of booked estimates for a house painting company
View full portfolio →

Packages built around your business.

Every package is scoped to the size and ambition of the business behind it — get in touch and I’ll put together a clear, written proposal.

Standalone One-off project

AEO Audit + Plan

one-off

Full AEO modernisation — schema, llms.txt, content shape, entity disambiguation.

  • AEO audit across 25 checks (6 categories, A–F grade per category)
  • llms.txt deployment + spec
  • validation
  • Schema implementation (Organization+sameAs, FAQPage, Article+Person, BreadcrumbList, Speakable,
  • LocalBusiness)
  • Content-shape rewrites for top 5 pages (TL;DR, question H2s, answer blocks, bylines,
  • last-updated)
  • Per-location URL split for multi-location sites
  • AI crawler robots.txt review + documented
  • stance
  • Topic cluster hub-and-spoke map
  • 12 prioritised actions + 30-min walkthrough
  • Bundle with SEO Audit + Plan for a reduced combined fee
Get started →
Or fold into a retainer

Bundled in SEO retainers

Three-month minimum, then a 30-day rolling contract — cancel anytime.

Every SEO retainer tier includes AEO maintenance. Audit cadence scales with tier.

  • SEO Essentials — bi-annual AEO audit + ongoing schema/llms.txt maintenance
  • SEO
  • Growth — quarterly AEO audit + monthly entity research
  • SEO Pro — monthly AEO audit +
  • advanced schema engineering
  • AEO baked into the same retainer that handles your conventional SEO, so the two
  • compound on the same content investment.
See SEO retainers →
first call, on the house

Ready to build?

Thirty minutes, no pressure, no sales pitch. A conversation about the opportunity and what a properly built site could do.

Book a free call → 07833 247 577
Common questions

What people ask before starting.

How much does a website cost?

It depends on the scope. A focused landing page, a fully bespoke website and an e-commerce build are very different pieces of work, and the same is true of ongoing support, SEO and Studio retainers, so every engagement is quoted individually after a short conversation about what you need, and confirmed in a written proposal before anything starts.

However a project is priced, we break it into milestones — each with a fixed price tied to a working deliverable. You never pay 50% of the total cost up front. Instead, you pay 50% of the first milestone to start it. When that milestone is complete, you pay the remaining 50% of it together with the 50% deposit on the next milestone — and that's what unlocks the next phase of work. The pattern continues until the final milestone is delivered, at which point you pay the remaining 50% of it.

The effect: cash flow stays smooth, you always see a working deliverable before paying for the next, and we never carry more than half a milestone of unbilled work.

How long does a project take and what does delivery look like?

Indicative timings:

  • Landing page: ~4 weeks from kick-off
  • Custom website: 4–8 weeks
  • E-commerce build: 8–12 weeks
  • Brand work: 2–8 weeks depending on tier

Delivery is broken into milestones built around working functionality, not internal phases like “design” or “build” in isolation. Think of it like an MVP and then MVP+1, MVP+2 — at the end of every milestone you have a live, usable thing you can see and sign off on.

For a typical website project, the milestones look something like this:

  1. MVP — A working homepage and core navigation on staging, with your brand applied. Real, clickable, mobile-friendly.
  2. MVP+1 — All inner pages built, forms wired, analytics installed.
  3. MVP+2 — SEO foundations, schema, performance optimisations, content polish.
  4. Launch — Final QA, DNS cutover, hand-over docs.

You'll always know what we're working on each week and what's due back from you. We never start the next milestone until the previous one is signed off and paid for, which keeps surprises out of the project.

What if I need a bit of everything — can you do that?

Yes, and this is what our Studio packages are built for. Instead of piecing together a freelance designer, a marketing agency, a developer, and a hosting account, you get all of it from one team on one monthly fee:

  • Studio Lite — SEO retainer + GBP management + WP Care + 6 hours/month of design, dev or content time.
  • Studio Standard — Bigger SEO scope, 13 hours/month design + dev, quarterly brand reviews.
  • Studio Pro — The whole stack — 18 hours/month of flex time, weekly GBP posts, monthly cross-discipline strategy session.

Studio is best for businesses who'd otherwise hire a junior designer plus a part-time marketer. It's also how we work with most of our long-standing clients — they like having one point of contact for the whole digital side.

Do you offer ongoing maintenance after launch?

Yes — four WP Care plans, scaled to the size of your site, covering plugin and core updates, daily backups, security and performance monitoring, and content tweaks. Most clients pair their build with at least our Essentials plan so the site stays healthy and up to date.

See all FAQs →