Traditional SEO is a shrinking pond. AI engines now answer the questions that used to mean a Google search and a paid ad click. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are how you stay visible when the search box becomes a chat box.
Five years ago, "search" meant Google. The job was simple: rank for keywords, get clicked, convert.
Today, your customers are asking ChatGPT "what's the best HVAC company in Nashville." They're asking Claude "I need a Tennessee-licensed contractor for a remodel." They're using Perplexity to research, Gemini embedded in Gmail, Copilot embedded in Office, and Google's own AI Overviews answer their query before they ever see a blue link.
Gartner projects traditional search volume will drop ~25% by 2026. Pew Research found 27% of U.S. adults already use AI for search regularly. Your competitors who get cited by these engines are eating the lunch of competitors who don't. And most agencies are still selling 2018 SEO.
Optimizing so AI engines pull your business as the answer when users ask questions in your industry. Schema markup, entity structure, factual content, authority signals. The discipline of being citable.
Optimizing for generative engines that produce written responses (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini). Includes citation pursuit in AI training sources, brand-mention building, and content engineered for LLM extraction.
Both work alongside traditional SEO. You don't replace SEO with AEO — you add AEO on top because your customers are now using both kinds of search engines.
Every page on your site gets proper JSON-LD schema markup — Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Article, Product (whichever apply). We validate against schema.org's validator. We deploy entity markup that clearly tells AI engines who you are, what you do, where you operate, and who you serve. This is the technical foundation. Most agencies skip it because they can't read JSON. We can — we come from IT.
Your robots.txt gets configured to explicitly invite AI crawlers — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended, CCBot. Most sites either block these accidentally or don't address them at all. We make sure the engines are welcome to read you.
AI engines consume content differently than humans. They want answer-first writing, clear factual claims, defined entities, structured Q&A patterns, and citation-worthy authority signals. We restructure existing content and write new content using this methodology. The same content also performs well in traditional Google search — but it's engineered for the new world first.
LLMs cite sources they trust. We work to get your business mentioned in authoritative places those engines learn from — industry publications, niche directories, expert roundups, podcast appearances, original research. This is the new "link building" and it directly drives AI-engine citation behavior.
For local businesses, AEO has a strong overlap with Local SEO. Google Business Profile optimization, Apple Business Connect setup (yes, Apple feeds Siri + Apple Intelligence), Bing Places, and the local citation network all feed AI engines' answers to "near me" and city-specific queries. We work all of these.
None of the above replaces SEO. We still deliver technical SEO (Core Web Vitals, crawlability, indexation), on-page optimization (intent matching, internal linking, content quality), off-page (digital PR, backlinks, brand mentions), and local SEO. AEO sits on top of a solid SEO foundation. If your foundation is broken we fix it first.
Most agencies report on Google rankings. We also track where you're being cited in AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews — for the queries that matter to your business. Monthly reports show citation volume, share of voice vs. competitors, and which content is being pulled. You see what's actually moving the needle.
Maverick Marketing is a sister brand to Maverick Endeavors, a 23-year-old Nashville IT services company (founded 2003, Microsoft Partner MPN 3318934). Our team includes engineers who write JSON-LD by hand, configure server-side analytics, and have spent two decades getting the technical side of the web right.
AEO is fundamentally a technical discipline. Schema validation, entity resolution, authoritative server response, structured data quality, semantic HTML hierarchy — these aren't marketing buzzwords. They're engineering deliverables that most marketing agencies subcontract and get wrong. We don't subcontract them and we don't get them wrong.
AEO is the practice of optimizing your content, schema markup, and authority signals so that AI-powered answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews) cite your business when users ask questions in your industry. It's the new layer of search optimization that complements traditional SEO.
GEO is a related discipline focused specifically on optimizing for generative AI engines that produce written responses rather than blue-link results. It includes entity-rich content structure, factual answer-first writing, citation pursuit in AI training sources, and brand-mention signal building. AEO and GEO overlap significantly — many practitioners use the terms interchangeably.
Traditional SEO targets blue-link rankings on Google and Bing. AEO targets citations and brand mentions in AI-generated answers. They share some foundations (schema, authority, content quality) but require different content architecture and tactics. AEO emphasizes entity clarity, factual structure, and citation-worthiness; SEO emphasizes keyword targeting and link velocity. The smart move is to do both — most pages we optimize work for both audiences.
All major AI engines: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Perplexity, Gemini (Google), Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews / SGE, You.com, Brave Search AI. Each has slightly different citation patterns; our methodology covers the foundations that work across all of them, plus engine-specific optimization where it matters.
Faster than traditional SEO. Most clients see initial AI-search citations within 30–60 days of foundational AEO work (schema deployment, content restructuring, entity markup). Substantial citation volume builds over 3–6 months as AI engines re-crawl and update their citation patterns. Compounds from there.
Our AEO Visibility package starts at $1,497/month with a 3-month minimum. Includes full schema deployment, entity markup, AI-bot allowlist configuration, Google Business Profile optimization, AI-search rank tracking, and monthly reporting. Most clients land here or in our Growth tier at $3,997/month which adds traditional SEO and content production. See full pricing →
We guarantee the work — the schema deployment, the content restructuring, the AI-bot configuration, the citation pursuit. We don't guarantee specific citation outcomes because AI engines' citation behavior depends on factors outside any agency's control (engine training cycles, competitive density, source authority weights). What we can guarantee is that you'll have a measurable AI-search visibility footprint within 90 days, with clear monthly reporting on what's working.
No — AEO sits on top of SEO, doesn't replace it. The schema, content quality improvements, and authority signals that drive AEO citations also improve traditional SEO performance. Most clients see both Google rankings AND AI citations improve simultaneously when we deploy a full AEO program.