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

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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.

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: In this episode, Joe and I are diving into our biggest takeaways from HubSpot's inbound conference, and one acronym kept popping up, and that is AEO, or AI Engine Optimization. So think SEO, but for AI. So in this episode, we break down what AEO actually is, why it might matter for solopreneurs, but shouldn't be your top priority, and how to start showing up in AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity without losing your human touch. From structured content and original frameworks to the importance of clarity over cleverness, this is a crash course on being found by machines while still connecting with people. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.

I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of Lifestarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.

No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. So Joe, when we were done with the solopreneur success cycle sound bite episodes, we're like, let's dive into the inbound conference and what we learned there and all that jazz. It's crazy to me that we're now like six weeks out from Inbound. And we had so much content to cover with the success cycle that we're just now getting to it. How wild is it that it's already been six, seven weeks?

Joe Rando: It's time. Time just passes.

Carly Ries: It is wild. But one of the things that came up so much, at this conference was the idea of AEO, which is AI engine optimization, kind of like a play on SEO, but it's AEO.

Joe Rando: Instead of search engine optimization.

Carly Ries: Exactly. But what was interesting, Inbound is is HubSpot's annual conference, and it's primarily I don't wanna say primarily, but it's largely focused on larger companies,

Joe Rando: And pretty heavily b to b as well, not business to consumer.

Carly Ries: Yes.

Joe Rando: Business to business. But still, it still has stuff.

Carly Ries: It does. And one of the topics that came up, like we're saying, was AEO. What we wanna say, we feel like you should have the knowledge listeners of what AEO is and kind of the tools that you should use to implement it or just kind of the strategy you should use. But like with SEO, and we mentioned this in our book as well, this should not be a top priority. For solopreneurs, building those relationships, really fostering connection in the human component should be number one.

But if you also wanna be figuring out how to optimize free EOS that you have found in ChatGPT , Perplexity, all those other AI platforms, this gives you a little bit of an advantage from a long term play. But this is likely not gonna get you any immediate results.

Joe Rando: Yeah. It depends on the business. I mean, a lot of solopreneurs are things like life coaches and consultants and contractors. And it, isn't likely that SEO is driving a ton of their business. But, maybe some solopreneurs develop apps.

And if you have a very uniquely positioned app that's, got a narrow niche, and when somebody searches for that thing, you might want to be able to show up, you know, when you Google now, the top thing you get a lot of times is basically a description from Google about what it is you're asking or an answer to what you're asking. And if you have the answer, it might be nice to show up there as opposed to, you know, even if you show up now on the list, a lot of people don't go past that. They call it zero click search. Right? You type it in, it pops up an answer, and you don't click on anything.

And that worries me. I mean, just to be honest, that worries me that the motivation to create content is being, reduced. But, we'll see what happens.

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

So you have to know your audience clearly. You have to have a strong brand voice. You have to have that original content. You have to have your own owned marketing sources like newsletters, your website, those communities that you build. Having those foundational components in place should be number one in an effort to get discovered in these new AI or AI platforms.

Anything to add to that?

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

There may be a link back. There may not. So it's kind of important to think through if you do decide you wanna show up in here, you gotta be saying something that not only the AI likes and wants to show people, but that the people will remember so that they can find you later. So just keep that in mind that, this whole kind of automated SEO show up, click the link, and they are on your site. That's broken, along with a lot of other stuff this is doing. so just keep that in mind that you wanna be very memorable when you show up.

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

Joe Rando: Sure. I mean, I've got some things I wanna talk through, but yeah, do that, and then we can cover anything that maybe I feel like we didn't quite hit hard enough.

Carly Ries: Okay. yeah, so like I said, clarity over cleverness. And actually this next part, structured content is big for AEOs. So your headings using FAQs, using bullet points in your written copy. AI scrapes well organized information higher.

So actually, even for our podcast, for our show notes, I now have FAQs as part of our episodes in an effort for AI to be like, oh, well those are questions that people might type in to chatGPT. They're said verbatim on their website, I'm gonna pull those into AI. So that's big Authoritativeness, did I just make up that word?

Joe Rando: No. Authoritativeness? That's a word.

Carly Ries: Alright. It is now. We're bringing it for an authority, getting that social proof, getting those credentials. AI loves it.  it scrapes all of that as well. So be an expert and be trustworthy from your audience.

Be consistent with your branding across the board. AI tools check for consistency to verify the source credibility. So that's huge. And then think about topic clusters. That signals expertise to AI.

So if you're a productivity coach, let's say, have multiple posts on productivity. Time blocking burnout, it'll see the repetition, and kinda be like, oh, they know what they're talking about. But those are some of the pointers. anything you wanna add?

Joe Rando: Yeah. I think this is an important one that most solopreneurs aren't going to know about. And that is there's this kind of code that you can add to your web pages or your blog pages, and called JSON - LD. I don't even know what that stands for, but it's basically kind of code, that tells the AI very efficiently at the top of your page what the page is about. So the AI can kind of digest it.

Then that's it saying you get rid of things like FAQs because those are also good, and they're good for the user, you know, the person that's on your page. But this kind of this very efficiently lets AI process what's there, and it can really help you if you're trying to rank for it. You can Google this JSON-LD, There are tools out there that will kind of go through your page. I think HubSpot has one.

I know Kevin Fremon, who was on our podcast a few years ago, has developed one. But there are these tools out there that will kinda go through your page, create this code. You can paste it into the header of the web page, and make your page much more attractive.

Carly Ries: Any others you'd wanna add?

Joe Rando: Yeah. So I just wanna reiterate that you want to be thinking about the machines, but don't forget about the humans. You know, you wanna think about the machines and having this JSON - LD is great. But still keep creating content for people. I think number one, you're still gonna have people go into your content and you want it to make sense for them. And number two, I'm pretty sure that the AIs are gonna be looking at this AI code, so to speak, comparing it to the content, deciding whether they're coherent and that they're gonna rank it higher if it looks like good human content too, because you know, that's what it's supposed to be about.

Carly Ries: And I think the other thing that I forgot to mention is to really lean into your own research or original frameworks or methodologies, because they'll see you as a trustworthy person there as well. So like, we have our smooth method now. We have the priority framework. We have this opener success cycle. Having those kinds of things is also a good signal to AEO or the to the AI platforms that like, oh, these guys have original ideas.

I could use this as part of my recommendations of the results. So that's a big one. I would say things not to do. Don't try to game the system. There isn't really a system right now.  It's still changing in my opinion.  I think anyone that thinks there is an actual playbook right now is mistaken.   

If there is one thing we know about AI, it is constantly changing. I wouldn't try to game anything. Again, just like SEO, don't use keyword stuffing in order to get in the results.  Like SEO, It'll flag it. And like we keep saying, human connection is priority, so don't prioritize this kind of stuff over your audience relationships, your conversations. I think the other hard thing about AEO right now is there are platforms to track it. But even those aren't down to a science. So it can't be something that you're putting all of your eggs in this one basket from a tracking standpoint, because that's also always changing.

Those are my 2¢ there of like kinda red flags to avoid.

Joe Rando: Yeah. There aren't the good tools like they have for SEO that show how well you're doing so you kinda have to manually test it. You know, go into an incognito browser type a question and see whether you show up. Right? that's the way to do it right now. I will say that things like AnswerThePublic and those kinds of tools that tell you what people are searching for, that can still be a powerful way to decide what kind of content you might wanna create. That's not gone. It's just that, once you've done that, you need your content to have this kind of AEO friendliness that we never thought about before.

Carly Ries: Exactly. Well, to wrap up, human connection always, this could be a good long term play, but just don't rely on it as your sole marketing tactic. Anything else?

Joe Rando: That's it for me.

Carly Ries: Alright, listeners. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave that five star review. Share this episode with a friend and subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube. And we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur.

You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.