AEO Is Changing What Good SEO Content Looks Like

AI answer engines are changing what it means to create good search content, and I’ve been changing the way I use Claude and ChatGPT right along with them.

We’re in an entirely new era, and it’s important to know what’s changed, whats new and what needs to be updated. AEO and SEO are the new rules.

I’m going to tell you how it gets played.

I’ve been doing SEO for over ten years, and I can say that some rules are the same, but it’s important to know the new rules of the game.

A lot of SEO used to reward comprehensiveness. Sometimes that was useful, or it gave us 2,000-word articles explaining something that only needed four paragraphs and a decent example.

Think like: recipe guides, how-to information ... you’ve seen them before. Filled with thousands of words and lots of ads along the way.

That’s outdated, and it doesn’t work anymore. It’s no surprise, we all hated reading and sorting through all the tech anyway.

Or at least I did.

AEO changes that equation. When ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and other answer engines are trying to surface useful information, clarity suddenly matters a lot more than bulk.

And I think that’s probably good for all of us. Here are real, direct answers for you.

Long introductions before answering the question need to go

Traditional SEO encouraged writers to establish a lot of context before getting to the point. Over time, that turned into four paragraphs of setup before anybody said anything useful.

For AEO, I’m increasingly thinking about the first sentence as the answer and everything after it as support.

Maybe a good hook upfront to keep people interested in reading below. I’d be lying if I said that I don’t throw in an occasional hot take, click bait kind of sentence near the top to get people going.

Repeating keywords isn’t the same thing as explaining something well

I’m much less interested in whether I’ve mentioned a keyword five times than whether the page makes the topic unmistakably clear.

This is where Claude and ChatGPT can be useful.

I’ll give them a section and ask what they think it’s actually about. If the answer isn’t what I intended, that’s usually a sign the writing needs work.

That’s a better test than forcing another exact-match phrase into a sentence nobody would actually say.

Huge sections don’t automatically make an article comprehensive

There’s a weird assumption in SEO that longer means deeper, more insight.

Sometimes it does, but usually it just means longer.

I’ve started using Claude and ChatGPT to find places where I’m saying the same thing three different ways. Ask either model what can be removed without changing the reader’s understanding, and they’ll always find some dead weight.

The goal isn’t to make everything tiny. It’s to make every paragraph earn its rent.

My favorite AI revision prompt is: “reduce this article by 50%.”

Most things can be made far more concise and short, and still make just as much sense and provide as much valuable information.

Generic FAQs aren’t helping anybody

I still like FAQs when there are actual frequently asked questions.

AEO and AI likes them too. FAQs are when we’re speaking their language. And, as it turns out, people like and use these too.

What I’m less interested in is inventing three painfully obvious questions because somebody once said every SEO article needs an FAQ section.

Instead, I’ll ask Claude or ChatGPT what questions someone would logically still have after reading the article.

That usually produces much better material.

Find the information that actually changes the reader’s understanding

Every article has information that’s technically relevant and information that genuinely helps someone understand the topic.

Those aren’t always the same thing.

I use AI to ask questions like: What would a beginner misunderstand here? What assumption am I making? What piece of information would actually change someone’s decision?

One of the best new approaches I’ve been using is “write this so that an eighth grader can understand it.” by making things simple and straightforward we can get everyone engaged, regardless of reading level.

Those prompts tend to uncover better additions than “make this section longer.”

Clear headers matter more than clever headlines

I love a clever headline, but inside an article I want headers that tell readers exactly what’s coming.

They also give answer engines a cleaner map of the page.

If a section explains how ChatGPT can help with AEO research, I’m probably going to call it something pretty close to “How ChatGPT Can Help With AEO Research.” Then I’ll make at an H2 or H3 header to show hierarchy.

Direct opening sentences make information easier to extract

I’ve started treating every major section almost like a miniature article.

The header establishes the topic. The first sentence gives the answer. The next few sentences explain it.

That works well for humans because we scan pages, and it also creates clean chunks of information that AI systems can understand.

Plus, most people scan on the web, and maybe 10% - 15% read.

Your perspective is becoming more valuable, not less

If everybody has access to Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools, generic information becomes incredibly cheap.

Your experience doesn’t.

The things you’ve tried, the mistakes you’ve made and the observations you picked up while actually doing the work are increasingly the parts worth publishing.

That’s why I don’t really want AI writing my opinion for me.

SEO and AEO have converged

I don’t think we’re heading toward a world where everyone abandons SEO and starts doing AEO instead.

The two are increasingly connected.

The pages that work best will probably be easy to discover, easy to understand, easy to extract answers from and still interesting enough that a human wants to keep reading.

Claude and ChatGPT can help with all of that.

But the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is surprisingly old-school: answer the question, say something useful and don’t make people work unnecessarily hard to understand you.

AI didn’t invent that strategy.