The course
Get your brand into AI answers
12 interactive lessons on answer engine optimization for marketers who already know SEO: how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews choose their sources, and the work that makes one of them yours.
Who it’s for
You know SEO
You can read a robots.txt file and you know what a canonical is. The course starts from there, not from what a search engine is.
You're asked about AI search
A client or your boss wants to know why ChatGPT recommends a competitor. You want an answer built on the platforms' own documentation, not hype.
You'd rather practice than watch
Every lesson has checks, a hands-on exercise and an audit. You work on real files and passages, not slides.
Syllabus
5 parts, 12 lessons
Each lesson is a district of the City of Answers. Work through them in order, or jump to the one you need.
- Part 1
How AI search works
What happens between a question and a cited answer.
District 1: The Gate
How answer engines choose sources
Follow a question from the prompt to the finished answer: retrieval, grounding and query fan-out. You will learn the difference between being cited and being mentioned, and how an AI answer differs from a results page you already know how to win.
Beginner25 minFree
- Part 2
Your site
Let AI in, write passages it can lift, and mark up who you are.
District 2: The Crawl Docks
Make your site reachable by AI
Tell AI crawlers from the user agents that fetch a page on someone's behalf, and decide what your robots.txt should say to each. You will also cover rendering and JavaScript, llms.txt, sitemaps, IndexNow, and the CDN and WAF rules that quietly block bots.
Beginner30 min
District 3: The Answer Quarter
Writing citable content
Lead with the answer, then support it. You will practice passage-level clarity, question headings, lists and tables, clean definitions, and keeping dates and freshness honest, so each section still makes sense when it is pulled out on its own.
Beginner30 min
District 4: The Schema Works
Structured data and entities
Get the JSON-LD essentials right for Organization, Article, FAQPage, HowTo and Product. You will then work on entity consistency, sameAs links and the knowledge graph, so machines know exactly who and what you are.
Intermediate30 min
- Part 3
Beyond your site
The mentions, reviews and platforms that shape what AI says about you.
District 5: The Agora
Authority beyond your site
AI search tools learn about you from places you do not control. You will look at brand mentions, reviews, Reddit and forums, digital PR, Wikipedia and Wikidata, and the comparison and "best X" lists that shape recommendations.
Intermediate25 min
District 6: The Embassies
Platform playbooks
Work through Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude one at a time. For each you will see what it tends to favor and how to run a simple test on your own pages.
Intermediate25 min
- Part 4
Measure and scale
Track your AI visibility and run AEO as an ongoing program.
District 7: The Observatory
Measuring AI visibility
Build a prompt set, track share of voice, and find AI referral traffic in GA4. You will also read server logs for bot hits and turn the results into a report that people outside your team can follow.
Advanced25 min
District 8: The Citadel
Running an AEO program
Run an audit, prioritize what you find, and build a roadmap. You will practice reporting to stakeholders or clients and finish with a 90-day plan you can start on Monday.
Advanced20 min
- Part 5
Advanced playbooks
Products, local businesses, video and images, and fixing what AI gets wrong about you.
District 9: The Market
Products and shopping in AI answers
Learn how ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode and Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity choose products, and which merchant listing markup, feeds and reviews feed them. You will fix product markup, write a feed row, keep prices and stock accurate everywhere, and see what the new agentic checkout protocols ask of a merchant.
Intermediate25 min
District 10: The Neighborhoods
Local businesses and reviews in AI answers
Learn how Google ranks local results, what its AI features and ChatGPT document about nearby businesses, and how to claim and align your listings on Google, Apple and Bing. Mark up each location with LocalBusiness structured data, then ask for and reply to reviews within Google's policies and the FTC's rule.
Intermediate35 min
District 11: The Picture House
Video, images and YouTube in AI answers
AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT can show videos and images with links back to their source. Learn what Google, YouTube and OpenAI actually document: watch pages, VideoObject and key moments, video and image sitemaps, YouTube titles, chapters and captions, alt text and image license metadata.
Intermediate25 min
District 12: The Hall of Records
When AI gets your brand wrong
Learn why answer engines get brand facts wrong, from hallucinations to outdated training data to faithfully repeating a bad page. You will trace errors through citations, fix the sources under each site's rules, use each platform's documented feedback routes, and avoid the shortcuts that backfire.
Intermediate30 min
How a lesson works
- 01
Learn
Short concept cards, each with the sources it relies on and the date they were checked.
- 02
Check
A quick check after each group of concepts, so you know it went in before you move on.
- 03
Practice
A hands-on exercise: trace an answer through an engine, fix a robots.txt file, rewrite a passage answer-first.
- 04
Audit
Each lesson ends with an audit that tests what you learned and earns XP toward your level in the City of Answers.
Finish all 12 and download a certificate with your name on it, with a link anyone can use to verify it.
What it costs
Lesson 1 is free. Every plan unlocks the whole course.
Best value
Lifetime
$100
one payment
Pay once. Keep it for good.
Yearly
$60
per year
A year of access at half the monthly price.
Monthly
$10
per month
Learn a month at a time.
Who writes it
Harry Harrison writes Learn AEO: the lessons, the blog and the glossary. Harry is a B2B content strategist and copywriter for fintech, SaaS and AI companies. More about the course.
Questions
Do I need to know SEO first?
The basics, yes: crawling, indexing, titles and links. The course builds on SEO rather than teaching it from scratch, because most of AEO is SEO with a different scoreboard.
How long does the course take?
About 5.5 hours in total. Each of the 12 lessons takes 20 to 35 minutes, and your place is saved, so you can stop and come back.
Is the first lesson really free?
Yes. Lesson 1 is free with a sign-in and no card. It covers how AI answers get built and how sources get chosen.
Will this guarantee my brand gets cited?
No, and nothing honestly can: no one controls what an AI tool writes. The course teaches what the platforms document, how to remove the things that stop you being used, and how to measure whether changes work.