I rank websites in three places that used to be one. Traditional search results, AI Overviews and answer boxes, and the LLM responses coming out of ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude. These three surfaces reward different signals, and treating them as a single strategy is why most websites show up in Google but never get cited by an AI assistant. I'm Arun, and I've spent 15 years building the technical and content foundation that makes a website visible across all three, for ecommerce brands, service businesses, and everything in between, in any country and any language.
What AEO Actually Requires
Answer engine optimization means structuring a page so a search engine, a voice assistant, or an AI Overview can lift a direct answer out of it without misreading the context. That starts before I write a single sentence.
I map user intent first. A question like how much does SEO cost has a different intent than SEO pricing for ecommerce stores. One wants a general answer, the other wants a number tied to a specific business type. I build separate pages or separate sections for each, because forcing both intents onto one page dilutes the answer and gives Google a weaker snippet to extract.
Once intent is mapped, I target question-based keywords directly in headings, then answer the core question in the first paragraph, in 40 to 60 words, before expanding with supporting detail. This is the single biggest lever for featured snippets and voice search results, since both systems pull from the first clear, complete answer on the page rather than scanning the full article. I write in simple, direct language for this first answer, then allow the writing to get more technical as the section develops for readers who want depth.
FAQ sections get built around real questions, not invented ones. I pull from People Also Ask data, actual customer questions, and search console query reports to find what people are asking, then answer each one with FAQ schema attached. HowTo schema goes on genuine step-by-step processes, and Article schema ties authorship and publish dates to the content so search engines can verify freshness.
Topical authority comes from content clusters, a pillar page covering a subject comprehensively, linked to supporting pages that go deep on each subtopic. I've found that a single page trying to rank for fifteen unrelated questions performs worse than five focused pages that each answer three or four related questions and link back to a central pillar.
E-E-A-T matters more for AEO than most site owners realize. I add real author bios with credentials, keep publish and update dates visible and accurate, and cite primary sources when a claim needs backing. Google and AI systems both weight content differently when there's no identifiable author or when the same outdated statistics have been sitting on a page for three years.
On the technical side, I keep title tags aligned with the actual question being targeted, write meta descriptions that state the answer rather than teasing it, use clean URLs without unnecessary parameters, and make sure Core Web Vitals and mobile-first rendering are solid, since a slow page can rank in theory but still lose the snippet to a faster competitor with equivalent content. Internal linking, backlinks, image alt text, and breadcrumb navigation all reinforce the same signals from different angles, and I treat them as one connected system rather than separate checklist items.
What GEO Actually Requires
Generative engine optimization overlaps with AEO but has its own priorities, because I'm optimizing for how large language models retrieve and synthesize information, not just how a search algorithm ranks a page.
LLMs favor content that states a position clearly and supports it with specifics, numbers, named entities, comparisons, original data. I write concise summaries at the top of every page, use conversational language instead of keyword-stuffed phrasing, and structure headings so each section can stand on its own if an AI model pulls just that portion. Semantic keywords and related entities matter more here than exact match keywords, since these models are matching concepts and relationships, not strings.
Original research is one of the strongest GEO signals I use. A page citing a study I ran on my own client data, actual conversion rates or ranking timelines, gets cited by AI systems far more often than a page repeating the same generic statistic that's been copied across five hundred other sites. Case studies with real numbers work the same way.
I optimize the same page for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude, but I don't assume they all retrieve information identically. Perplexity leans heavily on citing sources directly and tends to favor pages with clear sourcing and recent publish dates. ChatGPT's browsing and retrieval behavior favors well-structured, authoritative pages with strong entity signals. Gemini pulls heavily from Google's own index and rewards the same technical SEO fundamentals that drive traditional rankings. I build content that satisfies the common denominator across all of them, clear structure, verifiable facts, strong entity relationships, and up to date information, rather than chasing platform-specific tricks that stop working after the next model update.
Brand mentions across the web, even unlinked ones, help build the entity recognition that these models rely on. I run outreach and PR that gets a brand named consistently across industry sites, review platforms, and directories, because AI systems build confidence in an entity through repetition across independent sources, not just backlinks.
Monitoring matters as much as building. I track AI referral traffic in analytics, monitor whether a brand gets cited in AI Overviews or Perplexity answers for target queries, and analyze what competitors are doing differently when they show up and I don't yet. GEO is still a moving target, so I treat every month as a chance to test a structural change and measure whether citations increase.
The SEO Foundation Underneath Both
AEO and GEO don't replace traditional SEO, they sit on top of it. Without solid technical SEO, none of the answer or generative optimization work holds up.
I start every engagement with keyword research built around actual search intent, not just volume. Long-tail, high-intent keywords convert better than broad head terms for most businesses, especially service businesses competing in a specific city or ecommerce stores competing on a specific product category. Title tags, a single well-optimized H1, and a clean H2 and H3 structure come next, followed by content that's genuinely original, not rewritten competitor copy with different word choices.
Technical fundamentals get audited regardless of how strong the content is. HTTPS across the entire site, correct canonical tags, a clean robots.txt, an updated XML sitemap, and no crawl or indexing errors sitting unresolved for months. I fix broken links, remove duplicate content, and check server response codes, since a site quietly returning soft 404s on category pages loses far more traffic than most owners realize until someone actually pulls the crawl report.
Page speed and Core Web Vitals get fixed at the code level, image compression, lazy loading, deferred JavaScript, not just flagged in a report and handed to a developer who deprioritizes it. Mobile-first optimization is non-negotiable since Google indexes mobile by default, and a desktop-only layout decision made years ago still shows up as a ranking ceiling today.
Off page work centers on earning links that reflect real authority, backed by digital PR and content worth referencing, not directory submissions treated as a link strategy. Local SEO gets its own layer, accurate business profiles, consistent NAP data, genuine customer reviews, and location-specific landing pages for businesses operating across multiple cities or regions.
I monitor rankings, organic traffic, CTR, bounce rate, and dwell time continuously, and I treat every ranking or traffic drop as a diagnostic question rather than a reason to just add more content. Sometimes the fix is a redirect chain cleanup. Sometimes it's rewriting a title tag that's technically accurate but doesn't match what people are actually searching for.
Custom Coded Websites
I build custom coded websites from scratch for both ecommerce and service-based businesses, using React, Next.js, or platform-specific development depending on what the business actually needs. A templated theme is faster to launch, but it comes with structural limits, bloated code you can't remove, rendering behavior you can't control, and SEO ceilings baked into the platform itself.
A custom build lets me control server-side rendering for pages that need to be both fast and fully crawlable, structure the URL architecture exactly around the keyword and intent map I've already built, and implement schema markup precisely instead of working around a plugin's limitations. For ecommerce specifically, that means product and category pages built to handle filtering without generating duplicate URLs, checkout flows designed for conversion, and Core Web Vitals that are fast because the code was written for that outcome, not patched after the fact.
Common Questions I Get Asked
How long does AEO and GEO take to show results? Technical fixes like schema markup and page speed can shift within four to eight weeks. Topical authority and AI citation frequency usually take three to six months, since AI systems need repeated exposure to a domain across multiple queries before treating it as a reliable source.
Do I need separate content for Google and for ChatGPT? No. The same well-structured, well-sourced page works across both, since the underlying signals, clear answers, verifiable facts, strong entity relationships, overlap heavily. What changes is monitoring, since I track citation behavior separately for each platform to see which one is picking up the content and which one isn't yet.
Does GEO replace traditional SEO? No. GEO and AEO sit on top of technical SEO. A page with weak crawlability or slow load times won't get cited by an AI model even if the content itself is excellent, because these systems still rely on the same underlying index and crawl infrastructure that traditional search does.
Can a small business compete for AI citations against larger competitors? Yes, more easily than in traditional rankings actually. AI systems reward specificity and original data over domain authority alone. A small business with a genuinely useful comparison table or original case study can get cited over a larger competitor publishing generic content.
Working Across Countries and Languages
I work with businesses across the United States, city by city and state by state, from Texas and California to New York and Florida, and I build location-specific strategies that account for how search behavior and competition differ by market. I also work across the Gulf region, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, where bilingual Arabic and English search behavior requires a different content and schema approach than a single-language market.
Across Latin America, I've worked with businesses in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile, where Spanish and Portuguese content each need their own keyword research rather than a direct translation of English terms, since search intent and phrasing genuinely differ by language, not just by country. I work with businesses across Australia, and across European countries including the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, where hreflang implementation, currency and shipping localization for ecommerce, and language-specific content strategy all need to be handled correctly or the site ends up competing against its own translated pages instead of ranking cleanly in each market.
I'm multilingual and I build AEO, GEO, and SEO strategies in the actual language of the target market, not machine-translated content layered onto an English structure. That difference shows up directly in rankings, since search engines and AI models increasingly reward content that reads as native to the language and culture it's written for, rather than content that reads as translated.
If you're running a business anywhere and you need someone who treats technical SEO, AEO, GEO, and custom web development as one connected system instead of four separate vendors, that's the work I do. Reach out and let's look at what's actually holding your visibility back right now.
