How to Get Your Business Recommended by AI (and What AEO Actually Means for Small Business Owners)

There’s a question your potential customers are asking about you… but they’re not typing it into Google anymore.

They’re asking AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

People are asking things like:

“Who are the best business coaches for women in Australia?”

Or…

“What’s the best bookkeeper for a small creative business?”

And instead of a page of links, they’re getting a short, summarised answer. A handful of names. A list of recommendations that AI has decided are the clearest, most credible, most relevant options.

Is your business showing up in that summary?

Here’s what every small business owner needs to know about showing up in AI searches using AEO strategies.

What is AEO — and how is it different from SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is something that’s been around for a long time, and most small business owners are familiar to some extent. It’s all about getting found on Google. Ranking well in search results, so people click through to your website.

But AEO?

AEO is Answer Engine Optimisation, and it’s taking over. It’s how your business gets recommended NOT in search engines, but by AI tools. ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools create short, generated summaries that now appear at the top of Google results (and directly in-chat conversations).

So while Google ranks results, AI summarises them.

That means your business needs to be “summarisable”.

Your content needs to be something an AI tool can easily interpret, understand, and repeat back clearly.

So broad, vague, generic messaging is what makes businesses practically invisible to AI searches.

Why businesses doing “everything right” with SEO can still be invisible in AI search

I sat down with an AEO expert, Jenna Hannon, founder of Hatter, and she walked me through the core principles of how to rank in AI searches — and how to be one of the businesses AI recommends.

She said that often, the businesses that are doing great with SEO are often completely invisible to AI search results.

Because, they went too broad.

Traditional SEO rewards volume. Large websites targeting lots of keyworks, driving high traffic even when those keywords aren’t closely tied to the business. That strategy can still help with Google rankings — but it actively works AGAINST you in AI searches.

AI tools have one goal: they want to understand. They want to have a clear, concise picture of:

1. Who you are
2. What you do
3. And who you serve

So these broad websites that appeal to everyone under the sun are inherently confusing to AI. It can’t accurately summarise your business in a few words, so it leaves you out of the recommendation, opting for a competitor who has their messaging clearly defined.

It’s all about clarity. Clarity on your ideal client. Clarity in your messaging. Clarity in what your offers are, and who they are geared towards.

AEO and AI Search is VERY good for small business owners.

AEO gives small business owners a great opportunity to outshine competition, even against bigger companies.

Because it levels the playing field.

It favours the focused, intentional small businesses over these large brands that have sprawling content libraries.

Big companies that spent years going broad with their SEO are struggling in AI search.

But small businesses?

The ones who know exactly who they are and say it clearly – on their website, their content, across platforms…THEY are the ones showing up now.

That means YOU have an incredible opportunity to lean on all of the specific, specialised work you’ve been doing for years, and optimise your AEO.

Here’s what actually moves the needle in AEO

The foundation is your website.

Not the technical architecture, or the page speed – that stuff that matters so much with SEO, and is somewhat inaccessible to smaller businesses with smaller budgets.

What matters is the CONTENT. Your text. The clarity of your messaging.

Your website is how you train AI to understand and recommend your business. Every page needs to answer the same questions:

1. Who do you serve, specifically?
2. What do you do for them?
3. How are you different?

The more specific and specialised your content, the better AI can conceptualise what you’re about, and who to suggest it to.

I decided to talk with an AEO expert – here’s her best advice

I chatted with an AEO expert, Jenna Hannon, founder of Hatter, about how more small businesses can get AI to recommend them, and here’s what she said:

First, blogging is back, baby.

It sounds old school. It is old school. But it is still one of the BEST methods for AI to understand the specifics of who you are and what makes you different.

Specific, intentional blog content that goes deep on your positions – how you compare to your competitors, what makes your approach unique, the specific benefits you deliver for specific clients…

…it’s perfect fodder for AI to understand you deeply.

BUT — Jenna made one thing very clear.

AI content doesn’t help you in an AI search.

Using AI tools to write your content makes you blend in with everyone else.

We know when we read AI-generated content. It’s obvious these days.

AI can also clock AI content, just like we can.

Jenna said that the businesses getting recommended are the ones that are clearly human, with a defined and specific point of view.

A recognisable VOICE.

Real stories.

Content that could only be written by you, because you are the one who has given their all to this business and the clients you love.

The direction, the specificity, the human-ness can’t and shouldn’t be removed from what you are putting out there.

It prevents AI from recommending you – and, let’s be honest, no one wants to read AI-generated content anyway.

What are you doing to get recommended in AI searches?

I think AEO is the best news small business owners have had for a while.

Because if there is one thing we do best, it is deeply caring. It is striving towards giving our clients the best possible experiences. We have that human element that so many of our larger competitors don’t.

I’d love to hear in the comments what you think about AEO – and the strategies you’re using.

What are you going to incorporate?

P.S. Jenna and I had a FABULOUS conversation all about AEO and how to get your business recommended on Episode 360 of the HerBusiness Podcast.

I recommend every small business owner hears what she has to say. I learned so much.

→ Listen here on Spotify

→ Listen here on Apple Podcasts