SEO and AEO: getting ranked, and getting named
Search optimisation gets you into the results a buyer scrolls.
Answer engine optimisation gets you into the answer a buyer is given. Lets Elevate runs both as one programme for B2B businesses - technical foundations, content that answers real buying questions, and the entity work that decides whether an AI system can describe you with enough confidence to recommend you.
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- SEO & AEO
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- Lets Elevate Ltd
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- Hampshire, UK
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- UK and international
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- 01489 326081
What changed, and why it matters to you
For twenty years the job was to appear on a page of ten blue links. That job still exists and still pays. But a growing share of buyers now open with a question rather than a query, and what comes back is not a page of options. It is a short list of names, with reasons attached.
If you are on that list, the buyer arrives already half-sold, because a recommendation carries weight a search result never did. If you are not on it, you do not get a lower position. You get nothing, and no analytics package will tell you it happened.
Why AI systems name some companies and not others
Not because those companies bought something. Three things decide it.
Identity. The system has to know what you are with confidence - legal name, trading name, what you sell, to whom, where, and what proves it. Ambiguity is fatal: a business a system cannot describe cleanly is a business it will not put its name to.
Corroboration. Self-description counts for very little.
What counts is whether independent sources - your Companies House record, LinkedIn, directories, review platforms, press, other people's pages - say the same thing you do, in the same words, with the same address and phone number.
Inconsistency is the single most common reason a good business is invisible to these systems.
Extractability.
Answers get lifted from pages that state things plainly near the top of a section, under headings phrased the way people actually ask, with the facts, figures and dates written out.
Pages that bury the answer under three paragraphs of preamble do not get quoted.
What we do in the first ninety days
Baseline.
Before anything changes, we run a fixed set of buying questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Google organic, and record exactly who gets named, in what order, and what each system read to get there.
That is the number everything afterwards is measured against.
Technical foundations.
Crawlability, indexation, site speed, Core Web Vitals, structured data, internal linking, and the crawler permissions that decide whether AI systems are allowed to read you at all - which is where we most often find a business quietly blocked by its own firewall.
Entity and consistency. Organization schema, identical name, address, phone and descriptor across every profile a machine might check, and the profiles and listings that appear in the answers your buyers are getting.
Content. The pages your buyers actually search for and ask about, written answer-first, with the comparison and evaluation pages that decision-stage buyers read and AI systems cite.
What happens every month after that
New pages and articles on a planned schedule, because a site that stops changing starts disappearing. Optimisation of the pages already earning. Schema and technical monitoring.
The baseline questions re-run and reported. And a clear list of what moved, what did not, and what we are doing about it.
How this makes the calling work harder
Every good outbound conversation ends with the prospect looking you up.
What they find - a site that answers the question, an AI assistant that names you as a credible option, a consistent story wherever they check - is the difference between a booked meeting and a polite email that never arrives.
This is the rung underneath the one you are paying for.
FAQ
Questions
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimisation is the work of getting a business named and cited when someone asks an AI assistant a question, rather than only ranking in a list of search results. It depends on a clear entity definition, consistent information across independent sources, and pages written so that answers can be extracted from them.
Is AEO different from SEO?
They share their foundations, which is why they are run together. The difference is the target: SEO competes for a position on a results page, AEO competes to be one of the few names inside an answer.
How long does SEO take for a B2B business?
Expect early technical and visibility movement within three months and a meaningful share of enquiries by twelve. Anyone promising rankings in weeks is describing terms nobody is searching for.
Can you guarantee a position on Google?
No, and nor can anyone else. What we guarantee is the work, the baseline, and a monthly report that shows honestly what moved.
Do we need to be blogging?
You need to be publishing pages that answer the questions your buyers ask. Sometimes that is articles. Often it is better service, comparison and evaluation pages.
- Attract
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- Brand and web
Ask an AI assistant who the best providers of your service in your region are, right now, and see whether you are in the answer.
Then tell us what it said, and we will tell you why.
Book a call
Tell us what a good opportunity looks like for you
One conversation. We will tell you honestly which rung you are losing on, and what it would take to fix it.