Definition
Structuring content so AI answer engines (Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity) can quote it accurately when someone asks a question. Where traditional SEO competes for a click on a results page, AEO competes to be the sentence the answer is assembled from, which rewards direct, self-contained answers over long preambles and brand throat-clearing.
What it looks like in practice
A boutique law firm has a page titled 'Do I need probate in Ohio?' that opens with three paragraphs about the firm's history. An answer engine summarizing the question skips it and quotes a competitor whose page answers in the first forty words, then explains. The firm rewrites the opening to state the answer plainly, adds the exceptions underneath, and keeps the firm story at the bottom. Within a couple of months the page starts appearing as the cited source in AI answers, and the visits it does get arrive already half-convinced, because the summary agreed with the page.
Why it matters
AEO does not replace SEO; it changes what a page has to do in its first hundred words. Both reward genuine expertise, but an answer engine cannot quote a claim it has to dig for, and it will not quote one it cannot verify against the rest of the page. Two things matter more than any technical trick: answer the actual question early in plain language, and be specific enough to be checkable. The failure mode is optimizing for the summary and leaving nothing worth clicking through to. You become a citation nobody visits.