AEO is the practice of optimising content so that AI-powered search tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others — cite or reference your brand in their responses. For B2B companies, this is increasingly important because buyers use these tools during research. Brands that appear in AI-generated answers during the consideration phase gain a significant visibility and credibility advantage.
Traditional SEO gets you ranked in a list of ten blue links. AEO gets you named as a recommended option inside an AI-generated answer — which is where an increasing share of B2B research now happens. The mechanics are different: AI models favour content that's structured as clear, factual, entity-rich lists (which is why agency selection guides and buyer's guides tend to get cited more than generic blog posts). The critical SEO gaps in B2B SaaS are amplified in the AEO era — if your content isn't structured for extraction, AI tools will cite your competitors instead. Combining AEO with solid B2B website growth strategies creates a compounding advantage that's difficult for competitors to replicate quickly.
