Doing AEO
How do I adapt my SEO strategy for AI search?
By the RankNext team · Updated July 2026
The short answer
Keep your SEO foundation and add four layers: allow AI crawlers like GPTBot and PerplexityBot in robots.txt, restructure key pages around specific questions with direct answers, keep your business name, address, and services consistent everywhere you appear online, and regularly ask the AI engines your target questions to see what they actually say.
Most of what earns Google rankings also feeds AI answers, because engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity lean on the same crawled web and the same search indexes. That is why this is an adaptation, not a reinvention, and anyone selling you a full rebuild for AI search is overselling. The actual differences between the two disciplines are narrower than the hype suggests, and we break them down in AEO vs SEO.
Three of the four layers are checklist work. Open robots.txt to the AI crawlers, rewrite your highest-value pages so each section poses a real customer question and answers it in the first two sentences, then audit your name, address, and service descriptions across your site, Google Business Profile, and directories so engines see one consistent entity. Our AEO best practices guide walks through each step in order.
The fourth layer, answer sampling, is the one most owners skip. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode the questions your customers actually ask, note which businesses get named, and let the gaps set next month's content priorities. Rankings were always measurable; AI answers only tell you something if you go look.
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