The Search Landscape Has Shifted
Your buyers aren't Googling like they used to. Whether you're selling SaaS to enterprise clients or trainers to weekend shoppers, more of your audience is now asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for recommendations rather than scrolling through search results. These tools skip the list of links entirely, serving up direct, conversational answers instead.
This is where Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) comes in.
While traditional SEO is all about ranking on search engine results pages, AEO focuses on getting your content chosen as the answer, positioning your brand front and centre in AI-generated responses.
For B2B marketers with long sales cycles and D2C brands competing for instant attention, showing up in these answers is quickly becoming just as valuable as ranking on page one of Google.
The good news? If you're already using HubSpot Content Hub or Marketing Hub Pro, you're closer to mastering AEO than you might think.
What Is AEO, and Why Should HubSpot Users Care?
AEO is the practice of optimising content to appear as a direct answer in AI-powered tools. Rather than chasing keywords and backlinks, success here comes down to brand visibility, citations, and share of voice, essentially, how often and how prominently your brand gets mentioned when AI tools respond to relevant queries.
It's worth noting that AEO isn't the same as GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation).
GEO focuses narrowly on generative AI, while AEO casts a wider net, covering voice search, featured snippets, and AI-generated responses alike. And because ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity each work differently, a one-size-fits-all approach won't cut it.
Your competitors may already be showing up in these answers while you're nowhere to be found, and you might not even know it.
Getting to Know HubSpot AEO
HubSpot's AEO tool gives you a practical way to close that gap, offering:
- A brand visibility score, measuring how well you're being seen and recognised across channels compared to competitors
- Prompt tracking, showing which AI-generated questions your brand appears in (and which it doesn't)
- Competitor share of voice, so you can see how you stack up
- Citation analysis, revealing which pages and domains are driving AI mentions
- Prioritised recommendations, turning raw data into a clear, ranked action plan
Depending on your setup, AEO is available as a standalone tool or bundled within Marketing Hub Pro/Enterprise, so it's worth checking which option suits your team and budget.
Auditing and Optimising Your Content
Before creating anything new, run your existing content through HubSpot's free AEO Grader to establish a baseline. Test prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to see where you're strongest and where you're falling short, and pay close attention to your citation rate, as it's one of the clearest signals of AI visibility.
From there, optimisation comes down to two pillars: content optimisation and content visibility.
In practice, that means formatting with clear headings, bullet points, tables, and schema markup, writing in direct language that avoids ambiguity, and using tools like Breeze Assistant to review existing pages against your brand voice. The goal is content that reads naturally for humans while remaining easy for AI to parse and cite.
Building Multi-Engine Visibility
Because ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity each behave differently, building genuine authority means showing up consistently across all three, not just optimising for your favourite. HubSpot's Marketing Studio can help you plan aligned multi-channel campaigns, while Content Remix lets you repurpose existing assets to extend reach without creating more work.
Don't overlook third-party mentions, forums, and social platforms either. These all feed into your EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals, which directly influence whether AI tools trust your content enough to cite it.
Turning Insights Into Action
Once you've got recommendations flowing in through HubSpot AEO, prioritise them, decide when to create new content versus refresh existing pages, and use AI-generated suggestions as a starting point rather than a finished product. Human review still matters here, especially when you're protecting brand voice and accuracy across B2B and D2C content alike.
Your First Steps
AEO isn't a one-off project, it's an ongoing cycle. Set a regular audit cadence (every 90 days is a solid starting point), track your visibility score after each content update, and refine your brand voice based on what the data tells you.
To get started this week: run the free HubSpot AEO Grader, identify your three weakest content areas, and set a baseline you can measure future progress against. Multi-engine visibility is fast becoming the new competitive edge, and HubSpot users already have the tools to claim it.
Of course if you need some help getting started, we're here to guide and assist you. Look out for our 3-part e-book on AEO coming soon.
Get in Touch.
