Services / AEO & AI Search
Answer Engine Optimisation —
make your expertise clear.
We make your business easier for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity to find, understand and cite — then measure what changes in AI answers, search traffic and enquiries.
Published price From £995/month Also included in SEO Growth (£1,995/month) and Enterprise (£4,995/month) All prices →
An AEO agency makes your business easier for AI search tools to understand, trust and cite. Elite Digital checks crawler access, fixes inconsistent business facts, rewrites key pages to answer real buyer questions, adds accurate schema and measures AI answers alongside search traffic and enquiries. Programmes start from £995 a month; no one can guarantee a citation.
Why does AI search visibility matter now?
Because buyers now meet businesses inside generated answers as well as search results, and those answers draw on sources the engines can access and trust. If your pages are unclear, blocked or thin, a competitor's page is the one that gets quoted.
When a competitor appears in an answer, look at the question and the sources cited. That shows you the gaps in your own information; one answer doesn't prove market share or explain all of your traffic.
| SEO | AEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optimises for | Google rankings (the blue links) | Direct answers and featured snippets | AI-generated responses (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) |
| Key assets | Content, links and technical health | Q&A blocks, schema and answer-first structure | Entities, citations and brand trust |
| Success metric | Rankings and organic traffic | Snippet and answer share | AI citations and AI referral traffic |
SEO vs AEO vs GEO — in practice the three overlap: strong SEO makes AI citation more likely, and answer-first structure makes SEO content easier to extract. You can buy AEO on its own, or get it inside our Growth and Enterprise SEO retainers.
Track search visibility and business outcomes separately. An AI mention, a cited link, a website visit and a qualified enquiry are different observations; a useful report explains each measure and its limits.
What does an AEO programme include?
Entity optimisation
Consistent naming, structured data and authoritative associations, so engines can recognise your business as one clearly defined entity.
Schema architecture
Relevant Organisation, Service, Article and Breadcrumb data that describes the visible content accurately. Valid markup makes pages easier to read; it doesn't guarantee a search feature or citation.
Question-led content
Real buyer questions mapped to clear explanations and relevant evidence, with a distinct purpose for each page.
Topical authority
Pillar-and-cluster content that shows genuine depth in your category, not thin one-off posts.
Earned corroboration
Genuine mentions on relevant professional sites and publications, earned on merit, so your claims are supported beyond your own website.
AI visibility monitoring
Dated records of whether and how AI engines mention you for agreed questions — engine, prompt and cited URL — so progress is measured, not guessed.
How does an AEO engagement work?
It runs in five steps, in this order, whichever engine matters to you. Agreeing the questions first is what makes every later observation comparable.
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Agree the questions and a baseline
Choose a small set of real buyer questions, including unbranded service and comparison searches. Record the wording, engine, date and country, alongside current search performance and enquiries.
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Check crawler access
Test Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot against your actual pages and server responses. Training controls such as Google-Extended and GPTBot are a separate choice; they are not prerequisites for Google's AI features or ChatGPT search.
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Make your business facts consistent
Align your name, address, founder and identifiers across your website schema, Companies House, LinkedIn and professional profiles, so engines can confirm who you are.
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Improve the pages worth citing
Answer real buyer questions with clear explanations, original examples and sources, and add structured data that matches the visible content. There is no required word count, special AI file or guaranteed citation format.
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Earn corroboration, measure and iterate
Seek genuine mentions on relevant sites on merit. Log the engine, date, prompt, answer and cited URL for each agreed question, and read them alongside Google's Generative AI performance report where available, search performance and completed enquiries. Samples show what we observed, not every user's results.
See our public measurement method →AEO, GEO and SEO explained →How we review evidence →
Method follows Google's AI optimisation guide and Generative AI performance reports.
How do your options compare?
For a first look, the free route is enough: check your robots.txt and how AI tools describe you, then fix the obvious gaps. Paid AEO makes sense when the fixes span content, schema and off-site evidence.
| Route | Typical cost | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Your time; our AI visibility, robots and schema checkers are free | Manual checks of crawler access, schema and how AI answers describe you | A first look before you spend anything |
| Freelancer | Varies — usually a day rate or a small project fee; we haven't published an AEO-specific range | Typically a bounded audit or fix list; implementation and monitoring depend on the individual | A one-off audit when someone in-house will implement it |
| In-house hire | £35,000–£65,000 a year for a mid-level SEO manager, plus tools | Someone who can change pages, schema, robots.txt and copy week to week | Organisations with enough search work for a full-time specialist |
| Typical agency | £800–£3,000 a month for GEO/AEO programmes, usually bundled with SEO | Programme work across content, schema and mentions; deliverables and candour about guarantees vary | Businesses that need ongoing work but can't staff it |
| Elite Digital | From £995/month; also inside SEO Growth (£1,995/month) and Enterprise (£4,995/month) | Crawler and entity checks, answer-first pages, accurate schema and dated AI-answer observations | UK charities, private practices and growing businesses that want scope in writing |
Market ranges are guides, not quotes. No route — ours included — can guarantee a citation in any AI answer.
Where these figures come from: How much should GEO/AEO cost in the UK?How much does SEO cost in the UK?Our published SEO and AEO retainers
What do we honestly promise?
An agreed scope, documented changes and clear reporting. AI systems choose their own sources, so we don't promise a specific citation or ranking; we show what changed, what we observed and what the evidence doesn't prove.
What does AEO cost?
AEO programmes start from £995/month, scaled to your category and content needs. If you also need SEO, our Growth (£1,995/month) and Enterprise (£4,995/month) retainers include AEO work, so you don't pay for the same foundations twice.
Where is AEO applied in your sector?
AEO matters most where trust and accuracy decide the enquiry:
Related services
Service
SEO
The search foundations AEO builds on — crawlability, content and authority.
Service
Content marketing
Question-led pages and guides that engines can quote.
Consultancy
AI search consultancy
An AI visibility audit and plan for teams doing the work in-house.
Free tool
AI visibility checker
Organise manual checks of how AI answers describe your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)?
AEO is the work of making your content, business facts and evidence easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and cite. It combines crawler access, consistent entity information, question-led pages and structured data with ordinary search authority, so engines like Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT can recognise and quote your business.
What's the difference between AEO, GEO and SEO?
SEO targets ranking in traditional search results. AEO targets being the cited answer in AI-powered and featured answers. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) specifically targets citation in generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. They overlap heavily and we run them as one integrated discipline.
How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?
Start with accessible, accurate service pages and evidence that helps a reader make a decision. Check relevant search crawlers, business information and source quality. Record the actual prompts, answers and cited URLs over time. Our AI Visibility Checker organises manual checks; it does not query every engine or guarantee placement.
Can you guarantee my brand will appear in AI answers?
No. AI outputs aren't directly controllable, so be wary of anyone who guarantees them. We improve what can be controlled — access, accuracy, evidence and structure — and report what we observe.
How is AEO measured?
We record whether and how AI engines mention you for agreed questions — engine, date, prompt and cited URL — and read that alongside search performance and completed enquiries. You get dated observations, not vague reassurance.
How much does AEO cost?
Our AEO programmes start from £995/month, and AEO work is included in our SEO Growth (£1,995/month) and Enterprise (£4,995/month) retainers. Our published guide puts typical UK GEO/AEO programmes at £800–£3,000 a month, usually bundled with SEO because the foundations overlap. Whoever you choose, ask for written deliverables attached to the fee.
Does SEO still work now that Google shows AI Overviews?
Yes. Search visibility still depends on useful, accessible pages and relevant evidence. AI answers change how some results are presented, so review ordinary search performance, AI-feature impressions and completed enquiries separately.
What is llms.txt and does my website need one?
llms.txt is an optional text index used by some integrations. Google states that it does not use these files for Search, including AI features. It is not an access-control file and is not a prerequisite for citations. Prioritise useful pages, accurate business information and working customer journeys.
Do digital marketing agencies require long contracts?
Practices vary. Some UK agencies lock clients into 6–12 month contracts; others (including Elite Digital Agency) work on a short initial term — six months, the time SEO genuinely needs to compound — followed by rolling monthly agreements. Expect an honest agency to set that expectation, but expectation-setting is different from contractual lock-in. Always check the exit clause and confirm you keep your website, ad accounts and data.