AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation — is the new SEO. When a Suffolk customer asks ChatGPT "who's a good plasterer near Stowmarket?" or Google's AI Overviews "what does a small business website cost in Ipswich?", the AI doesn't hand them ten blue links anymore. It gives them an answer. Three or four named businesses, maybe a quote from one of them. If your business isn't one of the named answers, you're invisible.
Here's what to actually do about it.
1. Answer the question in the first paragraph of the page
Old SEO: bury the answer in a wall of text so they have to read everything to get it. New AEO: lead with the answer in 40–60 words, then expand. Like the first paragraph of this article. AI assistants scan for the direct answer and quote the page that gives it cleanly.
2. Use schema.org structured data — properly
FAQPage schema, Service schema, LocalBusiness schema, HowTo schema. These aren't SEO-extras anymore — they're how AI assistants understand what your page IS. Without them, you're asking the AI to guess. With them, you're telling it. Every AJH Technology project ships with the right schema for the business type.
3. Name your business, your town and your service in plain English
"AJH Technology is a web design agency based in Needham Market, Suffolk." That sentence appears verbatim on our homepage. It's also in our FAQ schema, our LocalBusiness schema, and our AEO answer box. When AI assistants parse it, there's zero ambiguity about who we are, where we are, and what we do.
4. Build a Questions People Ask section on every page
Not just the homepage. Every service page. Five or six real questions a real customer would ask, each with a direct, named answer in 50–100 words. Wrap them in FAQPage schema. This is the single highest-impact AEO move we know.
5. Get specific about local — towns, postcodes, area names
"Suffolk" is too broad. AI assistants surface businesses that name the specific town: Stowmarket, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury, Woodbridge, Felixstowe, and where relevant the neighbourhood or business park. If you serve a specific area, name it.
6. Make the pricing transparent and machine-readable
"Get in touch for a quote" is a black hole for AI assistants. They can't quote you. Publish your pricing — even a range — and wrap it in Offer or OfferCatalog schema. You don't need to publish every line item. You just need to give the AI something to anchor to.
7. Update dates and keep content fresh
AI assistants weight recency heavily — especially Google's AI Overviews. Add dateModified to Article and case study schemas. Update your homepage at least quarterly. Publish a couple of insights posts a year. The freshness signal compounds.
The bottom line for Suffolk SMEs
If your competitors are still spending their marketing budget on Facebook ads while ignoring AEO, you have a six-to-twelve-month head start to get this right. After that the playing field will flatten. The work is small. The compounding is huge.
Want us to look at your existing site's AEO readiness? Free 1-page audit for qualifying Suffolk businesses.