AEO vs SEO: How to Write Blog Posts That Show Up in AI Search
Apr 21, 2026The Way You Write Blogs Has to Change (And It's Actually Easier)
If you've been writing blogs for a while and wondering why you're not showing up the way you used to, or why you're not showing up in AI-generated answers at all, this is the post you've been waiting for.
Writing for SEO and writing for AEO are not the same strategy. And right now, most business owners are still doing one (SEO) without knowing they need the other (AEO).
The good news is that shifting your approach is not starting over. It's layering a smarter strategy on top of what you're already doing. And once you understand how it works, it actually makes writing blogs feel a lot more natural.
AEO vs SEO: What Is the Difference and Why Does It Matter?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about getting found or ranked on Google. You're optimizing for keywords and key phrases that people type into a search bar, and the goal is to show up in the list of results.
AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, is about getting recommended by AI. Instead of optimizing for a keyword, you're optimizing for a question. You're writing in a way that helps tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews find your content, understand it, and confidently share it when someone asks something in your area of expertise.
The biggest difference comes down to intent. SEO is written to get a click. AEO is written to be the answer.
When we're doing keyword research for AEO, we're not just looking at what people are typing into a search bar. We're looking at what people are actually asking inside AI tools. Ubersuggest, the tool we use for research, now shows you AI-specific search behavior, which gives you a much clearer picture of the questions your ideal client is already asking out loud. That's a completely different starting point than traditional keyword research.
We go deep on this topic on two podcasts if you prefer to listen. We joined Ellen Yin on Cubicle to CEO and Emily Reagan on The Marketing Freelancer. Links at the bottom of this post.
How Do You Structure a Blog Post for AEO?
With SEO, you're thinking about keywords being placed throughout the content. With AEO, you're thinking about questions being asked and answered directly. Which changes everything from how you write your headings to how you structure your paragraphs.
Write your H2 headings as the actual questions people are asking. Not clever titles, not cute section names. Real questions that someone would type (or say) into an AI tool. When an AI scans your blog looking for an answer to pull, a heading that IS the question makes it incredibly easy to find and cite your content. (You can literally see us doing it in this blog.)
The writing itself becomes more conversational, too. AEO-friendly content reads more like a knowledgeable friend answering a question than a listicle optimized for a bot. Blogs written for AEO contain fewer bullet points, more direct answers written in full sentences and clear paragraphs.
Each section of your blog should be able to stand alone as an answer. If you pulled out one H2 and the two or three paragraphs beneath it, it should make complete sense without the rest of the post. That's what AI is doing when it pulls from your content.
How Do You Choose the Right Blog Topics for AEO?
Definitely don't skip this part because it's different from the old SEO ways.
The mistake we see constantly is writing about a wide range of loosely related topics to try and cover as much ground as possible. That's an SEO strategy. It doesn't work for AEO because AI tools are looking for depth, not breadth.
For AEO, the goal is to become the clear, go-to authority on two or three specific topics related to your niche. That's what gets you recommended.
Here's how we actually determine what those topics should be for our clients. We start with the offer. What do you want to be known for? (Hint: it should be directly related to your offer.) What are the two or three things someone needs to fully understand before your offer becomes an obvious yes for them? What are people actually searching for or asking questions about regarding those topics? The overlap becomes your sweet spot.
We did this exact exercise with a client who teaches advanced clinical skills to dentists. When we dug into the research, we found that her audience wasn't searching for specific procedures (which is what she thought she would blog on). In fact, we found ZERO searches for the procedure topics she thought would make good blogs. Instead, they were searching for broader topics around continuing education and clinical confidence. So we built her entire blog strategy around those two topics, twelve posts total to get her started, structured so that every blog references and links to at least two or three others. The blogs circulate around each other, internal links keep people (and AI) moving through the content, and the whole ecosystem reinforces her as the authority on those exact topics.
That strategy is what we build for every client, and it's what we'd recommend for your business too.
What Does a Strategic Blog Content Plan Actually Look Like?
It's not just picking topics. It's thinking about how the topics relate to each other before you write a single post.
When you plan a cluster of blogs around two or three core topics, each blog has somewhere to link. You're referencing other posts you've written, circulating readers through your content by linking to other blogs within your blogs (as opposed to back linking, this is called internal linking), and showing AI tools repeatedly that you are the source for these specific questions. That repetition matters and is super powerful.
We audited a website recently for a LinkedIn expert who had built out about 21 blogs using this exact approach. She wasn't publishing something new every single week. Her strategy was to create a body of work around the questions her audience always asks, and then use those posts as resources she could point people to anytime the question came up. It's a completely different way to think about blogging.
That said, both Google and AI tools do reward fresh content. Consistently publishing new posts signals that your site is active. And updating older blog posts, even small updates, can give them a second life in search. You don't always have to start from scratch. Sometimes, refreshing what you already have is the fastest move.
Hot tip: When you update a blog post, be sure to update the date in your Schema Markup with the new date!
What Does AI Look for When Deciding Who to Recommend?
Three things AI needs to recommend you are clarity, authority, and repetition.
Clarity means AI can quickly understand who you are, who you serve, and what you're an expert in. If your website and blog are all over the place topically, AI doesn't know what to do with you. Think about that friend who you don't really know what they do for a living. How can you recommend them if you don't fully understand what they do?
Authority means your content demonstrates real expertise. Not surface-level summaries that could have been written by anyone. We're talking about first-hand perspective, professional judgment, cause-and-effect insights from actual experience. The kind of thing you'd say to a client or a colleague, not something you'd read in a textbook. When your blogs include phrases like "what we see consistently with our clients is..." or "in our experience working with coaches and service providers..." that's the kind of language AI recognizes as genuine expertise.
Repetition means showing up consistently on those same core topics across multiple posts. The more your blog ecosystem reinforces your authority in a specific area, the more confidently AI can recommend you when a related question comes up.
Clarity on your business plus consistent content on your core topics is what gives AI everything it needs to recommend you with confidence.
What Is Schema Markup and Why Does It Matter for AEO?
If you take nothing else from this post, take this.
Schema markup is structured data you add to the code of your website that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what your content is about, who wrote it, and why it's credible. It's essentially handing AI a cheat sheet about your business. And it benefits both your SEO and your AEO at the same time.
Most people don't add it because they have no idea what it is or that they are supposed to. (We are guilty of so many old blogs without schema markup.) But if you're not going to rewrite your entire blog strategy overnight, which we don't expect you to, the fastest single thing you can do to improve your AI discoverability is go back and add schema markup to your existing blog posts, especially the ones most closely tied to your area of expertise.
We built a free Schema Markup Tool at kandccreative.com/schema-tool specifically so you don't have to figure out what to put where. It pulls it together for you. It will create schema markup for all your website pages and your blog.
Don't have time to rewrite old blogs? Use this prompt.
Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT, then paste in the full text of your existing blog post:
"I need you to generate schema markup for a blog post. Here is the full blog post content: [PASTE YOUR BLOG POST TEXT HERE]. Please generate a complete BlogPosting schema in JSON-LD format that includes: the article title, description, author name [YOUR NAME], publisher name [YOUR BUSINESS NAME], date published [DATE], the main URL [YOUR BLOG URL], and pulls the primary topic and keywords from the content. Format it so I can paste it directly into the source code of my website."
Paste the code it generates into your blog's source code and you're done.
Watch this YouTube video to see how we add schema markup to our blog posts in Kajabi if you want to see the exact process.
How to Start Writing AEO-Optimized Blogs (Without It Taking All Day)
Writing a blog the right way takes time. Researching your topics, answering the questions your audience is asking, writing in a way that sounds like you, structuring it for both humans and AI, and then generating the schema markup at the end, that's a multi-hour process if you're doing it alone.
We used to pay a copywriter $1,000 a month to write four blog posts and four marketing emails each month. That was $12,000 a year. And even with a professional writer, the posts didn't include our real stories, our specific client experiences, or the kind of first-hand perspective that AEO actually rewards. They were good but they weren't fully ours and felt like AI could have written them because there wasn't anything personalized about them to us.
So we built something that solved all of it (and saves us $12,000).
Our AI Blog Co-Writer Skill is a Claude skill that interviews you before writing a single word. It pulls out your real expertise, your perspective, your stories, and then writes and structures your blog using the exact AEO framework we've covered in this post. At the end, it generates your schema markup automatically so you don't have to think about it.
The whole process, from interview to finished draft, takes about 30 to 40 minutes. The Blog Co-Writer Skill is a one-time investment of $67, and you get to write unlimited blogs from there.
AI Club members get $20 off. If you're not a member yet, you can join for $5.55 a month and the discount code will be waiting for you in your welcome email.
Writing a blog that sounds like you, answers the right questions, and actually gets found by AI is no longer a full-day project. It's a conversation inside Claude that takes you about 15 min to complete before proofreading.
Grab the AI Blog Co-Writer Skill here.
Before you publish your next post, don't forget to add your blog schema to the source code. Watch this YouTube video to see how we add schema markup to our blog posts in Kajabi. Test it at Google's Rich Results Test to make sure it's reading correctly.
Want to Go Deeper on AEO?
We've talked about this topic on two podcasts recently. If you're more of a listener than a reader, both episodes are worth your time.
"How To Get ChatGPT/AI To Recommend Your Website (SEO Isn't Enough Anymore)"
"From SEO to AEO: How to Show Up When AI Gives the Answers"
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