"Which company in Braunschweig builds websites?" More and more people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview that question instead of clicking through ten blue links. This guide shows, step by step, how to make sure your business is part of the answer.
Search is changing. AI assistants read the web and give one synthesized answer, often naming just a handful of businesses. If yours is not one of them, the customer never sees you. The good news: the work that gets you into AI answers overlaps heavily with good, honest SEO. Let's break it down.
📖 First, the Terms: GEO, AEO and AI Search
You will see three acronyms. They overlap more than they differ:
GEO · Generative Engine Optimization
Optimizing so that generative AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) mention and recommend you in their answers.
AEO · Answer Engine Optimization
Optimizing so your content becomes the direct answer to a question, in featured snippets, voice assistants and AI overviews.
AI Search Experience
The broader shift: search results that are answers, not link lists. Google's AI Overview is the biggest example.
The honest summary: GEO and AEO are SEO for the AI era. The foundations are the same, clear content, clean technology, a trustworthy reputation, but the goal shifts from "rank a link" to "be the recommended answer".
🛠️ Part 1: The Technical Foundation
AI engines can only recommend what they can read and understand. Three technical building blocks matter most:
1. Structured data (schema markup)
Schema markup (JSON-LD) tells machines exactly what your site is: your Organization, your LocalBusiness details (address, phone, area served), your FAQPage, and sameAs links to your other profiles (LinkedIn, GitHub, product sites). This is how an AI builds a confident "entity" for your business instead of guessing.
2. An llms.txt file
A plain-text file at /llms.txt that summarizes who you are, what you offer, where you operate and links to your key pages, written for AI crawlers. Think of it as a cheat sheet you hand the model. Keep it factual and quotable.
3. A solid, crawlable foundation
- Fast, mobile-friendly pages with clean, semantic HTML.
- A correct
robots.txtthat allows the AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended). If you block them, you cannot be quoted. - A sitemap, canonical URLs and per-page titles, so each page is understood on its own.
✍️ Part 2: Content Strategy
AI engines quote content that is clear, factual and easy to lift. Write for that:
Put the direct answer in the first sentence, then explain. Models lift the concise answer.
Real FAQs with clear questions as headings match how people ask AI, and feed FAQ schema.
"Web design studio in Braunschweig, fixed price from 890 €, serving Hannover and the region" beats vague marketing language.
Say clearly and consistently who you are, what you do and where. Ambiguity confuses the entity.
🎯 Part 3: The Core Recommendations (Off-Site)
Here is the part most guides skip: AI engines mostly learn about you from other websites, not just your own. When someone asks "which companies build websites in Braunschweig", the model draws on listings, directories and reviews across the web. So the decisive work happens off your site:
- Google Business Profile: the single biggest lever. It feeds the local map pack and Google's AI Overview.
- Directories with consistent name, address, phone: ProvenExpert, Clutch, Sortlist, WLW, Gelbe Seiten, your local chamber of commerce. AI reads these.
- Reviews: the number and recency of reviews shape both rankings and what AI summarizes about you.
- Get mentioned in "best X in your city" articles: models quote those lists directly.
- Earn links: every project, partner or local sponsorship that links back builds authority.
✅ Your GEO/AEO Checklist
- ☐ Organization, LocalBusiness and FAQ schema on your site
- ☐ sameAs links to your profiles and products
- ☐ An llms.txt file with a quotable summary
- ☐ robots.txt allows AI crawlers
- ☐ Answer-first, FAQ-style content
- ☐ A verified Google Business Profile
- ☐ Consistent listings in the main directories
- ☐ A steady flow of genuine reviews
Want to Be the Answer, Not the Afterthought?
At KorrektCode we build every website on exactly this foundation: structured data, llms.txt, clean fast code and a content structure AI engines can quote. It is how this very site is set up.