At a Glance
- SEO isn’t going away — but AI search and answer engines now decide whether your brand is seen and cited, not just how you rank.
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) layers on top of SEO, focusing on how LLMs interpret your site, choose your content, and retell your story in AI summaries and chat interfaces.
- For most marketing teams, the right move is a staged shift: clarify the strategy, restructure priority content around questions, and start measuring AI-driven visibility alongside traditional SEO.
Why SEO Suddenly Feels Less Reliable in 2026
If your dashboards show softer organic traffic and more “direct” or “other” conversions, you’re not alone. AI summaries and chat-style results are answering questions directly on the SERP, meaning users often get what they need without ever clicking through.
Webflow’s AEO research shows SEO traffic is down 15–25% across industries, while AI surfaces become a meaningful discovery channel. At the same time, 52% of marketing leaders say they’ll be optimizing for AI-driven search by 2026. For growth-stage SaaS and content-heavy firms, that creates a familiar tension: traffic is under pressure, but leadership still expects pipeline, credibility, and control over the narrative.
The real question behind “Do we need AEO?” is this: How do we make sure AI tools describe us accurately, show us alongside the right alternatives, and keep us in the consideration set — even when clicks drop?
What Actually Changes With AEO (and What Stays the Same)
AEO can sound like a new religion. In reality, it’s a strategic evolution of SEO around three shifts that non-technical teams can understand.
- From ranking for keywords to answering real questions. Traditional SEO focused on “B2B CRM software” or “HR compliance checklist.” AEO, guided by frameworks like Webflow’s AEO Maturity Model, pushes you to map and answer the actual questions your buyers ask across the journey — in clear, structured formats that LLMs can easily lift.
- From traffic-only to representation and authority. Ahrefs’ AEO and LLM citation research shows that being the cited source inside AI answers can build authority even when traffic is zero-click. Webflow’s own AEO work echoes this: AI search traffic is still a small share, but those visitors convert significantly better because they’ve already “pre-sold” themselves through AI research.
- From unstructured blogs to machine-readable experiences. Answer engines favor content that is scannable, structured, and technically clean — clear headings, FAQ blocks, schema, llms.txt, and fast performance. Webflow bakes much of this into the platform, reducing your dependency on plugins and custom dev just to be legible to AI systems.
None of this replaces SEO fundamentals. It reorders the priorities: high-quality, structured answers; brand authority; and AI visibility become the lens through which you design your content and site.
How We Help Marketing Teams Respond Without Burning Everything Down
From our vantage point at Underscore, the teams that win don’t “flip to AEO” overnight — they reframe strategy, not just tactics.
- Start by agreeing on language and scope. Internally, define SEO as “how we get discovered” and AEO as “how AI retells our story.” Use that framing to align marketing, product, and leadership on why you’re restructuring content and adjusting KPIs, instead of spinning up an isolated “AI project” on the side.
- Restructure a small set of high-impact journeys for answers. Take 5–10 core journeys (e.g., “compare vendors,” “implementation risk,” “pricing & ROI”) and turn them into answer-first assets: question-led headings, concise summaries at the top, followed by depth, FAQs, and schema where appropriate. Webflow’s AEO content and Ahrefs’ citation research both show that direct, structured answers are exactly what AI systems look for.
- Add AI visibility to your measurement stack. Keep tracking rankings, organic sessions, and conversions — but layer in AI-specific metrics like AI search traffic, LLM citations, and share of voice in AI answers using tools such as Ahrefs’ Brand Radar and Web Analytics. This turns AEO from hype into a measurable, board-ready workstream.
Our role in these projects is simple: reduce risk. We help you pick the few levers that matter, design content and Webflow structures that serve both humans and AI, and prove progress in language your CFO understands.
Bringing It Back to Your Roadmap
SEO is not being replaced; it’s being rerouted through AI. The brands that stay visible are those that treat AEO as a natural extension of their content and experience strategy, not a shiny side quest.
If you’re on WordPress and considering a move to Webflow, or already on Webflow and under pressure to “do something about AI search,” the next step isn’t a rebuild — it’s a conversation. A short Blueprint Strategy Session can map your current content, identify answer-critical journeys, and outline a pragmatic AEO roadmap tailored to your team and constraints.
You don’t need to become an AI engineer. You do need to decide how you want AI to tell your story.
