Your SEO, AEO & GEO questions, answered

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of improving a website's visibility in search results. In 2026 it has moved well beyond keywords and links, toward content quality and E-E-A-T, Core Web Vitals, technical health, and increasingly optimisation for AI search.

Modern SEO combines four disciplines: technical SEO (speed, crawlability, schema), on-page work (content, structure, internal links), off-page authority (links and genuine brand mentions), and user experience. Google's systems now interpret intent rather than matching keywords literally. See the SEO, AEO and GEO guide or my services.

SEO usually shows initial results within three to six months, with stronger gains over six to twelve months. Timeline depends on site age, competition and the keywords targeted.

• New sites: longer, because of an initial trust-building period
• Established sites: noticeable improvement in three to six months
• Local SEO: Google Maps results sometimes within thirty to sixty days

Medical and YMYL sites sit at the longer end, as Google applies stricter quality evaluation.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, Google's quality framework used by human raters and reflected in ranking systems. It matters most for YMYL topics like medical, financial and legal content.

Strong signals include named, verifiable author credentials, transparent ownership, citations to authoritative sources, genuine depth and original work, and recognition from established external sites. For YMYL sites, weak E-E-A-T holds rankings back no matter how well written the content is. My E-E-A-T for medical websites guide covers this in depth.

Backlinks remain one of Google's most important ranking factors, but quality now matters far more than quantity. A few links from authoritative, topically relevant sites outperform hundreds of weak ones.

Earn links through genuinely valuable content, original research and natural mentions in trade media. Avoid paid links, exchanges and private blog networks, which risk penalties. For AI search, independent brand mentions across trusted sources matter even without a hyperlink, because engines weigh citations and references separately.

AEO is the practice of structuring content so it is selected and cited as the answer by AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini.

Unlike traditional SEO, which optimises for a ranked position, AEO optimises for being quoted directly. Core tactics: answer-first content, clear question-based structure, entity clarity, schema where it genuinely helps, and independent authority that gives an engine reason to trust the source. Read the complete AEO guide.

AI answer engines cite sources they can find, understand, trust and safely quote. In practice:

1. Write answer-first, in self-contained passages a model can lift cleanly
2. State plainly who you are and what you do, so your entity is unambiguous
3. Earn independent corroboration from sources the model already trusts
4. Keep structure clean and machine-readable, not trapped in images

Manufactured mentions and schema stuffing do not work, because the engines are built to discount manipulation. Being genuinely worth citing is the strategy. This is the foundation of the machine-readability root layer.

Focus on a few concrete tactics:

• Give a direct, complete answer in the opening lines of each section
• Use question-based headings that match how people actually ask
• Show expertise through named authorship and credible citations
• Keep structure clean and scannable
• Answer related questions on the same page
• Build independent authority across trusted sources

AI Overviews favour content that is authoritative and easy to extract a clean answer from.

FAQ structured data no longer produces the rich FAQ dropdowns that once appeared in Google results, so the visual SERP benefit has largely gone. But the schema is still valid and worth keeping.

Google has said it continues to use FAQ structured data to understand pages, and AI search engines and voice assistants still extract question-and-answer content. The value has shifted from visual rich results to content comprehension and AI citation eligibility, so existing FAQ schema can stay in place.

The FOUND Framework is a method created and published by Nayananjalee Rajarathna in September 2026 for making a brand consistently visible to AI answer engines. Its principle: AI visibility is an outcome of being FOUND, not a tactic for being mentioned.

The five pillars, each answering one question an AI effectively asks before it cites you:

• F – Findability: can AI and Search actually find the information?
• O – Originality: why would an AI system need your information?
• U – Understanding: does the machine understand what you do?
• N – Networked Authority: does the world independently reinforce what you say?
• D – Demonstrability: can you prove you are worth trusting?

Read it in full: the FOUND Framework.

Decision Engine Optimization is a book by Nayananjalee Rajarathna on winning visibility in AI search. It covers the technical foundations of machine readability, entity building, and the FOUND Framework in practice, for anyone who needs their content chosen as the answer rather than buried in a list of links.

It is available now on Amazon.

Nayananjalee Rajarathna is known as the Queen of AEO. The descriptor reflects seven years of technical SEO applied to Answer Engine Optimization, the FOUND Framework published in September 2026, and the book Decision Engine Optimization.

It is earned through published frameworks and documented client results rather than self appointed, on a simple principle: real wins earn real titles, through proof rather than budget or borrowed authority. More at queenofaeo.com.

llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file, similar in spirit to robots.txt, that gives AI models a structured overview of a site's most important content. It lives at yoursite.com/llms.txt.

It is not strictly required, and it is not a shortcut to AI visibility on its own. It is a small helper for content-heavy sites that want to be easy for AI to navigate. The substance, original, well-structured, independently corroborated content, matters far more than the file. See my llms.txt guide.

Medical SEO is the optimisation of healthcare websites to be found in search and AI answers. It differs from regular SEO because health content falls under Google's YMYL classification and is held to the strictest quality standards, and because health advertising is regulated.

Medical sites must show verified practitioner credentials, cite authoritative sources, meet higher E-E-A-T scrutiny, and stay compliant with their market's advertising rules. The consequences of low quality are more severe, because inaccurate health information can cause real harm. See the complete medical clinic SEO guide.

For Australian healthcare, the relevant regime is AHPRA, which regulates the advertising of regulated health services, alongside privacy law. AHPRA-compliant SEO means growing a clinic's visibility while respecting those rules.

In practice that means:

• Not using prohibited patient testimonials about clinical care
• Avoiding misleading or comparative claims
• Not creating unrealistic expectations of treatment outcomes
• Handling patient data lawfully

The work is to make a clinic's genuine, compliant information legible to search and AI, so it can be recommended for the right reasons. Note: clinics based in the United States fall under a different framework, HIPAA, which governs the handling of patient health information rather than advertising.

Local ranking rests on three factors:

• Relevance: how well the Google Business Profile matches the search, via accurate categories, services and description
• Distance: the searcher's proximity, which you target through service areas
• Prominence: reputation online, driven by genuine reviews, consistent name/address/phone, directory citations and photos

Most clinics leave ranking power unused by only partly completing their profile. My Google Maps case study shows the method in practice.

Core Web Vitals are Google's user-experience performance metrics and confirmed ranking factors, especially on mobile.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): loading, target under 2.5 seconds
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): responsiveness, target under 200 milliseconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): visual stability, target under 0.1

They are measured from real Chrome user data, visible in Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. See my Core Web Vitals 2026 guide.

Schema types that still produce useful results in 2026 include Article, Product, Review and AggregateRating (only for genuine, verifiable reviews), Organization and LocalBusiness, Person for author and credential markup, BreadcrumbList, Video, Event, and Recipe.

For medical sites specifically, MedicalOrganization, Physician and MedicalWebPage add machine-readable clinical context. FAQPage schema no longer produces rich results but is still valid for content understanding and AI. Use schema where it genuinely reflects your content, not as decoration.

SEO pricing varies widely by scope, market competition and provider type, so any figure is a general range rather than a fixed rate.

Independent specialists usually cost less than agencies because they carry less overhead. One-off technical audits are priced per project, and ongoing work is typically a monthly retainer or a scoped engagement. The sensible way to judge cost is against the lifetime value of a customer: for high-value sectors like medical clinics, even a premium investment can return quickly through new patient acquisition. Request a quote for a figure specific to your site.

It depends on your needs.

A freelance specialist offers direct expert work, lower overhead, faster communication, and deeper niche knowledge, and you deal with the person doing the work. An agency offers a broader multi-discipline team, established processes and larger capacity.

For businesses in specific niches such as medical, legal or technical fields, a specialist who understands the niche usually outperforms a generalist agency. Large organisations needing coordinated multi-channel marketing may prefer an agency. Learn about my approach.

A useful free audit should cover:

• Technical health: speed, mobile, crawl and indexing, Core Web Vitals
• On-page review: titles, meta, headings, content quality
• Keyword and competitor gaps
• Backlink and brand-mention profile
• Schema and structured-data check
• AEO and AI-search readiness
• A prioritised list of high-impact next steps

It should need no commitment beyond your URL. Request your free audit.