Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): How AI Has Changed Websites Forever

Welcome to this Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Update. In these discussions, I’ll be analyzing opportunities, impact, and outcomes possible with AI.

Highlights

00:40 — I’m planning a series on something that I know all companies, not just sales and marketing people, are struggling with, and that’s answer engine optimization (AEO). I want to analyze AEO and how they might use Copilot and other tools to integrate some of this information and data to their CRM, particularly Dynamics 365.

01:56 — The buyer journey has completely changed — think about your own search habits and tendencies. There is nothing more frustrating as a customer or user of the Internet than to search for something and be given a million search results that have nothing to do with your search. Recently, I was in Minneapolis, looking to see what sporting events were available. I did a search on Google, and all I got were vendors selling tickets for stuff that wasn’t even that weekend. I opened ChatGPT to see if it would give me different results, and it absolutely did.

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02:57 — So what do companies need to do to stay relevant? They need well-structured, AI-readable data beyond just SEO. Metadata is required on a website, as is a clear value proposition. Website AI agents are becoming essential. AI agents are going to completely change the way we do things, and they will allow us to tie much different information into our CRM systems. The caveat: AEO tracking is still messy; we’ve tested a number of tools at Marketing Copilot, and we’ve been really disappointed with the results.

04:02 — Here are three things you can look for right now to improve your AEO readiness. Look at the referral traffic from AI tools within your Google Analytics. Look at branded content versus non branded content and what the ratio is on your website and whether you’re showing up. Look at zero click interactions: Are people getting answers but not visiting your site?

05:25 — We’re going to be talking about choosing the right AI agents for your website and what is actually working out there today. I’m really excited about being part of this with the Cloud Wars team. 

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