Stop chasing rankings.Be the answer buyers are handed.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI, or Perplexity who to hire or what to buy in your category, one set of sources gets named. Our team runs the program that puts you in it: mapping, technical work, publishing, corroboration, and the reporting loop that keeps it current every week.
- From $1,500 / month
- Month to month
- Named people, plus a live dashboard
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization is the work of making your business the source an AI model names when a buyer asks a question in plain language. It uses the same three pillars as search, technical retrievability, content that answers the real question, and third-party corroboration, aimed at a different target: the answer itself.
A model doesn't run one search. It breaks the question into sub-questions, retrieves evidence for each, and synthesizes a response from what it found. You can hold the top organic position on the headline phrase and still be absent from every branch that actually decided the answer.
AEO doesn't replace SEO. It extends it. The technical hygiene, structure, and authority work that earns rankings is the floor. What's new is mapping the question tree, writing to be extracted rather than skimmed, and building the corroboration a model checks before it repeats a claim.
Three things changed at once.
None of them are coming. They already happened, and most sites are still built for the search behavior that came before.
From keywords to questions
Nobody types “best CRM small business” into a model. They describe their situation in two sentences and ask what to do. The model reads intent, decomposes it, and answers. Pages written for keyword strings don't survive that.
From rankings to recommendations
There's no position three in an answer. You're named or you're not. That's a harder bar than ranking, and it's why the work has to target the sub-questions that decide the answer rather than the headline phrase.
From clicks to citations
When a model names you, it hands the buyer a recommendation instead of a link to evaluate. Fewer visits, warmer ones. The metric that matters shifts from sessions to how often you're the source.
How we run the program.
Five steps. The first three land in the first thirty days, then four and five repeat every month for as long as you run with us.
Audit and baseline
We record where you stand today: technical retrievability, the prompts you appear on, who gets named instead, and which sources those answers pull from. That baseline is what every later report measures against.
Fan-out mapping
We map the sub-question tree a model walks in your category, then score each branch on commercial value against difficulty. That scored map is the publishing plan, not a keyword export.
Fix the foundation
Crawlability for AI agents, entity and schema work, internal structure, and the answer-shaped formatting that makes a page easy to extract and quote. This lands in the first thirty days.
Publish and corroborate
Content shipped against the branches worth owning, plus the off-page half: business profile, digital PR, and the third-party sources a model checks before it trusts a claim.
Measure, then adjust
Tracked prompts, weekly reporting, and rewrites where a branch slipped. The map updates continuously because model behavior moves and a plan built once goes stale.
Every capability, operated for you.
There's one thing to buy and this is it. Every capability below is included in every tier, because you can't move an answer with press if crawlers can't read the page, or with schema if there's nothing worth quoting on it. Nothing here is an upsell, and each one links to exactly how it works.
Included in every tier of Cognos. Volume of published work is what changes.
AEO next to traditional SEO.
The goal
Rank on page one
Be the source the answer names
Where it plays
Google results
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews
Unit of work
Keywords and volume
Questions, entities, and corroboration
Success metric
Rankings and sessions
Citation share on named prompts
Cadence
Periodic audits and pushes
A live dashboard, updated continuously, reported weekly
What you're competing for
One of ten links
The one answer a buyer acts on
The honest version: this isn't a replacement. Rankings still send traffic, and the fundamentals still hold. AEO is the layer on top that decides whether you exist in the answer a buyer reads before they ever see a list of links.
Where this pays for itself.
Considered B2B
Long research cycles where a model shapes the shortlist before anyone fills out a form. If you get named in the comparison, you get the call.
Professional services
Legal, financial, healthcare, and trades, where buyers ask a model what to do before they ask who to hire. Expertise signals decide these answers.
Ecommerce and DTC
“What's the best X for Y” is now a purchase query. Product entities, specifics, and third-party corroboration determine whether you're in the set.
SaaS and technology
Buyers ask for comparisons by use case. Being the clearest, best-corroborated source on your specific use case is the whole game.
When we'll tell you no
One-off projects, a freelancer to take direction, or a brand refresh. The program is continuous and that doesn't compress. If your buyers don't research before they call, or you need results inside thirty days, this is the wrong spend and we'll say so on the call.
From $1,500 a month.
- Tier 1 from $1,500 / month
- Tier 2 from $2,500 / month
- Tier 3 from $3,500 / month
- One-time $1,000 setup, month to month after that
A dashboard, updated regularly. A report, every week.
Prompt-level citation movement, everything shipped tied to the branch it targeted, what it changed, and what's next. Including the branches that didn't move and what we're doing differently because of it.
A dedicated account strategist and a dedicated technical and fulfillment lead own the account, backed by a live reporting dashboard you can check any time between weekly reports.
Before you ask us.
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization is the work of making your business the source an AI model names when a buyer asks a question in plain language. It covers the same three pillars as search: technical retrievability, content that answers the actual question, and third-party corroboration that the model trusts. The difference is the target. You aren't competing for a position in a list, you're competing to be the answer.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links. AEO optimizes for a synthesized answer where there is no page two. A model decomposes the question, retrieves evidence for each sub-question, and cites a handful of sources. You can rank first on the headline keyword and never appear in the answer, because the branches that decided it pointed somewhere else.
Which engines do you optimize for?
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. The underlying work travels across engines because they all reward the same things: clean structure, specific claims, and corroboration.
What's included?
Everything: technical work, entity and schema, content, business profile, digital PR, citation targeting, tracking, and the weekly report. All of it is included in every tier of Cognos. What changes between tiers is how much ships each month.
How long until it works?
Technical work lands in the first few weeks. Citation movement typically shows in the sixty to ninety day window and compounds from there. Anyone promising a flipped answer in two weeks is selling you something that doesn't exist.
Can you guarantee we get cited?
No. No one can guarantee model output. We guarantee the work and the reporting that proves it: the map, the pages, the fixes, the corroboration, and the tracking that tells you either way.
What does it cost?
From $1,500 a month for Tier 1, $2,500 for Tier 2, and $3,500 for Tier 3, plus a one-time $1,000 setup fee. Month to month with thirty days notice.
Do we need to rebuild our website?
No. We work inside whatever you already run, adding structure, schema, entity markup, and pages without a redesign. If your stack genuinely blocks the work, we tell you that in the audit rather than after you sign.
What do we have to do?
Approve content and press, give us occasional subject-matter access for an interview, and honest feedback on voice. Technical work runs without waiting on you. That's the load on your side. We don't hand you a homework list and call it a program.
How do you measure it?
Prompt-level citation movement across the tracked engines, share of answer against the competitors we name at kickoff, AI referral traffic, and the outcome you came to move. One weekly report with the interpretation attached.
Do we keep the work if we cancel?
You keep what's on your site: published pages, articles, profile work, and earned coverage. The live technical and schema layer runs while the program is active. Ask before you leave and we'll hand over anything you want made permanent.
Find out what answers your buyers are getting right now.
Start with the free audit. We run your category's questions live, show you who's being named instead, and map what the first thirty days of Cognos would cover.