Optimize content and improve brand visibility for AI

As a marketer, you want to ensure that your content reaches your target audience. To effectively market your business and generate leads through answer engines (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini), understand and apply the key strategies for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) when creating marketing content.

For example, a marketer for Sprocket Supply Co., an ecommerce office supply company, wants to ensure the brand is cited when leads search for Best office chair suppliers in my area through an answer engine.

Optimizing for AEO can ensure that Sprocket Supply Co. is surfaced with a link in the generated results. When a lead clicks on the link, they will already have researched and compared different suppliers through the answer engine. Consequently, they are more prepared to purchase, which leads to higher conversion rates.

Below, review the two key strategies used for AEO: content optimization and visibility. Then, learn how you can use different tools in your HubSpot account to optimize your content for AI and build visibility across different channels. 

Understand AI optimization strategies

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) focuses on two key strategies: content optimization and content visibility across different channels. Each piece of content you create, from pages to social posts, can contribute to the overall success of this strategy. 

These two strategies determine whether your content is parsed and surfaced in AI-powered search across answer engines, and consequently, the impact of your marketing efforts in tangible results such as traffic, engagement, and conversions. 

• Content optimization: creating and structuring content in a way that answer engines can find and understand your content. When writing or generating content for answer engines, there are specific strategies that you can use, such as content structure, answer clarity, and multi-format accessibility. Learn more about the key best practices for AEO.

• Visibility: how likely answer engines are to surface your content. This is determined by a combination of the following:

  • Consistency: whether messaging is aligned across your different channels.

  • Authority: whether the answer engine determines that your content displays subject matter expertise.

  • Density: whether you have a multi-channel presence. This is also impacted by the frequency and saturation (e.g., depth) of your content.

Optimize marketing content for answer engines

To ensure your content is surfaced by answer engines, optimize the structure and format of your written content with these best practices:

• Incorporate schemas into your pages: add schemas to your pages to provide structured data so that answer engines can interpret your pages. Answer engines will use a page’s schema markup to classify, rank, and display content in search results. Adding schemas will increase the likelihood of your pages being cited. Learn more about incorporating schemas into your page.
• Use direct, concise, and consistent language and formatting: use action-oriented sentences beginning with verbs and avoid unnecessary adverbs and adjectives. Use clear headings for each section and follow a predictable structure (e.g., H2 header for sections, H3 headers for subsections, and so on).
• Consider the best formatting for the type of information: use numbered steps and checklists for sequential instructions. Use bulleted lists for options. Use tables for comparisons or lists with multiple sections.
• Avoid using visuals as the main source of information: only use images (e.g., graphs, charts) as a secondary source to complement written descriptions.
• Use alt text when adding visuals: when using images, include alt text to help answer engines interpret the image within the page context. The alt text should be specific. For example, use "an ergonomic office chair with armrests in a black mesh fabric" as opposed to "an office chair".
• Use conditional statements: write conditional rules (e.g., if, then) for processes to help AI provide actionable answers based on specific scenarios. For example, use the following: 
  
  • lf the price of a product is over $500, always include a link to the 5-year warranty offering. 
  • If the channel is email, include a 'Shop Now' button at the end of the email before the sign-off.
• Include negative constraints: when documenting rules, be clear about what is not allowed to avoid AI hallucinations. For example, use the following constraints: 
  • No exaggerated durability. Do not use words like "indestructible," "permanent," or "forever" for consumables like pens or folders. Use "long-lasting" or "heavy-duty".
  • No speculation on health. Do not claim that furniture "cures" or "fixes" medical conditions (e.g., "cures back pain"). Instead, use "supports spinal alignment" or "designed for ergonomic comfort".

• Include examples: where possible, show the agent what’s “good” or “bad.” This is particularly helpful for rule and process documentation. . For example, use the following good and bad examples: 
  • Good: do always use provided numbers (e.g., 80 GSM).
  • Bad: do not guess or use the term "Heavy-duty" without technical specifications.

For example, if a marketer for Sprocket Supply Co. was creating a blog post, they might include these components:

• Schema: @type: Article 
• Target title: Building a Home Office: Expert Answers to Your Setup Questions
• H2 Headers (question-based):

• • What is the ideal height for a home office desk?
  • Is a dual-monitor setup better for productivity?

• • How often should I replace my office chair?
  • What table lighting is best for reducing eye strain at a computer?
• H3 strategies: this can be used under the What table lighting is best for reducing eye strain at a computer H2 header
  • Is warm or cool lighting better for a work setup?
  • How bright should my office table lighting be? 

• Formatted information: a table comparing the specifications of different table lighting options or the lifespan for different office chairs. 

Audit existing content for AEO

Well-structured content helps both AI and users understand the information that you're trying to convey. Unique content that accurately reflects your brand will also help to establish consistency in your messaging. 

1. Audit your existing content for AEO:
   • It's recommended to use HubSpot's AEO grader as a starting point.
   • Use this audit to determine the key areas and pages that you'd like to optimize. 

2. Analyze content’s AEO (BETA): measure how well your brand AEO performs by running your prompts daily against answer engines, then aggregate results into visibility metrics. These metrics support analysis of brand mentions, prompt coverage, and citation patterns over time.

   • It's recommended to track your brand's AEO metrics before and after making any changes to measure the actual impact of your efforts. For example, review your brand's citation rate before and after restructuring your home page for AEO.
   • Within AEO, you can then take action based on recommendations, including automatically generating content with AI that you can review before publishing.

Set up and tailor your AI tools 

While you can use Breeze Assistant, HubSpot's AI conversational assistant, to review content, it's recommended to set up the following tools to refine your outputs for both your branding and answer engines. 

• Set up Breeze Assistant so users can access it for content generation and recommendations.

• Create a custom assistant specifically to optimize your content for AEO:
  • Create a custom assistant with added instructions based on the AEO optimization strategies that you'd like to put in place. After publishing your custom assistant, access the assistant from Breeze Assistant across HubSpot. 
  • Create a custom knowledge vault to provide additional context to your custom assistant. Without a custom knowledge vault, any assistants will be limited to the data configured in your AI settings. Adding a knowledge vault will allow your assistants to generate refined outputs tailored to your brand and audience. When creating source content, follow the same best practices for writing content for AI.
• Tailor your AI tools in HubSpot to your brand:

• • Set up your brand voice in your HubSpot account to establish consistency in your marketing content. This brand voice will then be applied whenever generating content in your HubSpot account. Learn more about setting up your brand voice to optimize for AI adoption.
  • Set up your brand identity context to provide additional context to AI when creating blogs, landing pages, and case studies. Learn more about setting up your brand identity context to optimize for AI adoption.
  • Set up your buyer personas to determine your target audience when generating content. Learn more about defining sales details to optimize for AI adoption.

Optimize new and existing content for AEO

After auditing your content and setting up your AI tools, review your data and use recommendations to optimize existing content for AEO. Generate new content based on recommendations to avoid missing potential citation opportunities. When optimizing your content with AI, it is strongly recommended to manually review and edit your content. 

• If you don't have any existing content: use Breeze Assistant to generate new content. When generating content for the first time, use Marketing Studio to create a high-level overview of your content to ensure alignment across channels and consistency with your brand messaging. You'll also be able to use campaign templates to get started with content ideas.
• If you have existing content: use Breeze Assistant to review your written content such as pages and social posts, then generate recommendations to improve AEO. 

• • For example, you could use this prompt: "Review the content in this page and optimize and generate suggestions for AEO."
  • While it is strongly recommended to use Breeze Assistant to optimize your content directly within HubSpot, if you prefer to use another AI tool, use a similar prompt, then use a preview URL of your current content draft for pages or blog posts.
• If you have existing limited content that has been optimized for AEO: use content remix to create additional pieces of similar content across different channels. Alternatively, you can also use the Recommendations tab in AEO (BETA) to review potential topics and generate content. 

Refine your marketing content based on performance

After optimizing your content for AI, test and review your performance to understand which topics drive leads, identify underperforming content, and make changes to improve your content. 

• Repeat an AEO audit on a regular basis to analyze the impact of your changes on AEO. For example, you may want to do an audit cycle every 3 months. 

• A/B test your pages: test two different versions of your page. While AEO metrics are not tracked through A/B testing, you can track marketing outcomes that can be correlated to organic visibility. Successful marketing outcomes to look for in the “winning” version include a higher number of conversions and higher citation rate (i.e. that version is being surfaced more often in answer engines). The outcomes of your A/B tests can then be incorporated into your brand voice or used as a consideration when generating or reviewing content moving forward. 

For example, a marketer at Sprocket Supply Co. creates an A/B test for two versions of a landing page offering an ergonomic chair guide. They test titles such as The Guide to Ergonomic Seating for 2026 against The Best Ergonomic Office Chairs in 2025. When The Best Ergonomic Office Chairs in 2025 has higher citation and conversion rates, they update the brand voice to recommend similar titles moving forward.

Learn more about A/B testing. 

Improve brand AI visibility

After establishing consistency with a brand voice and optimizing content with Breeze, your content should be structured in a way that can be parsed by both humans and AI. 

The goal of visibility is to ensure that when an answer engine surfaces an answer, your content is selected over other content that may be similar. The next step in improving your visibility will be to build consistency, density, and authority. 

Plan multi-channel campaigns

AI models use content across all platforms to assess brand authority and reputation. Building a presence across different social and media platforms can influence AI search rankings. Providing concise answers on these platforms will build experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT), which is used to rate content for quality and determine which content should be cited.

1. Use Marketing Studio (BETA) when planning your campaigns:

   • In the canvas view in Marketing Studio, review all assets to ensure that your marketing strategy has a multi-channel approach and that your content is aligned across these different channels. 

   • Generate content directly from within Marketing Studio. For example, review if there are topics that are performing particularly well or a successful piece of content has not been replicated in another channel, such as a social post, video, or podcast. 

2. Use content remix to reuse your content and ensure that it reaches multiple channels. For example, you could remix a video about the different office furniture offered in your store into a blog post, an Instagram post, and a YouTube short for customers who look for content on those platforms.

3. Use AI to help you generate content across multiple channels: 
   • Generate images using AI
   • Use AI to generate social post content
   • Generate social posts from blog posts

1. • Use AI assistants to create ad campaigns
   • Generate blog posts

1. • Generate marketing emails with AI email creation (BETA)
     
     

Reach a wider audience with translated content

Translate and set up your pages for multiple languages to reach a wider audience. For example, Sprocket Supply Co. has a branch in Miami, a city with both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities. A marketer for the company translates the content for the local website to effectively market office supplies to businesses in both populations. 

1. Automatically translate page and post content into other languages with Breeze for your website pages, landing pages, and blog posts. 
2. Ensure that content is indexed for localized search queries:
   • Tag your language content with hreflang to allow AI to recognize and serve the correct language version. Learn more about using hreflang tag attributes.
   • Adapt content for cultural nuances and local search behaviors. Localizing casual language will improve relevancy for AI models and increase the likelihood of citations. For example, certain puns or idioms may not work in other languages, such as 'Broken pencils are pointless. That's why we have a 20% sale on all sharpeners!'. In the translated versions of your content, you'll want to change the pun used. 

Additional resources

• Best practices for AEO
• How to structure pages for AEO and answer engines: A quick-start guide
• Best practices for answer engine optimization (AEO) marketing teams can't ignore
• HubSpot AEO Grader
• Recommended HubSpot Academy resources:
  • What Is HubSpot's AEO Grader
  • Putting It All Together: Your 90-Day AEO Action Plan
  • Your First 3 Steps for AEO in Loop Marketing
  • Your AEO Community Content Strategy
  • Your AEO Short-Form Video Strategy
  • Your First AEO Writing Assistant: Choosing the Right Tool
  • YouTube AEO Fundamentals: Titles, Descriptions, and Thumbnails

Glossary

• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): the strategy of optimizing your content to be surfaced by answer engines. 
• Answer engines: AI platforms and answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.
• Citations: whether your brand appears in the answers provided by answer engines. 
• Channels: different platforms where you can host content or where references to your content may appear. Some examples include websites, social media platforms such as Instagram or Tiktok, video hosting platforms such as YouTube, forums, such as Reddit, and directories such as Yelp.