PR teams have always played the long game. You build credibility, earn mentions, land quotes, shape narratives, and rack up trust signals that most brands cannot buy. Now here’s the part nobody loves hearing: If AI search cannot clearly connect those signals back to your client’s expertise, you are leaving visibility on the table. Because […]
PR teams have always played the long game. You build credibility, earn mentions, land quotes, shape narratives, and rack up trust signals that most brands cannot buy.
Now here’s the part nobody loves hearing:
If AI search cannot clearly connect those signals back to your client’s expertise, you are leaving visibility on the table.
Because the way people “search” has changed. Prospects, journalists, and even internal stakeholders are asking AI tools direct questions and getting answers without clicking around. When your client is not in those answers, the win you earned in the press can disappear into the noise.
This is where Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) comes in.
AEO is the layer that helps AI systems understand, trust, and reuse what PR already creates.
AEO is commonly defined as optimizing content so it can be cited by AI powered search tools and answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot. (Amsive)
That definition is useful, but PR needs the translation.
For PR, AEO means:
And yes, PR is suddenly even more important. Search Engine Land makes it blunt: AI systems crave high-quality, context-rich signals, and brand mentions in trusted publications are becoming critical to authority and entity recognition. (Search Engine Land)
So PR is not “separate” from AI visibility. PR is one of the inputs.
AEO is how you make sure the input actually gets used.
Earned media is powerful, but earned media by itself is not a clean system.
Here is what can go wrong:
Meltwater has been pushing this point: earned media influences how generative engines interpret credibility and visibility in AI-generated answers. (Meltwater)
And multiple PR and search sources are converging on the same reality: AI engines appear to lean heavily on editorial sources and credible mentions when forming answers, sometimes more than brand-owned content. (Search Engine Land)
So the play is not “do PR” or “do SEO.”
The play is: do PR, then lock it in with AEO.
If you take nothing else from this post, take this:
PR is the story. AEO is the wiring that makes sure the story travels.
That wiring looks like:
That is the difference between being “mentioned” and being “the answer.”
These are designed to be practical. No PhD required.
When a client gets a feature, interview, or quote, do this within 48 hours.
Step 1: Create a Source-of-Truth Page on the Client Site
Do not rely on a single earned article to carry the message.
Publish a short page that:
This page becomes the content AI can consistently crawl and reference.
Step 2: Add an Answer Block + FAQs
At the top of the page, add a 40–60 word direct answer to the core question the coverage addresses.
Then add 3–7 FAQs that match what people will ask next.
Example FAQs:
Structured FAQ content matters for AI and answer engines because it matches conversational query patterns and can be marked up with schema. (New Target, inc.)
Step 3: Add Basic Schema
If this is an article or insight page, use Article/BlogPosting schema.
If you have FAQs, add FAQPage schema where appropriate. Google provides structured data documentation for these types. (Amsive)
This does not guarantee placement, but it helps machines interpret your page accurately.
Step 4: Internally Link It
Link that new page from:
This tells crawlers what the page is about and where it sits in the site’s topic map.
When an executive is quoted, do not leave the quote floating around the internet with no anchor.
Search Engine Land highlights that AI systems are hungry for context-rich signals, and editorial mentions play a major role in AI’s view of brand reputation. (Search Engine Land)
So, make sure your client’s entity data is clean.
Step 1: Standardize the Executive’s Identity
On the client’s site, update:
Keep it consistent across press kits, LinkedIn, speaker profiles, and the website.
Inconsistent titles and bios confuse humans, and machines. Machines just get confused faster.
Step 2: Publish a “Quoted In” or “Insights” Page That Ties Quotes Together
Create an owned page that:
This gives AI a stable place to connect “this person” with “this topic” and “this company.”
Step 3: Add Organization and Person Schema Where Appropriate
If you have a well-built about page, organization schema can help clarify your entity details.
You do not need to obsess over schema, but you should at least avoid making the machine guess basic identity relationships.
Press releases can still matter, but only if they are usable and connected.
A lot of teams distribute a release and stop. That is fine if you only care about distribution metrics. If you care about visibility in AI answers, add these steps.
Step 1: Publish the Release on the Client Site, Properly
Not as a PDF. Not as an image. As an actual web page.
Include:
Guidance on press release optimization for AI visibility commonly recommends adding schema and clear metadata on the owned version of the release. (eReleases)
Step 2: Add a Follow-Up FAQ Section
Press releases usually create questions:
Add those FAQs directly on the release page and mark up with FAQ schema if appropriate. (eReleases)
Step 3: Create One Supporting “Explainer” Page
This is where PR and marketing stop stepping on each other.
The press release announces. The explainer teaches.
The explainer page should:
That page is what has the best chance to become the AI’s preferred summary source.
You do not need full control of the site. You need a few predictable levers.
Here is the short list:
If the website team can give you this, PR becomes much more “AI visible” without changing what PR is good at.
Traditional PR metrics still matter, but AEO adds a few new ones that actually explain impact.
There are platforms focused specifically on tracking brand visibility in AI answers. Profound, for example, positions AEO as ensuring accurate representation in AI responses and offers tools to measure visibility in those environments. (Profound)
You can also do manual checks:
You will spot gaps fast.
Traditional PR often has a spike pattern:
AEO changes that.
When you publish source-of-truth pages, add answer-ready structure, and connect earned signals back to owned content, you build something that compounds.
That is how you go from “we got coverage” to “we own the narrative in AI answers for this topic.”
And in 2026, that is a serious advantage.
If you run PR for multiple clients, AEO can be packaged as:
If you want help setting up an AEO system for your PR team (or for your clients), we can walk through your current workflow and show where to plug in the biggest wins first.
Drop us a note through our AEO consultation form and we’ll tell you, straight up, if this is worth doing for your client mix.
(And yes, we can make this scalable across multiple clients without turning your team into an SEO department.)
