Tish Briseno | AI Writing That Sounds Human

I recently got a boutique real estate agency to show up as the number one recommendation in ChatGPT for a competitive local market search. Above a national franchise (Coldwell Banker) with decades of brand recognition. No paid placement. No SEO agency. No massive content team.

Just a content system built around three principles most marketers aren’t thinking about yet.

What made it happen wasn’t better SEO. It was something different entirely. It was AEO strategy. And if you haven’t heard of it yet, now is exactly the right time to start paying attention. ChatGPT alone now has over 900 million weekly users and processes billions of queries daily, making it one of the fastest-growing discovery platforms in history.

AI search isn’t coming. It’s already handling billions of queries a day. You need to be showing up in AI results.

What Is AEO Strategy?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the process of creating content designed to be directly cited, summarized, or recommended by AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.

Instead of competing for rankings, you’re competing to be the answer.

Here’s the shift that matters. People used to Google something and scroll through a list of links. Now they ask an AI and get a direct answer with a recommendation.

Nearly 40% of Google searches now include AI-generated answers, reducing the need to click through to traditional results.

The question isn’t just “how do I rank in search results” anymore. It’s “how do I become the answer AI gives.”

That’s a fundamentally different outcome. SEO gets you on the list. AEO strategy gets you recommended directly.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, the best content strategies do both simultaneously. However, most businesses are still optimizing exclusively for the list while their competitors are quietly becoming the answer.

Why Your Current SEO Strategy Isn’t Enough Anymore

SEO still works. It still matters. This is not a post telling you to abandon what’s working. But you can no longer stop at SEO.

You can still optimize your posts for SEO, just also factor in optimizing it for AEO right now as well.

Three things have changed that make AEO strategy essential right now.

Search behavior is shifting faster than most marketing plans. Your customers are asking questions to AI tools every day. They’re asking ChatGPT which real estate agent to call. They’re asking Google AI Overviews which product to buy. They’re asking Perplexity to explain their options before they ever visit a website. If your content isn’t built to answer those questions directly, you’re invisible to a growing segment of your audience.

AI search engines evaluate content differently than traditional algorithms. Keywords and backlinks still matter for Google rankings. However, AI search engines are trying to answer questions helpfully and accurately. Thin content that ranks on Google through technical SEO tactics doesn’t necessarily get recommended by AI. What gets recommended is content that actually answers the question thoroughly, credibly, and in plain language.

The window to get ahead is open right now. Most businesses haven’t started thinking about AEO yet. The early movers are establishing authority while the space is uncrowded. This is the same window that existed for SEO in the early 2000s. The businesses that moved first built advantages that lasted for years. The same opportunity exists right now for AEO strategy. With product and research queries inside AI tools are growing rapidly, increasing nearly 90% year-over-year, it’s more important than ever to jump on this now.

How AI Search Engines Choose What to Recommend

AI tools don’t rank pages the same way traditional search engines do.

They look for:

• Clear, direct answers to specific questions
• Content written in natural, human language
• Demonstrated expertise or firsthand experience
• Structured, extractable formatting
• Up-to-date and contextually relevant information

In other words:

Helpful > optimized
Clear > clever
Specific > broad

The Three Principles Behind an Effective AEO Strategy

This framework comes from real experience, not theory. Here’s what actually produced results.

Principle 1: Human First, Always

Write like a knowledgeable person, not an algorithm.

AI search engines are trained on human behavior. Content that real people find genuinely useful, readable, and trustworthy is content AI recommends. The two goals are not in conflict. They’re the same goal.

If you’re writing for algorithms, you’re writing for the wrong audience. Write for the person asking the question. The algorithm follows.

This means your content needs to sound like a knowledgeable person explaining something clearly. Not keyword-dense. Not stiff. Not formatted like a checklist someone generated in thirty seconds. Real voice. Real perspective. Real usefulness.

Principle 2: Answer the Specific Question AI Needs Help With

Stop thinking about keywords. Start thinking about questions.

AEO content is built around:

• “What would someone ask AI?”
• “What answer would they need next?”

The goal is simple: Be the most complete, most useful answer to a real question.

What is your customer actually asking right now? What would they type into ChatGPT? What would they ask Google AI Overviews? Build content that answers that question more completely and more specifically than anything else available.

AI search engines are trying to be helpful. They’re looking for content they can trust to answer a question accurately. Give them something worth recommending. Be the most complete, most specific, most useful answer to a question your audience is already asking.

The businesses that win AEO aren’t guessing at keywords. They’re listening to questions.

Principle 3: Bring Expertise That Isn’t Found Elsewhere

This is the piece most people miss entirely. AI already has access to thousands of generic takes on every topic. Generic content doesn’t get recommended. It gets passed over.

What gets cited is original expertise. Local knowledge. Specific insight. Real experience that can’t be copied from somewhere else.

Think about what makes your perspective genuinely different. What do you know that a competitor couldn’t just replicate? What experience do you have that adds a layer of credibility and specificity no one else can match? That’s your AEO advantage. Build your content around it.

What This Looked Like in Practice

In Hawaii we had a complex real estate law pass that was creating a lot of questions among buyers and sellers in the real estate market. The topic was evolving quickly. Most of the content available was either shallow news coverage or dense legal language that wasn’t helpful to a regular person trying to understand what it meant for their property.

My approach was simple: write like a knowledgeable friend explaining something complicated in plain language. Answer the specific questions people were actually asking. Update the content as the situation evolved. Make it the most complete and genuinely useful resource on the topic available anywhere.

Example query:
“Maui real estate agent that specializes in Bill 9 laws”

Result:
The result was top placement in not only Google Search but also in Google AI Overviews for related queries, with AI was driving more traffic. Our phone started ringing with people who had questions about this law and how it impacted their property/condo they wanted to buy.

Not because of a clever hack, but because the content genuinely deserved to rank. It answered real questions with real expertise that wasn’t available elsewhere.

That’s AEO strategy working exactly the way it should.

Common AEO Mistakes Businesses Are Making

Most businesses aren’t losing because they’re doing nothing.

They’re losing because they’re doing the wrong things.

• Writing generic content AI has already seen 1,000 times (and is likely written by generic AI, another problem I specialize in solving)
• Over-optimizing for keywords instead of questions
• Publishing without unique insight or experience
• Ignoring how AI tools actually extract and summarize content

AEO is not about more content.

It’s about better answers.

How to Start Shifting Your Strategy Today

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Here’s where to start.

Audit your existing content for question-answering depth. Read your most important pages and ask honestly: does this actually answer what someone would ask AI? Or does it just contain keywords and general information? The gap between those two things is your opportunity.

Identify the questions your customers are asking that nobody is answering well. Search your topic in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. See what comes up. Notice the gaps. Those gaps are where AEO strategy wins.

Write one piece of content built entirely around answering a specific question with genuine expertise. Not a keyword. A question. Make it the most complete answer to that question available anywhere. See what happens over the next sixty to ninety days.

Start testing your own brand visibility in AI search. Type your business name into ChatGPT. Ask it to recommend options in your category. You might be surprised where you stand. And if you’re not showing up, now you know why and what to do about it.

AEO and SEO Work Best Together

This isn’t a replacement. It’s an evolution.

• SEO is still the foundation.

• AEO is the answer layer on top of it

The goal isn’t to choose between AEO strategy and traditional SEO. The goal is to build content that earns both.

Content that genuinely answers questions with real expertise tends to rank well in traditional search too. The principles overlap more than they diverge. Human-first writing, specific expertise, and thorough question-answering are good content strategy regardless of which algorithm is evaluating it.

The businesses that will dominate search over the next decade aren’t choosing between SEO and AEO. They’re building content systems that do both at the same time.

The Bottom Line

The boutique real estate agency that outranked Coldwell Banker in ChatGPT didn’t win because of a bigger budget or a more sophisticated tech stack. It won because someone took the time to actually answer the questions people were asking, with expertise that wasn’t available anywhere else, in language that felt like a real person wrote it.

That has always been good content strategy. It’s just more important now than it has ever been.

SEO gets you on the list. AEO strategy gets you recommended. The businesses paying attention to both right now are building advantages their competitors won’t understand until it’s too late to catch up.

Start paying attention now.

Want to Show Up in AI Search?

If your business isn’t showing up when people ask AI who to trust, you’re already behind. I help brands fix that. Contact me!