In a landscape where search is rapidly evolving from a list of links to a direct source of answers, the old rules of SEO are no longer enough. We’re joined by Anastasia Braitsik, a leading expert in digital marketing strategy, to unpack the shift to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). She argues that success is no longer about isolated tactics but about a fundamental rewiring of how marketing teams collaborate. In our conversation, we explore the organizational blueprint for a modern AEO strategy, discussing how to build a Center of Excellence that unites disparate teams like PR, social media, and brand marketing. We’ll delve into the practical ways these teams must work together—from translating social trends into high-authority content to using brand sentiment to conquer zero-click searches—and look ahead at how generative AI will reshape these roles entirely.
The traditional, ad hoc nature of SEO coordination seems insufficient for the demands of AEO. You recommend a Center of Excellence. Could you describe how you envision this CoE being structured, and what are the crucial first steps for an “evangelist” leader trying to bring teams like PR, social, and brand marketing into this new collaborative fold?
Absolutely. The Center of Excellence, or CoE, isn’t another silo; it’s a central hub designed to break them down. It should be led by an evangelist who truly understands not just the technical side, but the profound impact AEO has on the top and middle of the marketing funnel. The first step for this leader isn’t to issue mandates, but to start a dialogue rooted in shared goals. They must sit down with the PR, social, and brand teams and show them, with data, how AEO directly amplifies their own efforts. For PR, it’s about proving their earned media placements are building measurable topical authority. For social, it’s demonstrating that their listening insights can become the company’s most authentic, high-ranking content. It’s about creating a shared accountability for growing the brand’s market share and making it clear that everyone has a critical role to play in becoming the most visible answer for our customers.
You point out that social listening is key to AEO because answer engines prize the authenticity of user-generated content. Can you give us an example of how a team could take a trend they’re seeing on social media and transform it into effective answer-engine content, and what metrics would show it’s working beyond just page views?
Of course. Imagine the social media team observes a growing number of user-generated videos and posts where customers are sharing a clever, off-label use for one of our products. Instead of just resharing it, they flag this as a key “voice of the customer” insight for the AEO team. The AEO team then creates a comprehensive content cluster around it: a detailed FAQ page using the exact conversational language from social media, a short “how-to” video optimized for search, and perhaps even a structured data markup that can be pulled directly into an answer snippet. The proof of success here goes far beyond traffic. We’d look for a spike in branded searches that include the new use case, a measurable lift in positive sentiment in future social listening reports, and a reduction in related queries to customer service. That’s how you know you’ve not only captured attention but have also deepened brand consideration and solved a real user need.
The article emphasizes a symbiotic relationship between PR and AEO for building offsite authority. Could you walk us through what a collaborative campaign looks like, from identifying an authority gap to executing a strategy to fill it?
This is where the magic really happens. The process begins with the AEO expert doing a deep dive into the search landscape for a critical business topic. They might discover that our brand is almost invisible, while competitors are consistently cited by authoritative industry journals and news outlets. That’s the authority gap. The AEO expert doesn’t just keep this data; they bring it directly to the PR team. Together, they brainstorm a campaign specifically designed to close that gap—perhaps it’s a proprietary research report with new, compelling data or a strong thought leadership piece from an executive. The PR team then uses its expertise to pitch this content not just to any outlet, but specifically to those high-authority domains the AEO expert identified. When PR secures a placement, it’s a dual victory: a powerful media hit for them and a high-quality backlink for AEO that directly signals to answer engines that our brand is a definitive voice on the subject.
You mention that voice-of-the-customer data from brand measurement should fuel AEO content. What kind of specific data should brand marketers be sharing with the AEO team, and how can that information be practically transformed into something like an effective FAQ page that actually ranks?
Brand marketers are sitting on a goldmine of AEO fuel. They should be providing raw, unfiltered voice-of-the-customer datkey themes from brand health tracking studies, sentiment analysis from surveys, and the exact phrasing customers use in focus groups or product reviews. For instance, if brand measurement reveals a persistent customer perception that our product is “too complicated to set up,” that exact phrase is a gift. The AEO team can then build an FAQ page titled, “Is [Our Product] Complicated to Set Up?” The answer would directly address that sentiment, using simple language and perhaps embedding a quick-start video. By meeting the user with the precise words they are thinking and searching for, you create content that feels incredibly authentic and relevant, which is exactly what answer engines are designed to find and elevate. It’s about turning brand sentiment into a strategic ranking asset.
Given that AEO often impacts the upper funnel and can result in zero-click searches, you note that leaders must measure traffic quality and “halo effects.” What are some of these non-traditional metrics leaders should be using to prove the value of their AEO strategy?
Focusing solely on clicks and organic traffic is a fast way to undervalue AEO. Since many user queries are now answered directly on the results page, the victory isn’t always the click—it’s winning the moment of consideration. We need to shift our measurement to brand-level metrics. For example, did we see a measurable lift in branded search volume after we began dominating the answer boxes for key non-brand terms? Is there a corresponding increase in direct website traffic, suggesting users saw our answer and came straight to us later? The most sophisticated approach involves running brand lift studies, comparing sentiment and purchase intent between a group exposed to our AEO content and a control group. The real value is the “halo effect”—the cumulative impact of becoming the most trusted, visible, and helpful answer in your category, which builds brand equity that pays dividends long after that initial search.
What is your forecast for how the roles of PR, social media, and brand marketing will specifically evolve within an AEO strategy over the next three years due to advancements in GenAI search?
Generative AI is accelerating this evolution dramatically. Over the next three years, these roles will become even more specialized and integrated. The PR team will evolve from media relations to “authority architects,” focusing on getting their brand’s experts and proprietary data cited as primary sources within AI-generated summaries. Their goal will be to influence the AI’s core understanding of a topic. The social media team will become the real-time “prompt engineers” for the business, listening intently to the conversational questions and nuances in user language to feed the AEO content strategy, ensuring it aligns with how real people are querying AI. Finally, brand marketers will become the ultimate guardians of the brand’s narrative in an AI world. As GenAI synthesizes information from countless sources, their job will be to ensure the brand’s unique selling points and core messaging are so clear, consistent, and authoritatively present across the web that the AI reflects them accurately. They’ll be managing the brand’s very essence in a world of synthesized answers.
