Aeo

AEO — Answer Engine Optimization

First: Read ~/.claude/skills/seo-references/core.md. Apply the methodology and voice to all output. AEO lives on purchase-intent pages. It is not a program for spawning "what is" articles so a snippet has somewhere to live.

Also read:

• ~/.claude/skills/seo-references/data-pull-patterns.md
• ~/.claude/skills/seo-references/sturm-shorts.md
• ~/.claude/skills/seo-references/fan-out-diagnostic.md — if /geo already ran Step 4b, reuse that table. Do not invent a second branch list.
• Companion research: https://github.com/abouchard11/ai-citation-patterns — passage length, schema, and AIO overlap numbers. Do not dump the research file into the playbook.

Unit of success: the extracted passage. Featured snippet, PAA answer, voice response, or the short sentence an AI Overview lifts. GEO (/geo) owns brand mentions and citations inside a multi-source synthesis. If the user wants both, run AEO on the page structure and GEO on the prompt matrix.

Route, do not duplicate:

• Preferred Sources frequency badge on AIO / AI Mode / Discover / Top Stories → /preferred-source (SHIP / MAYBE / SKIP first)
• Citation share across ChatGPT / Perplexity / Claude → /geo
• Fan-out heading on the same money page → /geo Step 4b, then the passage spec below
• Links → /hunter then /kilo
• Indexing → /indexer

Do not do this

• Do not label the page "optimized for AI assistants and LLM search, not human marketing." That line is a confession. Assistants already say "filtering out SEO spam" in the thinking phase. Write the answer a buyer would trust.
• Do not recommend a new informational blog so schema has a home. Put one question + one 40–60 word answer on the money page that already ranks.
• Do not treat llms.txt or hidden LLM-only blocks as an AEO tactic. Google has said normal SEO works; Danny Sullivan warned against chunking pages "for LLMs."
• Do not scrape live SERP snippet HTML through Google /goto redirects to prove a win. Use GSC appearance data and a CamoFox snapshot of the result the operator is allowed to load like a person.
• Do not add a page per inferred AI Mode branch. Heading-query match on the converting URL is the move. Coverage percentage is not.

Step 1: Parse Domain

Extract the domain. Strip protocol, www, trailing slash, lowercase. Resolve against the MCP Routing Map. Flag local-service vs national so Map Pack is not sacrificed for a snippet vanity play.

Step 2: Pull Live Data

GSC (PRIMARY for AEO):

1. mcp__gscServer__get_search_analytics — last 28 days, dimensions=[query, page], rowLimit=50. Sort by impressions. These queries are the answer inventory.
2. Same call filtered or noted for queries that look like questions (who / what / where / when / how much / near me / vs). Those are snippet and PAA candidates.

Semrush (ENRICHMENT): 3. mcp__semrush__execute_report — Domain Organic Search Keywords, display_limit=30. Note SERP features where the tool exposes them (featured snippet, PAA, AIO). 4. For the top 3 question-shaped keywords, mcp__semrush__execute_report — Organic Results, display_limit=10. Who currently owns the answer box.

GA4 (ENRICHMENT): 5. mcp__google-analytics__run_report — top landing pages by sessions, last 28 days. Snippet work goes on pages that already take traffic, not on a draft URL.

CamoFox (ENRICHMENT): 6. Load the #1 GSC page. Snapshot H1, first 150 words, FAQ headings, table presence, schema in raw HTML (view-source if needed), CTA above the fold. Optional: load the Google result for one target query as a person would — do not hammer /goto links. If CamoFox is down: [SEO] CamoFox unavailable — snippet-owner snapshot skipped.

If a source fails, print the [SEO] warning from core.md and continue.

Step 3: Answer inventory

Build a table of at most 10 queries:

Prioritize:

1. High impressions, position 4–12, question-shaped, page already converts
2. "How much" / price / timeline / city + service — these stay BOFU
3. Drop pure "what is [generic noun]" unless that noun is the offer

If /geo already produced a fan-out table this session, reuse the worst MISSING branch as one row. Do not grow the inventory to absorb every inferred subquery.

Step 4: Generate the AEO Playbook

Section 1 — Verdict Which one query should own the next engineering hour. If the domain has no question-shaped impressions on a money page, say so and stop — do not invent a blog calendar.

Section 2 — Passage spec (one page at a time) For each chosen URL + query, write the exact block the operator should paste:

• Lead answer: 40–60 words, first two sentences of the relevant section. Direct SVO. No throat-clearing.
• Expandable passage: 134–167 words total for Google AIO extraction. Atomic. Stands alone if the rest of the page is dropped.
• H2: the query in question form only when the page is already about that job. Do not tack five unrelated FAQs onto a service page.
• Table or numbered list: only if the query is comparison, steps, or pricing tiers.
• Schema: FAQPage or Product / LocalBusiness / Service JSON-LD that mirrors visible text. Never schema-only answers.

Stay inside core.md word caps. If the page is already at 500 words, replace a weak paragraph — do not append.

Section 3 — SERP feature honesty

• Featured snippet and PAA are passage contests. Winning them does not require more backlinks than the current owner if the passage is cleaner — but a zero-RD new domain still loses most AIO slots. Say which case this is.
• AI Overviews now show Preferred Sources labels. That is frequency for people who opted in, not a snippet override. Point to /preferred-source with a fit verdict, do not paste publisher.js here.
• Voice assistants read the same short answer. Write it so it can be spoken without the table.
• Query fan-out is real. A missing branch is a heading on this page, not a new silo.

Section 4 — Anti-spam Reject any draft that:

• Announces machine-optimization in the lede
• Lists the operator's own product as "#1" inside a fake roundup on their own domain and expects an assistant to treat it as a third-party ranking
• Hides the answer below 800 words of preamble
• Justifies a new informational URL as "fan-out coverage"

Section 5 — Measurement Re-check in 28 days via GSC (impressions + position for the query set) and one manual SERP look. Do not treat Ahrefs/Semrush URL-path loss after Google's /goto change as "we lost the snippet." Confirm on the live result.

Step 5: Output

Follow the Output Protocol from core.md:

1. Print the full AEO playbook to terminal
2. Extract structured summary
3. Save to Graphiti with name AEO — [domain]

In Recommended Actions, first item is the single passage to ship, with the pasted copy included so the operator does not have to rewrite it.