You’ve followed every AEO best practice, optimized your metadata, written clean paragraphs, and crafted the perfect blog layout—but your page still gets buried. Why? It’s not about content quality; it’s about how AEO really works today.
In this video, I’m going to show you a simpler, more effective approach to AEO that most people overlook. If you’re ready to stop guessing and show up when people search for your expertise, keep reading!
What AEO Really Involves Today
Most AEO advice focuses on optimizing your website. But AEO goes beyond websites now. You can even do AEO without having a website! While a website is still important for landing pages and promotional material, it’s not the primary factor for AEO.
Let’s explore some outdated AEO assumptions:
- Outdated Assumption #1: Focus on your website’s robots.txt file and making your website “searchable.”
- Outdated Assumption #2: Write clear, high-quality content. While important, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll rank in answer engines like Google or ChatGPT.
- Outdated Assumption #3: Backlinks and citations are still key. Not true for AEO.
- Outdated Assumption #4: Structure your page with headings, metadata, and FAQs to optimize for AEO. But even these won’t guarantee ranking.
The real shift in AEO isn’t from Google to ChatGPT. It’s from a website-focused approach to content-focused optimization.
The Real Shift in Answer Engines
While Google has not lost its dominance, many people mistakenly think that the shift to AEO means transitioning entirely to ChatGPT. The truth? Google is now just as powerful a tool for answers as ChatGPT. So, the shift is not away from Google; it’s toward content that is indexed and searchable by topic—whether it’s on your website, YouTube, or other platforms.
Where Your Content Should Live
For your content to be discovered by answer engines, it needs to live somewhere indexed by search engines. Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram do not index their content for topic-based searches.
The best place to post your content for indexing? YouTube. YouTube videos rank highly on Google and also have their own answer engine. Additionally, you should embed your YouTube videos on your blog. The title of your YouTube video and your blog should answer the same question.
If you want to dominate AEO, integrate YouTube with your blog. Post your content in a place where it can be indexed, and make sure your blog and video titles align.
The Leaf Strategy Explained
The Leaf Strategy is all about creating content that will rank on Google, YouTube, and ChatGPT. Here’s how it works:
- Create a video that answers a specific question and post it to YouTube.
- Embed the YouTube video at the top of your blog post, using the same question in both the video and blog title.
- Turn the video transcript into a blog post. Now, you have content that ranks in both Google and YouTube.
By following this strategy, your content will rank higher, and when people search for that question, ChatGPT will recommend your video and blog post.
What You Actually Need to Do
Forget about traditional keyword research. Instead, focus on question research. Find long-tail questions—eight, nine, or ten-word queries—that your audience is searching for. Make sure your blog title is a direct question that answers their needs.
Your post or video should directly answer that question. Avoid the unnecessary inclusion of FAQs or additional internal linking for AEO purposes. Just keep your content clean, direct, and valuable to the user.
Do not waste money on outdated SEO services that promise vanity metrics like more views without meaningful engagement. Answer engines are smarter now. They can detect spammy content, and fake views will hurt your rankings.
Why Bad SEO Can Hurt You
Answer engines like Google, YouTube, and ChatGPT are becoming more intelligent at spotting what’s real and what’s not. Fake views or spammy content won’t help you rank. Answer engines reward quality content that provides real value to users, so avoid shortcuts like bots or automated SEO services.
What to Watch Next
If you’re ready to show up in search and rank effectively, don’t just focus on getting more views. Focus on the views that actually matter. Watch my video “Low Views on Purpose,” where I explain why a video with just 10 views might be more valuable than one with a million views.
In that episode, I’ll shift how you measure success and help you focus on the views that actually convert into leads and business. Go check it out now—linked right here!
