Today’s buyers aren’t scrolling through ten blue links. They’re asking AI tools like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for direct answers, often without ever clicking a website.
That shift is why SEO alone is no longer enough.
Welcome to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), the evolution of SEO for an AI-first world. At the center of AEO is schema markup, the structured data that helps AI understand, trust, and reuse your content as the answer.
Recording from our HubSpot User Group Webinar: "Schema Made Simple - The Secret to Being the AI Answer (From SEO to AEO)"
No. SEO is not dead — lazy SEO is.
Search engines still rely on the same core fundamentals: crawlability, content quality, structure, authority, and relevance. What has changed is how results are surfaced and consumed.
AI has accelerated this shift:
SEO still builds visibility.
AEO builds clarity, trust, helps you get cited.
If SEO helps your content get found, AEO helps your expertise become the answer.
Related Article: Google is still 210x bigger than ChatGPT in search (Search Engine Land)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so AI systems can clearly understand, trust, and reuse it as direct answers.
Do AI referrals convert better than organic search traffic? Yes, the data is clear.
Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking pages, AEO focuses on:
AEO does not replace SEO — it builds on it. Strong SEO creates visibility. AEO ensures your expertise is correctly interpreted and confidently reused by AI.
AI Search Adoption Is Growing Rapidly:
“According to McKinsey, about half of consumers now use AI-powered search tools, and AI is projected to influence $750 billion in revenue by 2028.” Source: McKinsey
Even when buyers don’t discover you through AI, they still use AI to research, validate, and compare options before making decisions. That means your website content, FAQs, videos, reviews, and structure all influence the final outcome — whether the click happens or not.
This is where schema becomes essential.
Schema is the bridge between human content and machine understanding.
Schema markup is structured data added to your website that explains what your content means, not just what it says.
Before we go deeper, here’s the key idea to remember:
Schema isn’t about rankings. Schema is about being understood, trusted, and reused.
How Does Schema Help AI Understand Your Content?
AI models don’t guess meaning. They infer it using patterns, probability, evidence, and structured signals.
Schema provides those signals by clearly defining:
Example of AI using FAQs from blog and social posts as the answer (schema is why this works)
Schema gives AI clear context instead of forcing it to infer meaning.
Without schema, AI may:
With schema, AI can:
The result is greater clarity, higher trust, and a much higher likelihood of being cited as the answer.
You don’t need dozens of schema types. You need the right stack.
Every website should start with:
Optional (when relevant):
|
Page type |
Recommended schema |
Notes / tips |
|
Homepage |
Organization + WebSite (optional) + LocalBusiness (if applicable) |
Great place to anchor your identity, logo, social profiles, and location/service area. |
|
About page |
Organization + Person/Author |
Add founder/leadership entities, credentials, social links, and “sameAs” profiles. |
|
Service page |
Service (or Product) + Offer (optional) + FAQPage (if FAQs exist) |
Use Service for professional services; Product for packaged software/products. Add Offer when pricing/packages are present. |
|
Location page (local) |
LocalBusiness + Place (optional) + FAQPage |
Include NAP consistency, service areas, hours, and location-specific FAQs. |
|
Blog post / guide / pillar |
Article + Person/Author + Organization + FAQPage (if FAQs exist) |
This is your “expertise” engine. Author schema boosts E-E-A-T. |
|
Pricing page |
Offer + Service/Product + FAQPage |
If you don’t publish pricing, AI may pull “consensus pricing” elsewhere. This page is a key AEO control point. |
|
Case study |
Article (or CreativeWork) + Organization + Review/Testimonial (if real, visible) |
Only mark reviews/testimonials that appear on the page. |
|
Testimonials page |
Review + Organization |
Don’t fabricate review markup. Match the exact visible testimonial content. |
|
FAQ page |
FAQPage |
Keep answers concise. Avoid duplicate FAQs across many pages unless it’s truly the same content. |
|
Video page / webinar landing page |
VideoObject + Article (optional) + FAQPage (optional) |
Always pair video with transcript + chapters if possible. |
|
Podcast / episode page |
PodcastEpisode (optional) + AudioObject (optional) + Article + FAQPage (optional) |
Great for AI visibility when paired with transcripts + question-based headings. |
|
Product page (ecommerce/SaaS) |
Product + Offer + Review (if visible) |
Add Offer for pricing. Add Review only if real reviews are shown. |
|
Contact page |
Organization + LocalBusiness (if applicable) |
Reinforces legitimacy and consistency for local + trust signals. |
Schema should always reflect what users actually see on the page. Anything else risks doing more harm than good.
Related Article: From SEO to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): How AI is Redefining Client Acquisition
Yes. Schema can cause issues when:
Schema should clarify reality, not manipulate algorithms.
When done correctly, schema strengthens SEO and AEO together.
Absolutely.
Schema reinforces local SEO by clearly defining:
What improves local SEO also improves AEO, and vice versa.
Yes. FAQs are one of the fastest AEO wins.
AI prefers content already structured as questions and answers because it can reuse it with minimal effort.
Use FAQs on:
Don’t hide them on a single FAQ page. Place them where buyers actually have questions.
Yes, significantly.
AI trusts video because it shows:
Always pair video with:
Important note:
YouTube does not add schema to your website. If the video appears on your site, you need to add schema yourself.
HubSpot Video and Wistia handle this automatically.
This is where HubSpot excels.
HubSpot:
How to add schema in HubSpot (step-by-step)
In Website Pages & Blog Articles Go to:
Multiple schema blocks are fine, no need to combine them into a clean schema block. Always test.
Test in three places:
Ask:
If answers improve over time, schema is working.
Week 1:
Audit entity clarity and existing schema. Fix Organization and Author first.
Week 2:
Add Article and FAQPage schema to top pages and blogs.
Week 3:
Add VideoObject schema and transcripts. Update top legacy content.
Week 4:
Layer in Product, Service, Offer, or Review schema. Test across AI tools.
No. SEO is still the foundation of visibility. AI builds on strong SEO signals like content quality, structure, and authority to generate answers. AEO ensures that visibility turns into trust and reuse.
SEO focuses on ranking pages in search results.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on helping AI tools understand, trust, and reuse your content as direct answers.
AEO optimizes for:
AEO drives trust, validation, and conversion.
Schema helps AI understand who you are, what your content means, and how it can be trusted and reused. Without schema, AI must guess. With schema, your content becomes easier to extract and cite as an answer.
Every website should start with:
These schema types cover most AI extraction and citation use cases.
Some schema should appear site-wide, such as Organization and Author.
Other schema types should only be added when relevant:
Schema should always reflect what users actually see on the page.
Yes. Adding schema that doesn’t match visible content, duplicating irrelevant schema, or “stuffing” schema can cause issues.
Schema should clarify reality — not attempt to manipulate rankings.
Schema strengthens local SEO by clearly defining:
What improves local SEO also improves AEO — and vice versa.
Yes. Keyword research still matters, but the focus shifts to intent and entities.
Long-tail, question-based searches and topic clusters are especially important because they align with how AI interprets and answers queries.
Yes. AI models often return different answers to the same question because they:
That’s why consistency matters. The more clearly and frequently your brand is associated with an answer, the more often AI will cite you.
You should test in three places:
Improving answers over time is the strongest signal that schema is helping.
AI should be used as an accelerator, not a replacement for human expertise.
Content that originates from real experience — webinars, videos, interviews, and conversations — performs better for both Google and AI. AI works best when editing, structuring, and scaling human-generated insight.
There is no exact percentage, but content that is overwhelmingly AI-generated with no original insight tends to perform poorly.
As a guideline:
Yes. FAQ sections are one of the fastest AEO wins.
AI prefers content that is already structured as questions and answers because it can extract and reuse it with minimal effort.
Absolutely. Video builds trust because it shows:
When paired with transcripts, chapters, and VideoObject schema, videos significantly increase the likelihood of being cited by AI.
Yes. YouTube does not add schema to your website.
If the video appears on your site, you should add VideoObject schema so AI can associate the video with your brand and content.
Yes. HubSpot automatically generates much of the base schema when using the right themes and modules, connects authors and content, and allows easy insertion of custom schema without developer support.
You should still test everything.
Start with:
AEO is iterative, not one-and-done.
Want to see these ideas in action? Join our next live sessions to go deeper on SEO/AEO, Loop Marketing, HubSpot optimization, and AI-powered strategy. Register here to our AEO webinars.
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