Attraction & Visibility · SRV-REF-03
SEO / AEO Search Strategy
Two jobs at once: ranking on Google and Bing, and getting cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Built on a clean technical foundation, structured data, and the discipline of measuring it in Search Console, not guessing.
“Inject custom structured schemas over heuristic client pages to achieve high-accuracy citation rates in Perplexity search results.”
For twenty years "search" meant one thing: rank on Google. That's still half the job. The other half is new, and most businesses haven't caught up to it yet.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the discipline of earning the top organic spots on Google and Bing: the results nobody paid for. It's three layers working together:
- Technical. Can a crawler actually read your site? Fast pages, clean URLs, a valid sitemap, no broken links, mobile-first. This is where a Next.js or Webflow build quietly wins: the foundation is sound before a word of content goes up.
- Content. Pages that answer the questions your customers actually type, written for humans first and structured so search engines understand them.
- Authority. Other credible sites linking to you, consistent business listings, and real reviews: the signals that say you're legitimate.
Done right, SEO compounds. Unlike ads, it doesn't stop the moment you stop paying.
AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
Here's what changed. People now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews instead of scrolling ten blue links. Those engines don't just rank you: they cite you, or they leave you out entirely. AEO (also called GEO, generative engine optimization) is the work of being the source they quote.
That means:
- Structured data (JSON-LD) so machines read your hours, services, location, and prices unambiguously, instead of guessing from prose.
- Clear, factual, well-organized content an AI can lift a confident answer from.
- Consistency everywhere: your name, address, and phone identical across the web, so the model trusts the signal.
SEO gets you found by people searching. AEO gets you quoted by the machines they increasingly ask first. You want both.
Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools
You can't improve what you can't see. Two free tools are the instrument panel:
| Tool | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Which queries bring you traffic, your average position, indexing and coverage errors, Core Web Vitals, and a direct line to submit your sitemap and request indexing. |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | The same for Bing, and Bing's index feeds a lot of AI answers (including those built on Microsoft's stack), so it's not an afterthought. |
I set both up properly (verified ownership, sitemaps submitted, coverage clean) and read them every cycle, so we act on what's actually happening in search instead of guessing.
How I work it
- Fix the technical foundation first, then the content, then authority.
- Submit and monitor in both Search Console and Bing Webmaster from day one.
- Layer JSON-LD so one set of content serves Google's ranking and the AI engines' citations.
- Report on real movement (positions, impressions, and clicks), not vanity.
Ranking is table stakes. The new game is being the answer: the line ChatGPT reads back when someone asks about your industry. We build for both at once.