outhang

06 / search & answer engine optimisation

seo & aeo

SEO earns rankings in search results; AEO — answer engine optimisation — earns accurate mentions and citations inside AI assistants. Both reward the same foundations: fast pages, one page per topic, structured data and content that answers the question directly.

We engineer search into builds rather than bolting it on afterwards, because retrofitting costs multiples of doing it once. And we treat AI assistants as a channel, because for a growing share of buyers they are the first stop.

typical timeline: Technical work lands in weeks. Content compounds over months — expect movement at 8 to 12 weeks and meaningful gains across two quarters.

who this is for

pick this if any of these are true.

not this? Anyone who wants rankings guaranteed by next month. Nobody can promise that honestly, and the ones who do are buying you a problem.

  • Sites that look fine and are invisible in search
  • Businesses being described inaccurately by AI assistants
  • Migrations that must not lose existing rankings
  • Local businesses competing on London and UK terms
  • Content programmes that need a plan rather than a blog

what you actually get

01

technical foundations

Crawlability, indexation, server rendering, canonicals, sitemaps, redirects and Core Web Vitals held to budget.

02

architecture

A route per intent instead of one page with anchors — so each topic can rank, be shared and be measured.

03

structured data

Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Article, Product and breadcrumb markup, valid and matching the page.

04

keyword & SERP research

Real volumes and difficulty, competitor gaps, and honesty about which terms are winnable this year.

05

answer-ready content

A short quotable answer up top, question-shaped subheadings, comparison tables and definitions assistants can lift and cite.

06

measurement

Search Console, analytics tied to commercial events, and reporting that separates traffic from revenue.

how we do it

01

audit

Technical crawl, index status, speed, structure and current visibility — with the actual data, not vibes.

02

research

Terms, volumes, difficulty and who ranks now. We say plainly where the evidence is weak.

03

fix the foundations

Speed, rendering, structure, markup and internal linking. The unglamorous multiplier.

04

publish

Pages and articles built for one intent each, linked into the pages that convert.

05

compound

Monthly: what moved, what to write next, what to prune.

the tools we use

Named, not implied. If a tool is on this list we have shipped production work with it.

research

  • Semrush
  • Search Console
  • SERP analysis
  • competitor gap analysis

technical

  • Lighthouse & CWV
  • log and crawl analysis
  • schema validation
  • redirect mapping

content

  • intent mapping
  • internal link architecture
  • editorial calendars

aeo

  • quotable answer blocks
  • entity consistency
  • citation-friendly structure
  • assistant monitoring

questions people ask

What is AEO, and is it different from SEO?

Answer engine optimisation is the work that gets your business described accurately and cited by AI assistants. It shares SEO's foundations but rewards different formatting: direct answers, clear entities, structured facts and pages that can be quoted in a sentence.

Can you guarantee page one?

No, and neither can anyone else. We can guarantee the foundations, the research behind each target and honest reporting on what moved.

Do you work on sites you did not build?

Often. An audit plus a fix list is a common first engagement, and it frequently pays for itself before any new content is written.

start somewhere

what are you trying to make better?

Answer a few quick questions and we will come back with a price bracket, a timeline and a scope you can hold us to.