Three steps. Audit the site. Fix what the audit finds. Track whether AI engines start citing you. That is the whole method. Everything below explains why it works in that order and what each step actually involves.
What AEO is and why it is different from SEO
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your business cited inside AI-generated answers. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI results do not return ten blue links. They return one answer, and they name a small number of sources inside it. If your site is one of those sources, you get the customer. If it is not, you are invisible for that question.
SEO gets you ranked in a list. AEO gets you named in an answer. The two overlap on fundamentals, but they reward different things. Search engines reward authority and relevance signals built up over time. Answer engines reward pages they can read cleanly, understand without guessing, and quote with confidence.
Most small business sites in Minnesota were built for the first system. Almost none were built for the second. That gap is the opportunity.
Why we audit before we touch anything
Every AEO engagement at The Creative Depot starts with an AI Readiness Audit. We do not write content or add schema until the audit is done.
The reason is simple. Most sites fail AEO for structural reasons, and structural problems block everything downstream. A blog post answering the exact question a customer asks does nothing if the AI crawler is blocked at robots.txt, if the page renders its content in JavaScript the crawler never executes, or if the business entity is never stated clearly enough for the model to know who wrote it. Fixing content before fixing structure wastes the content budget.
The audit scores the site on 100 points across 8 categories. The weights tell you what we think matters most.
Crawlability and Access is worth 19 points. Can AI crawlers reach the site, and is the content in the HTML they receive? This is the highest-weighted category because a failure here zeroes out everything else.
AEO-Specific Optimization is worth 16 points. Does the site answer questions directly, in the first sentence, in a format a model can lift? Are there FAQ sections with real answers rather than marketing copy?
Structured Data is worth 15 points. Is schema markup present, valid, and specific to the business type? Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, and Article schema each tell the model something it would otherwise have to infer.
Content Structure and Semantics is worth 15 points. Proper heading hierarchy, one topic per page, descriptive section headings, and clean HTML that separates content from navigation.
Entity and Authority is worth 15 points. Is it clear who the business is, where it operates, who runs it, and why it should be trusted on this subject? Consistent NAP data, author attribution, and about-page depth all feed this.
Metadata and On-Page is worth 10 points. Titles, descriptions, canonical tags, Open Graph data, and alt text.
Performance and UX is worth 5 points. Load speed and Core Web Vitals. These matter less to answer engines than to search engines, so the weight is lower.
Freshness is worth 5 points. Visible publish and update dates, and evidence the site is maintained.
One thing the audit deliberately does not score: current visibility. Where you show up today in AI answers is a separate measurement, handled by tracking, not by the audit. The audit scores what is on the site. Tracking scores what the engines do with it. Mixing the two makes both less useful.
What the fix phase looks like
The audit produces a prioritized roadmap. We work it top down, highest-weighted failures first.
In practice the first fixes are almost always technical. Unblocking crawlers. Getting content into server-rendered HTML. Adding or repairing schema. Fixing heading structure. These changes are invisible to a human visitor and decisive for a model.
Then we move to content. AEO content follows one rule: answer the question in the first sentence, then support it. A page titled “How much does a roof replacement cost in Minnesota” should open with a number and a range, not with three paragraphs about the importance of a good roof. Models extract the direct answer. They skip the preamble, and so do customers.
FAQ sections get built from questions customers actually ask, sourced from sales calls, support email, and the prompts we track in Cite. Each answer is written to stand alone, because that is how a model will use it.
Entity work comes last. A consistent, fully stated description of the business, its location, its services, and its people, repeated across the about page, the footer, schema, and third-party profiles. This is what lets a model say “The Creative Depot, a web design studio in Lakeville, Minnesota” with confidence instead of hedging.
All of this is done in-house. No offshore content farms, no outsourced schema. The person who ran the audit is the person doing the fixes.
How we track results
AEO without measurement is guessing. We built Cite to solve that.
Cite runs a set of customer-style prompts every day across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Each prompt is something a real buyer would type: “best equipment rental company near Lakeville” or “who does headless WordPress development in Minnesota.” Cite records whether the business was mentioned, whether it was cited as a source, and which specific page was cited.
The output is a visibility score, a trend line over time, and page-level citation data. That last part is the one that changes behavior. When you can see that your pricing page gets cited and your services page does not, you know exactly which page to fix next.
Cite runs daily, without manual work, and includes up to 10 prompts per set. It costs $49 per month with no contract, and it is available on its own for businesses that want to measure before they commit to an engagement.
What this costs and how the engagement works
AI Visibility is a monthly retainer. The amount depends on site size and how competitive the market is. It is paid in advance, month to month, with no lock-in. Cancel any month.
The sequence is fixed. Audit first. Fix second. Track third. The audit happens before any retainer work begins, because the audit is what tells us what the retainer should cover.
Who this is for
Minnesota businesses whose customers are already asking AI assistants for recommendations. That now includes most service businesses: contractors, clinics, professional services, equipment rental, education, and local retail. If a customer could plausibly type “who should I hire for X near me” into ChatGPT, this applies to you.
It is also for businesses that rank well in Google and have noticed leads softening anyway. Strong SEO does not transfer automatically to AI answers. The audit will show you why.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI optimization for websites?
AI optimization is the set of technical and content changes that make a website readable, understandable, and citable by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI. It covers crawler access, structured data, content structure, entity clarity, and direct-answer content.
Is AEO the same as SEO?
No. SEO targets rankings in search result lists. AEO targets citations inside AI-generated answers. They share fundamentals like crawlability and clean HTML, but AEO puts more weight on structured data, direct answers, and entity clarity.
How long before AEO shows results?
Technical fixes are typically visible in AI answers within a few weeks of being crawled. Content and authority work builds over months. Cite tracks daily so progress is visible as it happens rather than at a quarterly review.
Do I need a new website to do AEO?
Usually not. Most fixes are made to the existing site. The audit will say if the platform itself is the problem, which is rare but does happen with some page builders that render content in JavaScript.
Does The Creative Depot offer answer engine optimization in Minnesota only?
We are based in Lakeville, Minnesota and most clients are in the Twin Cities area, but the work is remote and we take clients anywhere in the United States.
Can I just get the audit?
Yes. The AI Readiness Audit is available on its own and includes the scored report and the prioritized roadmap. Many clients use it to decide whether the retainer is worth it.
Start with the audit
See your score across all 8 categories and get a prioritized roadmap before spending anything on ongoing work. Or start tracking today with Cite at $49 per month, no contract.