The AEO Playbook: Getting Cited by Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini
The five-step playbook for getting your startup into AI answers. Works even for domains with zero existing authority.
AEO — AI Engine Optimization — is how you get your brand cited when someone asks Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini a question. In 2026 this matters as much as SEO did in 2015. Here is the playbook.
Step 1: Build your entity
An "entity" in the LLM sense is the structured set of facts about your brand that the model has learned. Every LLM builds an entity graph. Your job is to feed it clean signals.
Create a Wikipedia-style brand page on your own site at /company or /about. Include founding date, founders, HQ, product categories, notable customers, and key differentiators. Mark it up with Organization schema.
Step 2: Own three "vs" pages
Pick your three biggest competitors. Write a direct comparison page for each. These pages get pulled into AI answers 4× more often than standard product pages.
Step 3: Publish original research
One data-backed post per quarter. LLMs weight original data very highly — it is the single strongest signal for authoritative citation. Survey your users, analyze your internal data, publish the findings.
Step 4: Get Reddit and Wikipedia mentions
This is where AEO diverges from SEO. LLMs heavily weight mentions on Reddit, Wikipedia, and Hacker News. A single Reddit thread with your brand name in a positive context can move your citation rate more than 50 backlinks.
Step 5: Monitor and iterate
Use the ai-citation-tracker skill to measure how often each LLM cites you by name. Track weekly. When a model drops you, investigate. When one picks you up, study why.
The 90-day target
Following this playbook for 90 days gets most founders from "never cited" to "cited weekly" across all three major LLMs. Start with Step 1 today.
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