Cynthia Oswald

Surface Design, Fine Art + Branding for Creatives

website visibility

AEO Isn’t Replacing SEO: How to Help the Right People Find Your Business in the Age of AI

AEO Isn’t Replacing SEO:
How to Help the Right People Find Your Business in the Age of AI

Lately, I’ve had more conversations with friends and clients about AEO—or Answer Engine Optimization—and what it means for their websites. 

If you’re only beginning to hear this term, you’re not behind. The way people search is changing incredibly quickly, and even those of us who work in this world are continually learning, experimenting, and adapting. But here’s the encouraging part: you probably don’t need to throw out your SEO strategy and begin again.

The same strong foundation that helps your website appear in traditional search results also helps search engines and AI-powered tools understand your work. Google itself says that established SEO best practices remain relevant to its generative AI experiences. In other words, good AEO begins with good SEO.

What is AEO?

SEO—Search Engine Optimization—traditionally helps your website appear when someone searches for a particular product, service, or topic. AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, focuses on helping your content become part of the answers generated by tools such as Google’s AI experiences, ChatGPT, and other conversational search platforms.

I tend to think of a traditional search engine a highly sophisticated version of the Yellow Pages: you type in a few words and receive a list of potentially useful websites. An AI-powered answer engine works more conversationally. Someone can describe a highly specific need, add context, ask follow-up questions, and receive a synthesized response rather than simply a list of links.

That changes the search experience, but it doesn’t change the fundamental need for your website to be accessible, understandable, trustworthy, and genuinely useful.

AEO starts with your SEO foundation

Before worrying about how to “optimize for AI,” start with the basics. Search engines and AI tools need to be able to find your website, understand what it is about, and move through it easily.

That means making sure your website includes:

  • Clear page titles and descriptions
  • A logical site structure that makes information easy to find
  • Useful, descriptive headings
  • Internal links between related pages
  • Fast, mobile-friendly pages
  • Content that search engines can crawl and index
  • Accurate information about your business, services, products, and location
  • Helpful image descriptions and metadata

Once those foundational pieces are in place, there is another behind-the-scenes tool that can help search engines better understand your website: schema markup.

Schema markup is a small piece of code added to a website to label the type of information on a page. It helps search engines recognize whether they are looking at a business, service, product, article, event, review, or frequently asked question.

It isn’t a magic switch that guarantees your business will appear in AI-generated answers, and there is no special “AI schema” you need to add. Schema simply gives search engines a little more clarity. It can support a strong website, but it cannot make up for content that is vague, generic, or unhelpful.

Once the technical foundation is in place, the next question is much more human: What does your audience actually need to know?

Answer the questions real people are asking

One of the most useful things you can do for both SEO and AEO is answer the questions your audience already asks you. 

These answers do not all have to live on a page labeled “Frequently Asked Questions.” Instead, they might become:

  • Blog posts
  • Service-page sections
  • Buying guides
  • Process explanations
  • Comparisons
  • Case studies
  • Glossaries
  • Tutorials
  • Project recaps
  • Thoughtful captions that later develop into longer articles

Start paying attention to the questions that come up in consultations, emails, sales conversations, social media messages, or casual conversations with friends. If one person is curious about something, there is a good chance someone else is searching for it.

For example, an interior designer might write about:

  • What does the interior design process look like from start to finish?
  • How much should I budget for an interior design project?
  • What is the difference between full-service design and a design consultation?
  • When should I hire an interior designer during a renovation or new build?
  • How do interior designers work with architects, builders, and contractors?

These are useful questions in their own right, but answering them also does something deeper. It demonstrates experience, anticipates a potential client’s concerns, and gives search tools enough context to understand what the business actually offers.

Specificity may be your greatest advantage

Conversational search (which fuels AEO) allows people to be much more nuanced. Someone is no longer limited to searching “interior designer near me.” They might ask:

  • Who is an interior designer near Philadelphia who creates layered, timeless homes, can collaborate with my architect and builder, and will help preserve the original character of an older property?

That specificity creates an opportunity for small, specialized businesses. 

The more clearly your website communicates who you help, what you do, where you work, what the experience is like, and what makes your approach distinct, the easier it becomes for both people and search tools to recognize when you may be the right fit.

This is why language matters so much.

The nuances you use when describing your philosophy, process, audience, materials, location, or experience are not extraneous. They help distinguish you from businesses that may technically offer a similar service but aren’t the right fit for the same person.

Write for the human being you hope to reach. Use the language your clients use, and answer the questions beneath the initial question. I’ve written more about this relationship between storytelling, specificity, and search in Beyond Keywords: Why Storytelling Is the Future of SEO. 

The central idea is simple: the details that make your story human are often the same details that help the right people—and increasingly, AI-powered search tools—recognize that you are a relevant fit. That is useful communication before it is an optimization strategy.

Your most practical content may be your most powerful

As a creative person, I naturally want my writing to be thoughtful, visually rich, and sometimes poetic. There is still room for that, even when optimizing for search results. A piece of writing can be beautiful and answer a real question, but some of our most valuable content may also be surprisingly practical.

In fact, one of the posts gaining the most momentum on my own website is called Print 101. It explains common printing terms, file types, and considerations for preparing creative work for print. At first, I found it somewhat surprising that such a practical post was performing so well, but I worked in printing for nine years, and that experience still shapes how I approach branding, illustration, packaging, and other production-based projects today.

The post is useful because it answers real questions, but it also gives readers a fuller picture of the knowledge behind my work. It reminded me that we sometimes overlook our most valuable content because the subject feels basic or familiar to us. What feels like foundational knowledge to you may be exactly what someone else needs—and it may reveal a depth of experience they would not otherwise know you possess.

This is what strong educational content can do: answer the immediate question while quietly revealing the depth of your expertise. So I would encourage you to think beyond “What keywords should I use?” and ask:

  • What do my clients need to understand before hiring someone like me?
  • What questions do I answer repeatedly?
  • What do people misunderstand about my work?
  • What decisions are they trying to make?
  • What knowledge do I possess that a less experienced provider might not?
  • What details would help the right person recognize that I’m a good fit?

The overlap between those answers and your content strategy is where the greatest opportunity often lives.

Trust extends beyond your website

Your own website is only one source of information about your business. Reviews, interviews, professional profiles, directory listings, articles, videos, and genuine mentions elsewhere on the web may all contribute to the broader picture of who you are and what you do—and help boost your SEO/AEO. 

That doesn’t mean chasing artificial mentions or asking people to repeat particular keywords in their reviews. It simply means building a consistent, credible presence and making it easy for real clients to describe their experiences.

When requesting a review, you might invite someone to share:

  • What they hired you to do
  • What the process was like
  • What challenge you helped them solve
  • What felt distinctive about working with you
  • What changed as a result

Specific, authentic reviews are far more useful to future clients than generic praise. They communicate the actual substance of your work and help people understand what it might feel like to work with you.

Can you tell whether you’re appearing in AI answers?

Although measuring visibility in AI-generated answers is still evolving, you can already find some clues about whether people are discovering your website through tools like ChatGPT. In fact, when I looked at my own Google Analytics this morning, I could identify traffic coming to my website from ChatGPT. That tells me people are encountering my content through the platform and clicking through to learn more.

What Analytics generally can’t tell me is the precise question someone asked or the full conversation that led ChatGPT (or other Answer Engine) to recommend my website. I can see that the traffic came from ChatGPT, which page the person entered through, and what they did after arriving—but not necessarily what they were searching for when they found me.

Even with those limitations, the information can still be useful. If a particular article or service page begins receiving repeated traffic from ChatGPT, that may offer clues about the topics the platform associates with your website and the kinds of questions your content is helping to answer. OpenAI also now adds a source tag to referral links from ChatGPT, which makes this traffic easier to identify in analytics platforms such as Google Analytics. Over time, those patterns can help you understand which parts of your website are gaining traction through AI-powered search.

You can also occasionally conduct your own searches in tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google to see what types of businesses and resources appear. However, treat these as informal spot checks rather than definitive rankings. AI-generated answers can vary based on the wording of the question, available sources, location, context, and changes to the platform.

If appearing in ChatGPT search is important to you, it’s also worth asking your web designer or developer to confirm that your site isn’t blocking OpenAI’s search crawler. This doesn’t guarantee your content will appear, but it helps make sure ChatGPT can access it.

As with traditional SEO, the goal is not to react to one search result or one referral. The more useful approach is to watch for patterns over time and use those patterns to better understand how people are finding and engaging with your work.

Don’t let AI distract you from what is already working

The pace of change can be exhausting. It’s easy to spend hours reading about new tools, new terminology, new ranking theories, and new ways we are supposedly expected to restructure everything we have built.

I recently found myself moving in that direction—trying to absorb every possible change and determine what I needed to do next. Eventually, I had to step back and ask a much more grounded question: What is already working, and how can I lean further into it?

That question led me back to the pages attracting attention, the ideas resonating with clients, and the specific areas where my experience offers something genuinely valuable. That is where I would encourage you to begin, too.

Look at the content already drawing people to your website. Notice the questions that lead to meaningful conversations and identify the pages that attract your best-fit clients. Then consider the next highest-leverage improvement. 

It might be:

  • Expanding a service page with more specific information
  • Turning a recurring client question into an article
  • Adding a case study that explains your reasoning
  • Clarifying your location or the audience you serve
  • Improving the technical structure of an existing page
  • Updating outdated content
  • Requesting thoughtful reviews
  • Adding appropriate schema markup
  • Connecting several related resources through internal links

None of these changes requires you to overhaul your entire website. In many cases, the most effective next step is simply strengthening something that is already beginning to work.

The simplest place to begin

If you want to improve your visibility in both traditional and AI-powered search, here are a few things you can start with: 

  1. Make sure your website has a sound technical and SEO foundation.
  2. Clearly explain what you do, who you help, and what makes your approach distinct.
  3. Answer the real questions your clients and customers ask.
  4. Share knowledge that demonstrates the depth of your experience.
  5. Use specific, natural language rather than generic marketing copy.
  6. Build trust through consistent information and authentic reviews.
  7. Pay attention to what is already working before chasing the newest tactic.

AEO is a useful term for understanding how search behavior is evolving, but it does not require us to abandon thoughtful communication in favor of writing for machines. If anything, it asks us to become more helpful, more specific, and more human—and that is a strategy worth investing in, regardless of what we call it.

web designer

Not sure what your website needs next—or whether its SEO foundation is strong enough to support AI-powered search? My SEO Strategy Intensive takes a focused look at what is already working, where potential clients may be losing the thread, and which improvements could make the greatest difference. You’ll leave with a practical, prioritized strategy for strengthening your website’s visibility without chasing every new search trend.

Learn more about my SEO strategy intensive

How to Use Google Search Console to Know What to Write Next

How to Use Google Search Console to Know What to Write Next

There have been so many times I’ve sat down to write a blog post and had no idea where to start. And when you’re a solopreneur or working with a small team, that moment can feel overwhelming—because there are a hundred directions you could go, and no one to tell you what’s right.

Sometimes we get writer’s block because we’re not excited about the topic. Other times, we’re deeply passionate about something, but we’re not sure it’s what our audience actually needs. And as much as I believe in creating intuitively (and I do), I’ve also learned that content that doesn’t connect won’t do much for your business.

Over the years, I’ve published all kinds of content—some of it very strategic, and some of it just from the heart. And I’m grateful for both. Because now I can look back and say, “What actually worked?” And more importantly, “Where are the gaps between what I’ve shared and where I want to grow?”

That’s where Google Search Console comes in. It gives you a framework for getting from where you are to where you want to be—by showing you what’s already working and what’s quietly being ignored. It’s a tool I’ve come to rely on (and love!), both in my own work and with my clients.

Recently, I noticed that a blog post I wrote about motherhood, where I also talked about miniature watercolor paintings, was driving a surprising amount of traffic. But when I looked at the data, I realized people weren’t searching for my motherhood story. They were searching for miniature watercolor paintings. And while I’m glad they found the post, I also realized: I could write something more focused to actually meet them where they are.

Google Search Console gives you the kind of insight that helps you get specific. It helps you make better creative decisions—whether you’re building a blog from scratch, refreshing a website, or supporting a client who already has data but isn’t sure how to act on it.

If I could go back and tell myself one thing about blogging and SEO, it would be this: You don’t need an audience of thousands to grow your business. You just need one person to find the right post at the right time.

Why Intuition Isn’t Enough (And Why That’s Okay)

For much of my business, I’ve followed what felt right in the moment. I believe there’s something powerful—and very necessary—about honoring that kind of intuition. But when you have a lot of ideas, it helps to filter them through a lens that aligns with your goals. That’s what data does. It gives your creativity a compass.

My First Use of GSC Was Purely Technical—Until It Became Strategic

I started using Google Search Console years ago to index client websites after launch—submitting sitemaps so Google could crawl the site. It was just a step in the process. But over time, the back end became easier to understand. The interface improved. And with the rise of AI and data interpretation tools, I realized something: This wasn’t just a back-end box to check. It was a strategy tool I hadn’t been fully using.

How to Use GSC to Work Smarter, Not Just More

This brings me back to the Pareto Principle—that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. When I applied this principle to my own business, I mapped my biggest wins against the actions I’d taken—and realized that a few pieces of content were driving most of the interest.

With Google Search Console, you can do the same thing. You can:

  • See which pages are getting the most impressions
  • Spot which keywords are bringing people in
  • Identify where there’s opportunity to add or update content

This isn’t a guessing game. It’s a framework for clarity.

How to Use Google Search Console to Know What to Write Next

Let’s break it down. Once you’re logged into Google Search Console, you’ve connected and selected your site, here’s what to look for:

  1. Go to the “Performance” tab
    This is where you’ll find data about the search terms (queries) that are leading people to your site, along with clicks, impressions, and average position.
  2. Switch to the “Pages” tab
    Identify which blog posts or pages are getting the most visibility. These are usually your top performers—and worth updating or expanding.
  3. Now go back to “Queries” and filter by your top-performing pages
    This tells you what search terms are bringing people to specific posts. Are they searching for something that’s only briefly mentioned? That’s a gap—and an opportunity.
  4. Ask yourself: What’s missing?
    Are you ranking for terms you’ve never directly written about? That’s your cue to create a new post. Are there keywords related to your main offers that aren’t showing up at all? You may need to introduce those topics more intentionally.
  5. Create supporting content
    Use what you find to write new posts that:
    • Go deeper into a topic people are already searching for
    • Clarify or expand on an idea that’s getting traction
    • Introduce a new angle that supports your offers

This process doesn’t require any fancy SEO tools—just your existing content and a little curiosity. And best of all, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re building from what’s already working.

What Happens When You Follow the Data?

For example, one of my posts about creating cohesion started gaining unexpected traction. That told me something important: there’s an audience out there I haven’t met yet—one that’s finding me through this topic. That insight helps me write more strategically, not just randomly.

You don’t need a huge network to grow. I’ve spent two decades building strong relationships offline. But when you’re ready to scale local and beyond, this is where your website content can do the heavy lifting for you.

This Isn’t Just About “Blogs” Either

One quick myth to bust: Website content isn’t limited to a traditional blog. You don’t even need a blog to benefit from this—any page on your site can serve your audience and boost visibility when it’s built with purpose.

Also, your blog doesn’t have to look like a blog. It can be a journal, a guide, a resource library, or even a simple collection of helpful thoughts. The point is to publish content you care about in a way that helps people find you. And that’s where we begin. You can build:

  • A resource library
  • An FAQ section
  • A topic hub for your services
  • A project archive with case studies

As long as it lives on your site and answers a real question someone’s searching for, it counts. You don’t even need to enable comments or worry about keeping up with them. Your content can work for you quietly, consistently, and intentionally.

Your Website Can Reflect Your Strategy, Not Just Your Services

You’re already doing the work. Whether you’ve got a small website, a single blog post, or a full archive, Google Search Console helps you see the patterns in your effort—and turn them into a path forward. It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what works, and building from there.

Grab the Website Visibility Checklist!

Even if you’re not an SEO expert, below are a few simple & essential steps you can implement that can make a huge difference in your site’s visibility. Opt-in below to download your free checklist now!

How to Get Your Website Found on Google: SEO Tips

How to Get Your Website Found on Google: SEO Tips

Long before I ever thought about SEO—or even knew what it was—I found myself building my first website. At the time, I was working full-time and had signed up for a single evening coding course. For years, websites had felt clunky and uninspiring to me—especially as someone who cared deeply about design. But around 2008, that started to shift. Web design was becoming more flexible, and for the first time, I saw the potential for websites to actually look beautiful. HTML and CSS started to get more flexible. Designers could do more. It started to feel creative.

I built my first website in that class and ended up offering web design at the high-end printing company I was working for at the time. We ended up growing an entire web department around that offering. But what I realized really quickly is this: it didn’t matter how beautiful the site was if nobody could find it.

Much like the Yellow Pages—if your business wasn’t listed, it didn’t exist—your site today must be found on search engines, like Google. That means SEO can’t be an afterthought. In fact, I believe that content drives design, and it also drives strategy. So when I’m working on a website, I’m not just thinking about how it looks. I’m thinking about what Google will see and how the user will experience it.

Whether you’re a creative entrepreneur, service provider, or small business owner, this post will walk you through what actually matters when it comes to search engine optimization—and how to make your website more visible to the right people.

How to Get Your Website Found on Google (Even If You’re Not a Tech Expert)

If you’re wondering how to get your website found on Google, you’re not alone. So many business owners and creatives build something beautiful—but forget about discoverability. That’s where an SEO strategy comes in.

Even if you’re not an expert, below are a few simple, essential steps that make a huge difference in your site’s visibility.

1. Beautiful Design Means Nothing If It Can’t Be Found

There are a few non-negotiables when it comes to making a site Google-friendly. These might seem obvious in 2025, but I still see them missed all the time:

  • Your site should be responsive across all devices
  • It should be legible, with clean font sizes and color contrast
  • It needs to be accessible, including screen reader compatibility and alt text

Google takes all of this into account when deciding whether or not to show your site in search results. So while these things may feel like design choices, they are very much SEO choices too.

2. Understand the Content Hierarchy Google Cares About

This is where content strategy and SEO really start to work together. Google crawls your site in a specific order, which means you need to be intentional about how your content is structured.

Here’s the order Google typically reads:

  • Page Title
  • Meta Description
  • Headlines(H1–H6)
  • Paragraph copy
  • Image alt tags

If your most important keywords aren’t showing up in your title, headers, or descriptions, you’re missing a major opportunity to get found. When I build or optimize a website, I always walk through this structure first and make sure it aligns with the keywords and phrases my client wants to rank for.

3. Use Google’s Keyword Planner (Free + Powerful)

There are lots of SEO tools out there, but honestly, my go-to for small business SEO is Google Keyword Planner, which is built right into Google Ads.

Here’s how I use it:

  • I enter keywords related to my services, offers, or content pillars
  • Google shows me the search volume, keyword variations, and trends for each one of my keywords
  • I can save those keywords and use them to optimize my content—or run ads later

If you want to improve SEO for your website, understanding what your audience is actually typing into Google is essential. And this tool gives you that information, straight from the source.

4. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Think of Google Search Console as your direct line to Google. It tells you:

  • Which pages are being indexed
  • What terms people are searching to find you
  • How high you’re ranking for those terms
  • Whether people are clicking through

One of the first things I do after launching a site is submit the sitemap to Search Console. Most platforms generate a sitemap automatically (typically found at yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml), and by submitting it, I’m asking Google to index the full site. This helps Google understand your site structure and content—and makes it easier to show up in search results.

5. Analyze and Adjust Based on Real Data

Once Search Console is connected, the real fun begins.

Let’s say someone finds your blog post by searching “brand designer near me,” and your page is ranking in position #7. You now know two things:

  • That term is working
  • You have room to improve your visibility

I also use Google Analytics to see how long people stay on a page and where they drop off. If someone lands on your site from search but bounces immediately, it might mean:

  • The content wasn’t what they expected
  • It wasn’t relevant to the keyword they searched
  • The page didn’t clearly answer their question

You can either adjust the content to match the keyword or change the keyword to better match the content. Either way, you’re making a strategic improvement.

6. Create Content That Aligns With What People Are Already Searching For

This is one of my favorite parts. Once you know what people are searching for—and how they’re finding your existing content—you can create more content that aligns with their needs (and your goals!).

I often take the top search queries from Google Search Console and plug them back into Keyword Planner to discover related terms. Then I utilize what I discover to help me build out blog posts, service pages, or landing pages around those ideas. This help you stay visible where your audience is already looking.

Want to dive deeper into your website SEO? That’s where the SEO Strategy Pack comes in. 

Here’s the thing: knowing all of this is powerful. But having someone guide you through it and apply it to your business? That’s where real momentum happens.

My SEO Strategy Pack is a one-on-one, personalized service that helps you:

  • Audit and understand your current visibility
  • Pinpoint the best keywords for your audience
  • Build a content and SEO strategy that aligns with your goals
  • Set up the Google tools to track what matters most

Whether you’re launching something new or optimizing what you already have, this is the best next move if you want to start showing up—and showing up for the right things.

Click here to learn more about the SEO Strategy Pack

Grab the Website Visibility Checklist!

Even if you’re not an SEO expert, below are a few simple & essential steps you can implement that can make a huge difference in your site’s visibility. Opt-in below to download your free checklist now!