AEO Video Best Practices: How to Get Your Videos Cited by Answer Engines

Free download: Get the AEO Video Checklist, the 19 checks I use to make a video easy for answer engines to find and cite.

Key Takeaways

• The best practices for optimizing video for answer engines revolve around high information density and front-loading your answers.
• AI crawlers look for exact facts, not long hooks. State the definitive answer in the first 15 seconds.
• Speak in clear bullet points for easy extraction, and explicitly define your key terms.
• It is one question, one video, answered fully, using the buyer's own words.
• You know it is working when the right people watch about 70% of the way through. If they are not clicking, you will know within 24 hours.

This fits inside a bigger picture. If you want the full view first, here's the bigger picture.

What are the best practices for optimizing video for answer engines?

The best practices for optimizing video for answer engines revolve around high information density and front-loading your answers. AI crawlers look for exact facts, not long hooks.

To get your videos cited by AI, you must do three things:

1. State the definitive answer in the first 15 seconds.
2. Speak in clear bullet points for easy extraction.
3. Explicitly define your key terms.

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It means building your content so AI answer engines can find it and cite it when buyers ask their questions.

The rest of this page is the full process in three parts: plan, build, and analyze.

Plan: what are you trying to accomplish?

Start with your goals. What are we trying to accomplish?

For most people interested in AEO, the goal is about visibility and trust. Maybe your website traffic is dropping due to AI Overviews. Maybe the sales cycles are too long. Whatever the problem is, if you're trying to solve it with AEO, you still need goals. You've got to start somewhere, and you have to know where you're headed.

Get your baseline

Do a little intel on what you have now. Where are you showing up in AI search? What content do you have that is helping buyers get educated? This is your baseline.

What's possible, then what's realistic

As you head toward your goal, look at what's possible:

• Do you have subject matter experts who could go on camera and answer buyer questions?
• Can you do that frequently?
• How will you produce and post it?

Once you have a list of what's possible, filter it through the what's realistic phase. Can we actually pull this off? We have to be realistic here. Then approve the plan and go into production.

Build: one question, one video, answered fully

Start with buyer questions. These are the actual buyer questions in their words, pulled from transcripts and sales calls. You've probably heard a lot of these. You might know 80% of them off the top of your head. You can also use chat transcripts from the chatbots you have.

Once you have those questions, make video answers that follow the framework from the top of this page:

1. Answer their question right away, in the first couple of seconds.
2. Give clear bullet points for easy extraction.
3. Define key terms.

The goal is to answer the question sufficiently. Go far enough into the topic that there's really nothing else to say about it. Buyers will have other questions, but that's going to be a different video.

"So it's one question, one video, answered fully." Dane Frederiksen

Post: how do you give AI bots more surface area?

Post the video on YouTube. Then make sure it has:

• A description that is optimized to tell everybody what's in the video.
• The transcript.
• Chapter markers.

Then take those YouTube videos and embed them on your own URL, on your own website. That page should also have the transcript and an article that answers the question well.

"That gives you more surface area for the AI bots to find your content." Dane Frederiksen

Analyze: how do you know it's working?

Once the content is out there, go to YouTube Studio and look at the analytics:

• Are they clicking? That's click-through rate.
• Are they sticking around past 30 seconds, or dropping off right away?
• Are they watching at least 70% of the way through?

You'll know you're successful when they're watching about 70% of the way through. That means you've got the right people watching, and you've given them helpful enough information. If they're not clicking and not watching, you'll know within 24 hours. YouTube analytics also shows you where they're dropping off.

If it's not happening, revise your approach. Make new videos that answer the buyer questions you are not completely answering.

What is content bingo?

Your buyer has a whole bunch of questions on their buyer journey. They're headed toward a sale. Start by answering the obvious questions, the main ones that make up 80% of what you get asked.

Once you have videos answering all those questions, you've got buyers most of the way there. At about 80%, that's the normal time when they're ready to take a call with a salesperson for the last 20%, which is very specific to them.

So it's like content bingo. You have a bunch of squares, questions that are not covered, and you cover them. That's what the intel phase is for: where do we stand, what questions do buyers still have, and what do we still need to answer?

Get the free AEO Video Checklist

I have a free checklist that covers best practices for AI answer engines. Download the AEO Video Checklist here. If you need any help with this, just reach out. This is what I do, and I'd love to help.

Doing the thing is the easy part. The hard part is knowing where you're already winning and where you're invisible. That's exactly what our free AI Visibility Snapshot shows you, before you spend a dollar.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best practices for optimizing video for answer engines?

They revolve around high information density and front-loading your answers. AI crawlers look for exact facts, not long hooks. State the definitive answer in the first 15 seconds, speak in clear bullet points for easy extraction, and explicitly define your key terms.

What is AEO?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It means building your content so AI answer engines can find it and cite it when buyers ask their questions.

Where do the buyer questions come from?

From the buyers' own words, pulled from transcripts and sales calls. You might know 80% of them off the top of your head. You can also use chat transcripts from the chatbots you have.

How many questions should one video answer?

One. It is one question, one video, answered fully. Buyers will have other questions, but that is going to be a different video.

How do you know if an AEO video is working?

Go to YouTube Studio and look at the analytics. Are they clicking? That is click-through rate. Are they sticking around past 30 seconds? Are they watching at least 70% of the way through? If they are not clicking or watching, you will know within 24 hours.

Full Transcript

The best practices for optimizing video for answer engines, it revolves around high information density and front loading your answers. AI crawlers look for exact facts, not long hooks. To get your videos cited by AI, you must do three things. Number one, state the definitive answer in the first 15 seconds. Number two, speak in clear bullet points for easy extraction. And number three, explicitly define your key terms.

I have a free AEO video checklist for you to download in the description below. Now let's break down each step. We're going to start up here with our goals in the planning section, right? What are we trying to accomplish? For most people interested in AEO, we're trying to do something about visibility and trust. Maybe your website traffic is dropping due to AI Overviews, maybe the sales cycles are too long, whatever the problem is, and you're trying to solve it with AEO, we still need to have goals.

We've got to start somewhere. And we have to know where we're headed. So when we do a little intel on what we actually have now, where are we actually showing up in AI search, what content do we have that actually is helping buyers get educated, this will be our baseline. And then as we head in the direction of our goal, we have to look at what's possible of all the things we could do. Do we have subject matter experts that could go on camera and answer these questions that buyers have? Do we have the capability to do that frequently?

How are we going to actually produce and post this stuff? So once you kind of have a list of what's possible, you can filter this through the what's realistic phase. Like, can we actually pull this off? We have to be realistic here. So once we filter that through, we can improve our plan, and then we're going to go into production and build it over here. So we're going to start up here.

Same thing. Up here, we start with buyer questions. These are going to be the actual buyer questions in their words, pulled from transcripts, sales calls. You probably heard a lot of these. You might know 80% of them off the top of your head. You can also use chat transcripts from the chat bots that you have.

And then once you have those questions, you then go and you make video answers that follow that exact framework I gave you at the start of this, where we're answering their question right away. In the first couple seconds, then we're going to give clear bullet points for easy extraction, and then we're going to define key terms. So if our videos are doing that and they're explaining things up front and they're helping people answer their questions deeply, and the goal is to answer that question sufficiently that we're going far enough into the topic that you sort of answer the question fully. There's really nothing else to say about that. They're going to have other questions over here, but that's going to be a different video. So it's one question, one video, answered fully.

So you'll know you're successful when they're watching about 70% of the way through. That means that you basically got the right people watching and you've given them helpful enough information. If they're not clicking and they're not watching, you'll know that within 24 hours. You just go to YouTube and see what's happening there. You can find out where they're dropping off in YouTube analytics. So before we get to that point, we're going to post it.

And we're going to post it on YouTube. Like I said, we're also going to make sure that we've got descriptions that are optimized to tell everybody what's in that video. We've also got to have the transcripts and chapter markers. We're going to also take these YouTube videos and we're going to embed them on your own URL on your own website. And that's going to also have the transcripts and that's going to also have an article that answers their question well. That gives you more surface area for the AI bots to find your content.

So once our content is out there, we're going to analyze. We're going to go to YouTube studio and look at the analytics and see, hey, are they clicking? That's a click-through rate. You'll know if they're clicking at all, are they watching? And are they dropping off right away or are they sticking around past 30 seconds? And then are they watching at least 70% of the way there?

That's what we're going for is people completing the videos. So if that's not happening, we're going to revise our approach. We're going to make either new videos that answer buyer questions if we are not completely answering them. So here's your buyer. They have a whole bunch of questions on their buyer journey, right? They're headed towards a sale.

We want to start by answering the obvious questions, the sort of main questions that are in the like the 80% of like the most common questions that you get. And so once you answer all these questions, and we basically have videos like down here, we've got videos answering all those questions, you've got most of the way there. And once you get to 80%, that's kind of the normal time when they're ready to take a call with a salesperson for that last 20%, very specific to them. So really what we're doing is it's sort of like a content bingo, right? We have a bunch of squares or questions that are not covered, and we're going to cover them. So that's really what we're trying to do here when we're analyzing over here in this Intel phase.

We are essentially finding out where do we stand, what are the questions they still have, what do we need to still answer, and then we can go about building that. So that's what this is all about is making a good plan that's going to answer their questions and move them to a sale, or at least 80% there where you can do your sales technique. So I got a free checklist for you that's going to cover best practices for AI answer engines, and you can download that for free. And if you need any help with this, just reach out. This is what I do, and I'd love to help.

Most teams don't get this right on the first try. Here's how we approached it for a real team. Curious what it'd look like for you? Let's talk it through.