How to Optimise Your Content for AI Recommendation in 10 Steps (AEO/GEO)
To optimise your content for AI to recommend, you must focus on ten areas that have always been the foundations of good content.
Get to Grips with your Audience’s Intent and Needs
Use Words they would Search with (Keywords)
Make Quality and Depth your Non-negotiable
Ensure your Content is Readable
Add Pictures & Videos
Focus on How Clickable Content is
Make it Mobile Friendly
Use FAQs and Metadata (short what is this about blurb)
Build Confidence and Trust
Test and learn
Like all progression, there are opportunities and challenges. AI presents the opportunity for businesses to optimise their content to be recommended. In a way, this is a little like an SEO upgrade—one where you don’t have to compete with sponsored posts on Google.
Get to Grips with your Audience’s Intent and Needs
It’s nothing new to use websites like Answer The Public and other keyword phrases and search tools to look for the questions people are asking. What is new, though, is matching your tone of voice to that conversational style – writing professionally but also in a more chatty style. It makes it real.
Takeaway: Think question and answer like you would to a work colleague – maybe without the swearing.
Use Words they would Search with (Keywords)
Again, using keywords is nothing new, but using them in context as part of a deep discussion based on expertise is if not new, a refreshed focus. Algorithms like Google’s BERT like the depth and breadth of an answer – so crack your knuckles and flex that tasset knowledge (brain). It’s also wise to use the ‘can’, ‘how’, ‘why’, and ‘what’ questions – it also helps for voice questions. ‘Can I expense this latte?’
Takeaway: Don’t focus on keyword dropping – take a sprint in your brain to focus on your deep knowledge of a subject. If not, interview someone in your business who can answer.
Make Quality and Depth your Non-negotiable
Double down on holding your content accountable. Does your content offer quality and depth? That’s not saying your Christmas party pics aren’t going to go viral, but the technical questions are more likely to win your audience over enough to buy from the business.
Takeaway: Depth and quality are Queen. It helps to make the need for quality and depth stand out in your marketing strategy and copywriting/content briefs – BOLD that sucker.
Ensure your Content is Readable
Headers
There's nothing new here, but it still doesn’t happen enough. We’re talking H1, H2, and H3. Don’t stress this can be found in Word or Google. If you look at the drop-down formatting at the top of the document, select Header 1 or Title for the title. Use ‘header 2’ for subheaders (think school 101 English lessons), and use ‘header 3’ if you need to split the subheader into more topics. A good example is how this article is written. It is just a different text size with a little tag in the web code that tells AI and search engines how your article is structured.
Bullets
I don’t have to explain this. Use bullets. Use easy-to-view formats that change throughout the piece.
Summaries
Everyone likes a summary. I also personally like a quick read at the start for people with little time. If they like it, they’ll read on.
Takeaway: Go back to school and write structured articles with subheaders, or you’ll get detention.
Add Pictures & Videos
It’s nicer to have a few pictures in your articles. If you have them, add short videos and audio links, too. AI likes that you are trying to produce content that people can consume in different ways – we’re all different. What’s not new but very important is the ALT text – giving text to an image for non-visual people and structure.
Takeaway: add pictures and label them. Don’t be uncool.
Focus on How Clickable Content is
AI learns what people like very quickly. It looks for:
Clickable content. Use punchy titles and meta descriptions that entice people to click. If your content is also a great read – it will know by how long they stay reading it.
Shareable content. The article that is engaged with and shared must be good. Well, not always, but AI rewards engagement.
Takeaway: AI likes clickable and shareable content.
Make it Mobile-friendly.
Yes, I know, of course, that content has to be mobile-friendly, but what does that actually mean?
Think: Speed and Ease of Use.
Takeaway: It is worth investing in specialists, such as website developers and UX (user experience) professionals, who can make your website fast and easy to use. They often strip out unused messy code, have clever ways of loading large files like videos, and can map how people click.
Use FAQs and Metadata (short what is this about blurb)
Adding questions and answers on the topic is a fast and furious way to get extra brownie points. So is metadata – but I’ve said that already.
Takeaway: Don’t skip the small stuff—it’s big. Add FAQs, meta tags, descriptions, and ALT text.
Build Confidence and Trust
Okay, this is about areas like author bios. When you publish an article, be sure to link it to the author's credible profile. Trust is gained in this way, which is probably why LinkedIn started Verify to help protect people and also point them in the direction of professionals with knowledge in the area. You wouldn’t want a tiler fixing your electrics.
Also, consider reviews and testimonials to show social proof – this is a big deal as it proves that people trust you or your business.
Takeaway: the proof is in the pudding. Interview credible people and make them the author (link them). Also, add reviews.
Test and learn
It’s marketing 101, but testing and learning from previous pieces is vital. It’s tempting to churn out content without revisiting what works well or that could be tweaked to perform better. Could you expand on a piece and add more depth or quality?
Takeaway: Always check your analytics for performance and tweak to compete.
Summary
You could say there is nothing new here when optimising your AI content, but you’d be misguided. As a writer for over ten years, I can say that at least one area is usually neglected within every marketing department due to resources and budget. AI has driven shortcuts in writing production that could be used to reduce admin, like producing transcript summaries and idea generation. AEO is an opportunity for marketing leaders to return to what they know best – producing high-quality content with depth and breadth.
FAQs
Is AEO just SEO?
In a way, yes, but it focused on the context of an audience’s question on depth and quality. There is also a considerable trust element, where AI looks for many other signals to show credibility.
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I’m a seasoned copywriting professional with a background as a marketing manager for Lloyds Banking Group. As Co-founder of MPH Copywriting, I now work globally, interviewing subject matter experts to produce content with depth and quality to drive thought leadership for businesses and AEO.
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