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The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product | Ethan Smith (Graphite)

September 14, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, explains Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), the practice of appearing in LLM responses like those from ChatGPT or Perplexity. Building on his 18 years in SEO, he describes AEO as a summarization of search results via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), where success depends on frequent citations across sources rather than single top rankings.

Core Mechanisms of AEO

LLMs pull from RAG citations—web pages, videos, Reddit, Quora—to generate answers, favoring sources mentioned multiple times, especially for head queries like "best website builder." Unlike Google, where #1 rank wins clicks, AEO requires broad mentions; Webflow gained visibility by optimizing landing pages, YouTube videos, and Reddit threads. The long tail is larger, capturing novel follow-up questions (e.g., specific integrations) never searched before, allowing early-stage startups to appear quickly via fresh mentions without domain authority.

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What you'll learn

1 **[00:00-00:53] Intro to AEO and its advantages over SEO**
2 **[00:05:08-00:07:28] Ethan's SEO background and AEO/GEO definitions**
3 **[00:08:32-00:15:35] Impact examples and why quality content alone isn't enough**
4 **[00:15:49-00:21:27] Onsite/offsite levers + Reddit strategy**
5 **[00:21:48-00:24:40] 3 key principles: RAG topics, question research, citations**
6 **[00:29:12-00:33:35] Step-by-step AEO playbook**
7 **[00:34:03-00:38:44] Trackers, share of voice, multi-LLM focus**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Ethan Smith is the CEO of Graphite—the leading SEO growth agency—and my go-to expert on SEO. After 18 years of mastering traditional SEO, Ethan has been at the forefront of what is called AEO: answer engine optimization, or, more simply, getting your product to show up in ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity answers. He’s discovered that ChatGPT traffic converts six times better than Google search—and most companies are completely missing this opportunity.

In our conversation, we discuss:

1. His 7-step playbook to rank #1 in ChatGPT

2. Why ChatGPT traffic converts 6x better than Google

3. How early-stage startups can win at AEO immediately (unlike with SEO, which takes years)

4. The three tactics that actually work: landing pages, YouTube videos, and Reddit comments

5. Why help-center content can suddenly be your highest-ROI investment

6. The specific Reddit strategy that works (spoiler: be authentic)

7. Why AI-generated content doesn’t work

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