Answer engine optimization (AEO) does not replace SEO. It extends it. SEO is still how AI models and people find your content, but AEO adds a second job: making sure AI understands your brand, trusts it, and describes it accurately at every stage of the buyer's journey. On a recent episode of our podcast, Unwatchable, Gabriel Marguglio, CEO of Nextiny Marketing and a HubSpot partner for over a decade, walked our CEO Sajeel Qureshi and CRO Joe Jerome through how this shift works in practice.[1]

TL;DR

  • SEO is the foundation of AEO. Without crawlable, fast, well-structured pages, AEO has nothing to stand on.
  • SEO was mostly about discovery. AEO is about how AI understands and describes your brand across the entire buyer's journey.
  • AI looks for consensus across LinkedIn, Reddit, reviews, YouTube, and directories, not just what your website says.
  • Real experience beats generic AI content. Turn what you do every week into assets and publish them everywhere.
  • Measure mentions, citations, and sentiment over time, and treat AEO like compound interest, not a quick fix.

Why SEO Is Still the Foundation of AEO

When AEO enters the conversation, the first question is usually whether SEO is now less important. Gabriel was direct about it:

"SEO is the foundation of AEO."[1]

There are two reasons this holds. First, people still search on Google at massive scale. Search Engine Land reported that Google handles roughly 210 times more search volume than ChatGPT.[2] Gabriel pointed to the same gap on the podcast:

"Google's still 210 times bigger than ChatGPT in search, right?"[1]

Second, AI models often use search engines to find information in the first place. That means your technical SEO work still decides whether your content gets seen by either audience:

  • Site speed, page experience, and a clean, crawlable structure.
  • Schema markup so Google's Knowledge Graph and AI models can tell what is a video, a question, or an answer.
  • An optimized Google Business Profile for local visibility.
  • Technical AEO additions such as an llms.txt file.

Gabriel's point was that the two are not separate programs. SEO and AEO work as one strategy, with AEO adding the extra layers on top.

How AEO Changes the Game

1. Discovery is no longer the whole job

Traditional SEO was built around helping people find you. Gabriel described the scale of that focus this way:

"SEO was I would say 99% about how people find you for the first time."[1]

AEO covers discovery too, but its bigger value is what happens after someone already knows your name. Buyers now use AI to vet vendors before they ever talk to a salesperson:

"AI changed the way people buy, not just from discovery, but at every single part of the buyer's journey."[1]

Think about a buyer about to sign a contract. They paste it into an AI tool and ask whether to sign, what to change, and whether a cheaper or more reputable option exists. Gabriel also gave the example of med tech companies, where decisions involve insurers and multiple stakeholders who would never Google a supplier but will absolutely ask AI whether that company is real and reputable. That is why he is having AEO conversations with companies that would never have invested in SEO.

Joe described the same behavior on our side. We spend more time on proposals and scopes now because we know prospects will run them through AI, so we ask AI what we might be missing before they do.

2. Consensus matters more than what your website says

Anyone can write anything on their own site. AI models know this, so they look for agreement elsewhere:

"consensus is not what I say about myself on the website."[1]

Gabriel contrasted the two eras clearly:

"SEO was mainly website with link building. AEO is multi-channel."[1]

Joe summed it up as "triangulation, third party confirmation," and Gabriel agreed, listing the places AI checks:

  • LinkedIn posts and the comments under them.
  • Reddit conversations, where people can challenge your claims.
  • Reviews and digital PR.
  • YouTube videos with a clear question, a clear answer, and a full transcript.
  • Local sources such as a Chamber of Commerce page.

Two audit stories from Nextiny show how much these outside sources matter. In one, an 11-year-old YouTube webinar was still shaping what ChatGPT said about a company, including its old name, former staff, and discontinued products, even though the website was fully up to date. In another, an outdated Chamber of Commerce page carried more weight than the company's own service-area claims:

"if the chamber of commerce says you provide services in this area some human had to check that"[1]

3. Authentic experience beats generic AI content

Many teams fell into what Gabriel calls the AI content trap: publish everything with AI, fire the experts, and then wonder why nothing gets cited. His reasoning is simple. If an AI tool can generate your article in seconds, it has no reason to treat your article as a source. What it cannot reproduce is real experience:

"they can't fake my experience."[1]

This does not mean avoiding AI. Gabriel was clear that most of his own process uses it, especially for ideation:

"Yes, AI for ideation is amazing."[1]

The difference is the raw material. A blog built from a real webinar transcript, real slides, and real client lessons is different from a blog built from a one-line prompt asking for the latest stats. His rule for content strategy is refreshingly simple:

"Be you as much as possible, and people will do business."[1]

4. Results arrive in layers, not all at once

Gabriel described a rough order in which AI surfaces start reflecting new content, based on his own testing:

  • Google AI Overviews: often the fastest to reflect new content, which is why he uses it as a testing ground.
  • Gemini and Google AI Mode: typically follow once Google has picked something up.
  • Perplexity: leans toward live, recent information.
  • ChatGPT: tends to move more slowly because it needs more data points to change an answer.

On the speed of AI Overviews, he said:

"Google AI overviews takes 20 minutes now instead of taking six months like it used to."[1]

Visibility can move quickly. Business impact is a separate question, and it depends on whether the content brings in real conversations with real buyers.

SEO vs AEO: What Changes and What Stays

Aspect SEO focus AEO focus
Main job Help people discover you Help AI understand and describe your brand across the buyer's journey
Where the work happens Mostly your website and links Website plus LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, reviews, PR, directories
Proof Keywords, backlinks, on-page signals Consensus across independent sources and real experience
Key metrics Rankings, sessions, clicks Mentions, citations, sentiment, and leads that AI influenced
Content source Keyword research and optimized pages What your team does and learns every week
Time horizon Long term, compounding Long term, compounding, with faster early signals

How to Build an AEO Strategy That Compounds

1. Keep your SEO fundamentals tight

Fix speed, structure, schema, and local listings first. If the SEO foundation is broken, the AEO layer built on top of it will be too.

2. Run the human-to-answer loop

Gabriel's framework is built around real activity, not prompts. He described it in plain steps:

"talk about stuff you do every day, turn those things into assets, publish those assets everywhere, and then see the results"[1]

  • Run a webinar, podcast, or live conversation about something your team is actually doing.
  • Turn the transcript and slides into a blog, social posts, Reddit contributions, and short videos. Nextiny gets roughly 20 assets from each webinar.
  • Publish across the channels where your buyers ask questions.
  • Review what worked, then run the next loop.

Gabriel also covered this approach in a HubSpot webinar on building a content engine with video, webinars, and podcasts.[3] The results he shared were notable, and so was where they came from:

"$250,000 in seven months from AEO efforts."[1]

Yet the largest share of clients still came from the human side of the loop, not from AI mentions:

"Directly from the actual human webinars."[1]

3. Build consensus off your own site

Pick the position you want to own and create proof for it in public. If you want to be known as the HubSpot agency for franchises, write about that work, collect reviews from franchise owners, and host an event where franchise owners ask questions. Third parties agreeing with you is what turns a claim into a recognized fact.

4. Audit what AI already says about you

Run regular AEO audits and look for old webinars, outdated directory pages, and stale profiles that still shape the answer. Update what you can control and publish fresh, credible content around what you cannot.

5. Measure mentions, citations, and sentiment

You cannot track a fixed rank in AI answers the way you once tracked a keyword position. Gabriel framed the goal this way:

"We are trying to increase the probability of AI mentioning citing you in a good light."[1]

Research from SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai supports caution on position tracking. Their testing found that the same prompt almost never returns the same list of brands twice, with a repeat rate below 1 in 100.[6] That is why he points teams toward the three measures below:

"So it's mentions, citations, and sentiment."[1]

For HubSpot users, two tools help here. HubSpot's AEO tool tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and lists a $50 per month price, while AEO Sensor is a free tracker of industry-wide AEO shifts.[4] Gabriel compared the Sensor to market volatility:

"It's like the stock market."[1]

His advice was not to react to daily swings. For team training, HubSpot Academy offers a free AEO Fundamentals certification that covers how answer engines work and how to measure AI visibility.[5]

6. Ask buyers how they found you

Zero-click journeys will not always show up in analytics. A buyer might ask ChatGPT, verify in Claude, watch a YouTube video, and then call you, and your report will credit the call. Gabriel's fix is an old habit brought back, adding a direct question to your sales process:

"Did AI impact your decision in this transaction?"[1]

Putting It All Together

The conversation kept coming back to one idea: this is still inbound. Joe put it as "It sounds like inbound squared," and Gabriel's answer was simple:

"It's still inbound marketing, right?"[1]

What changes is the scope. Your brand now has to be clear and consistent wherever AI looks, which means doing more of the real work that inbound always asked for: teaching, helping, and publishing from genuine experience. It also takes patience. Gabriel's analogy was eating your vegetables:

"You eat your vegetables one day, you're not gonna lose three pounds."[1]

Sajeel's version was just as short: it is compound interest. A weekly habit of asking what your team did and who it helped will give you more usable content than any keyword list, and it feeds both SEO and AEO at the same time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does AEO replace SEO?

No. SEO is the foundation AEO is built on. AI models often rely on search engines to find information, and people still search on Google at far greater volume than on ChatGPT.[2] AEO adds extra technical and multi-channel work on top.

What is the difference between SEO and AEO?

SEO is mainly about helping people discover you. AEO is about how AI understands your brand, your people, and your services, and how it describes them across the whole buyer's journey, from first search to final contract review.[1]

Why does AI look at sources other than my website?

Because you control your own site and can say anything on it. AI models look for consensus across public places such as LinkedIn, Reddit, reviews, YouTube, and local directories, where claims can be checked or challenged.[1]

Can I still use AI to create content?

Yes. AI is excellent for ideation, structuring, and turning transcripts into drafts. The key is to feed it real input such as webinar transcripts, client lessons, and your own opinions, so the output reflects your experience instead of generic information that AI already has.[1]

How do I measure AEO success?

Track mentions, citations, and sentiment over time, and connect them to leads and sales conversations. Position tracking in AI answers is unreliable because lists vary so much between runs.[6] HubSpot's AEO tool is one option for tracking visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.[4]

How long does AEO take to show results?

Visibility can move quickly, with Google AI Overviews sometimes reflecting new content within minutes, while other models take longer. Revenue impact depends on consistency, and Gabriel recommends treating AEO as a long-term compounding strategy.[1]

Sources

  1. Unwatchable podcast by Computan: conversation with Gabriel Marguglio, CEO of Nextiny Marketing, hosted by Joe Jerome and Sajeel Qureshi
  2. Search Engine Land: Google is still 210x bigger than ChatGPT in search
  3. HubSpot Events: From SEO to AEO, Optimizing Your Content Engine with Video, Webinars and Podcasts
  4. HubSpot: AEO tool and AEO Sensor
  5. HubSpot Academy: AEO Fundamentals certification
  6. SparkToro: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products