243. Warning: “Zero-click search” could kill your traffic. Here’s the fix.

If you thought SEO was complicated…meet its AI-powered cousin.

In this episode, Carly and Joe break down the buzzword that dominated INBOUND, AEO (AI Engine Optimization), and explain what it actually means for solopreneurs. Spoiler: it’s not about gaming algorithms or chasing clicks. It’s about making sure your voice, ideas, and frameworks show up when AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini answer your audience’s questions.

You’ll learn:

• What AEO really is (and what it isn’t)
• The small tweaks that help your content stand out in AI search results
• Why clarity > cleverness in your copy
• And why human connection still beats machine optimization every time

If you’ve ever wondered how to future-proof your visibility without losing your authenticity, this one’s for you.

FAQs From The Episode

What’s the difference between SEO and AEO, and do I really need both?
SEO helps search engines (like Google) find you. AEO helps AI engines (like ChatGPT or Perplexity) understand and surface your content. While SEO is still valuable, AEO focuses more on structure, clarity, and credibility signals that make AI choose you as the source when answering questions. You don’t need to overhaul everything. Just start optimizing for both audiences: humans and machines.

I’m a coach/consultant/service provider. Does AEO even matter for me?
For most solopreneurs, relationships and referrals still drive the majority of business. But AEO is a long-term play. If someone asks an AI tool, “Who’s the best productivity coach for solopreneurs?” or “What’s the SMOOTH method?”—you want your name, content, or frameworks to appear. It’s not urgent, but it’s smart to start now so you’re discoverable later.

What’s one simple AEO tweak I can make today?
Add an FAQ section (like this!) to your website or blog posts. AI scrapes well-structured Q&A content, and it’s one of the easiest ways to signal authority. Bonus tip: use clear, direct language over clever wording. AI prioritizes clarity, and so do readers.

🌟 Featured Resource: LifeStarr Intro for Solopreneurs

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• A vibrant community of like-minded solopreneurs for feedback, encouragement, and connection
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Episode Transcript

Carly Ries (00:00):
In this episode, Joe and I are diving into our

(00:02):
biggest takeaways from HubSpot'sinbound conference, and one
acronym kept popping up, andthat is AEO, or AI Engine
Optimization. So think SEO, butfor AI. So in this episode, we
break down what AEO actually is,why it might matter for
solopreneurs, but shouldn't beyour top priority, and how to
start showing up in AI searchtools like ChatGPT and

(00:23):
Perplexity without losing yourhuman touch. From structured
content and original frameworksto the importance of clarity
over cleverness, this is a crashcourse on being found by
machines while still connectingwith people. You're listening to
The Aspiring Solopreneur, thepodcast for anyone on the solo
business journey, whether you'rejust toying with the idea,

(00:44):
taking your first bold step, orhave been running your own show
for years and want to keepgrowing, refining, and thriving.
I'm Carly Ries, and along withmy cohost, Joe Rando, we're your
guides through the crazy butawesome world of being a company
of one. As part of Lifestarr, adigital hub dedicated to all
things solopreneurship, we helppeople design businesses that

(01:05):
align with their life'sambitions so they can work to
live, not live to work. Ifyou're looking for a get rich
quick scheme, this is not theplace for you. But if you want
real world insights fromindustry experts, lessons from
the successes and stumbles offellow solopreneurs, and
practical strategies forbuilding and sustaining a
business you love, you're in theright spot. Because flying solo

(01:25):
in business doesn't mean you'realone.
No matter where you are in yourjourney, we've got your back. So

(02:14):
Joe, when we were done with thesolopreneur success cycle sound
bite episodes, we're like, let'sdive into the inbound conference
and what we learned there andall that jazz. It's crazy to me
that we're now like six weeksout from Inbound. And we had so
much content to cover with thesuccess cycle that we're just
now getting to it. How wild isit that it's already been six,
seven weeks?

Joe Rando (02:35):
It's time. Time just passes.

Carly Ries (02:40):
It is wild. But one of the things that came up so
much, at this conference was theidea of AEO, which is AI engine
optimization, kind of like aplay on SEO, but it's AEO.

Joe Rando (02:53):
Instead of search engine optimization.

Carly Ries (02:55):
Exactly. But what was interesting, Inbound is is
HubSpot's annual conference, andit's primarily I don't wanna say
primarily, but it's largelyfocused on larger companies,

Joe Rando (03:07):
And pretty heavily b to b as well, not business to
consumer.

Carly Ries (03:12):
Yes.

Joe Rando (03:12):
Business to business. But still, it still has stuff.

Carly Ries (03:15):
It does. And one of the topics that came up, like
we're saying, was AEO. What wewanna say, we feel like you
should have the knowledgelisteners of what AEO is and
kind of the tools that youshould use to implement it or
just kind of the strategy youshould use. But like with SEO,
and we mentioned this in ourbook as well, this should not be
a top priority. Forsolopreneurs, building those

(03:38):
relationships, really fosteringconnection in the human
component should be number one.
But if you also wanna befiguring out how to optimize
free EOS that you have found inChatGPT , Perplexity, all those
other AI platforms, this givesyou a little bit of an advantage
from a long term play. But thisis likely not gonna get you any

(04:00):
immediate results.

Joe Rando (04:02):
Yeah. It depends on the business. I mean, a lot of
solopreneurs are things likelife coaches and consultants and
contractors. And it, isn'tlikely that SEO is driving a ton
of their business. But, maybesome solopreneurs develop apps.
And if you have a very uniquelypositioned app that's, got a

(04:25):
narrow niche, and when somebodysearches for that thing, you
might want to be able to showup, you know, when you Google
now, the top thing you get a lotof times is basically a
description from Google aboutwhat it is you're asking or an
answer to what you're asking.And if you have the answer, it

(04:46):
might be nice to show up thereas opposed to, you know, even if
you show up now on the list, alot of people don't go past
that. They call it zero clicksearch. Right? You type it in,
it pops up an answer, and youdon't click on anything.
And that worries me. I mean,just to be honest, that worries
me that the motivation to createcontent is being, reduced. But,

(05:08):
we'll see what happens.

Carly Ries (05:10):
Yeah. And just before we kick things off, AEO
is think of it as a visibilityenhancer, but it shouldn't build
your business. I mean, this isjust how you can get discovered
on AI engines, AI searchengines. But you still have to
get the foundations right beforeyou can rely on AI to find you.

(05:34):
So you have to know youraudience clearly. You have to
have a strong brand voice. Youhave to have that original
content. You have to have yourown owned marketing sources like
newsletters, your website, thosecommunities that you build.
Having those foundationalcomponents in place should be
number one in an effort to getdiscovered in these new AI or AI

(05:56):
platforms.
Anything to add to that?

Joe Rando (06:00):
Well, I mean, absolutely, it's a way to get
discovered. The tricky part isthat when they do this, a lot of
times, if you show up in thatanswer, say, in Google or in
Perplexity or ChatGPT, whatever,sometimes there's no link back
to you. one of the things welove about SEO is if you do show
up, they click that blue bar andboom, your website pops up.

(06:24):
There may be a link back. Theremay not. So it's kind of
important to think through ifyou do decide you wanna show up
in here, you gotta be sayingsomething that not only the AI
likes and wants to show people,but that the people will
remember so that they can findyou later. So just keep that in
mind that, this whole kind ofautomated SEO show up, click the

(06:47):
link, and they are on your site.That's broken, along with a lot
of other stuff this is doing. sojust keep that in mind that you
wanna be very memorable when youshow up.

Carly Ries (06:57):
And I'm so glad you said that because I would say
clarity over cleverness in yourcontent. Think about being more
straightforward and cutting thefluff. I don't know. Joe, are
you okay if I dive into some ofthe takeaways of just, like,
some pointers?

Joe Rando (07:12):
Sure. I mean, I've got some things I wanna talk
through, but yeah, do that, andthen we can cover anything that
maybe I feel like we didn'tquite hit hard enough.

Carly Ries (07:20):
Okay. yeah, so like I said, clarity over cleverness.
And actually this next part,structured content is big for
AEOs. So your headings usingFAQs, using bullet points in
your written copy. AI scrapeswell organized information
higher.
So actually, even for ourpodcast, for our show notes, I

(07:41):
now have FAQs as part of ourepisodes in an effort for AI to
be like, oh, well those arequestions that people might type
in to chatGPT. They're saidverbatim on their website, I'm
gonna pull those into AI. Sothat's big Authoritativeness,
did I just make up that word?

Joe Rando (08:01):
No. Authoritativeness? That's a
word.

Carly Ries (08:05):
Alright. It is now. We're bringing it for an
authority, getting that socialproof, getting those
credentials. AI loves it. itscrapes all of that as well. So
be an expert and be trustworthyfrom your audience.
Be consistent with your brandingacross the board. AI tools check
for consistency to verify thesource credibility. So that's

(08:29):
huge. And then think about topicclusters. That signals expertise
to AI.
So if you're a productivitycoach, let's say, have multiple
posts on productivity. Timeblocking burnout, it'll see the
repetition, and kinda be like,oh, they know what they're
talking about. But those aresome of the pointers. anything
you wanna add?

Joe Rando (08:48):
Yeah. I think this is an important one that most
solopreneurs aren't going toknow about. And that is there's
this kind of code that you canadd to your web pages or your
blog pages, and called JSON -LD. I don't even know what that

(09:09):
stands for, but it's basicallykind of code, that tells the AI
very efficiently at the top ofyour page what the page is
about. So the AI can kind ofdigest it.
Then that's it saying you getrid of things like FAQs because
those are also good, and they'regood for the user, you know, the
person that's on your page. Butthis kind of this very

(09:33):
efficiently lets AI processwhat's there, and it can really
help you if you're trying torank for it. You can Google this
JSON-LD, There are tools outthere that will kind of go
through your page. I thinkHubSpot has one.
I know Kevin Fremon, who was onour podcast a few years ago, has
developed one. But there arethese tools out there that will

(09:54):
kinda go through your page,create this code. You can paste
it into the header of the webpage, and make your page much
more attractive.

Carly Ries (10:06):
Any others you'd wanna add?

Joe Rando (10:10):
Yeah. So I just wanna reiterate that you want to be
thinking about the machines, butdon't forget about the humans.
You know, you wanna think aboutthe machines and having this
JSON - LD is great. But stillkeep creating content for
people. I think number one,you're still gonna have people

(10:31):
go into your content and youwant it to make sense for them.
And number two, I'm pretty surethat the AIs are gonna be
looking at this AI code, so tospeak, comparing it to the
content, deciding whetherthey're coherent and that
they're gonna rank it higher ifit looks like good human content
too, because you know, that'swhat it's supposed to be about.

Carly Ries (10:54):
And I think the other thing that I forgot to
mention is to really lean intoyour own research or original
frameworks or methodologies,because they'll see you as a
trustworthy person there aswell. So like, we have our
smooth method now. We have thepriority framework. We have this
opener success cycle. Havingthose kinds of things is also a

(11:14):
good signal to AEO or the to theAI platforms that like, oh,
these guys have original ideas.
I could use this as part of myrecommendations of the results.
So that's a big one. I would saythings not to do. Don't try to
game the system. There isn'treally a system right

(11:55):
flag it. And like we keepsaying, human connection is
priority, so don't prioritizethis kind of stuff over your
audience relationships, yourconversations. I think the other
hard thing about AEO right nowis there are platforms to track
it. But even those aren't downto a science. So it can't be

(12:16):
something that you're puttingall of your eggs in this one
basket from a trackingstandpoint, because that's also
always changing.
Those are my 2¢ there of likekinda red flags to avoid.

Joe Rando (12:26):
Yeah. There aren't the good tools like they have
for SEO that show how wellyou're doing so you kinda have
to manually test it. You know,go into an incognito browser
type a question and see whetheryou show up. Right? that's the
way to do it right now. I willsay that things like
AnswerThePublic and those kindsof tools that tell you what

(12:47):
people are searching for, thatcan still be a powerful way to
decide what kind of content youmight wanna create. That's not
gone. It's just that, onceyou've done that, you need your
content to have this kind of AEOfriendliness that we never
thought about before.

Carly Ries (13:07):
Exactly. Well, to wrap up, human connection
always, this could be a goodlong term play, but just don't
rely on it as your solemarketing tactic. Anything else?

Joe Rando (13:19):
That's it for me.

Carly Ries (13:21):
Alright, listeners. Well, thank you so much for
tuning in. As always, leave thatfive star review. Share this
episode with a friend andsubscribe to our show on your
favorite podcast platform,including YouTube. And we will
see you next time on TheAspiring Solopreneur.
You may be going solo inbusiness, but that doesn't mean
you're alone. In fact, millionsof people are in your shoes,

(13:41):
running a one person businessand figuring it out as they go.
So why not connect with them andlearn from each other's
successes and failures? AtLifeStarr, we're creating a one
person business community whereyou can go to meet and get
advice from other solopreneurs.Be sure to join in on the
conversations atcommunity.lifestarr.com.