AEO foundations for NZ B2B.
The boring bits that get you cited.
Before anyone writes you a single blog post, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google need to be able to read your site, work out who you are, and trust you enough to quote you. That's the foundations. It's not glamorous. It works.
AEO (answer engine optimisation) foundations are the fixes that let AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews) crawl your site, understand what you sell and who you sell it to, and quote you as a source. That means AI crawler access, schema markup, clean titles and headings, answer-first page structure, sensible internal links, and consistent facts about your brand across the web.
Some people call this GEO (generative engine optimisation); it's the same work. For most New Zealand and Australian B2B sites I fix the foundations in one to two months, from NZ$1,400 a month. Your developer ships the code from my spec, or I ship it for NZ$500 a month extra. Content comes after, on purpose.
What's in AEO foundations? Six things, in this order.
Every site I've audited fails at least three of these. Most fail five. None of them need a rebrand, a new website or a 47-slide strategy deck.
Let the bots in
Check robots.txt, firewall rules and JavaScript rendering so GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot can actually read your pages. You'd be amazed how many sites block AI by accident.
Tell machines who you are
Organization, Person, Service, Article and FAQ schema, written by hand for your site. It's how a model knows you're a company that does X for Y, not a random page that mentions X.
Fix titles, metas and H1s
Rewritten so each page clearly says what it's about. Boring, yes. Also the quickest win on most audits I've done, for Google and for AI.
Answer first, waffle never
Restructure your key pages so the answer sits in the first two sentences, followed by the detail. AI engines quote passages, not vibes.
Link it like you mean it
Menu, hub pages and internal links that show how your topics connect. That's how engines figure out what you're an authority on.
Measure what matters
Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools (which reports AI citations), GA4 and a prompt tracker set up so you can see citations move, not just guess.
Content on a broken site is a very expensive hobby.
The last two companies I pitched both landed on the same answer on their own: do the AEO basics, then do content. They're right, and it's not because I told them to.
If AI crawlers can't read your pages, or your schema says you're a bakery, or your best page has the H1 "Welcome", then new content just inherits the same problems. You're paying to fill a bucket with a hole in it.
Even the people who sell this often skip it. In my check of 80 NZ and AU agency websites, only 5 had all 12 AI-search basics on their own homepage.
Fix the bucket first. It usually takes four to eight weeks. Then every article you publish afterwards works harder, because the site underneath it is finally pulling its weight.
"Let's do the AEO basics, then content." The last two companies I pitched said this before I could.Ben Harris, the person who'd rather say less and ship more
How long does AEO take? Week by week, no mystery.
Here's the honest timeline. The work ships fast. The citations take longer, because AI engines recrawl and rebuild trust on their own schedule, not mine. The full timeline is here.
- Week 1
Audit and baseline
I go through the site, crawl it, check where AI already mentions you (or doesn't), and write up a ranked list of fixes. You get the list, not a 90-page PDF.
- Weeks 1-3
Technical fixes and schema
I write the spec and the JSON-LD. Your developer ships it, or I do on the hands-on add-on. llms.txt, robots, sitemaps and Bing IndexNow get sorted here too.
- Weeks 3-8
Page restructure
Your top pages get rewritten titles, answer-first intros, Q&A blocks and proper internal links. This is where most of the citation gain comes from.
- Weeks 5-12
First signals
Long-tail and niche questions start citing you in Perplexity and ChatGPT. Bing's AI citation numbers start to move. Not fireworks yet, but real.
- Month 3 onwards
Content, on a site that works
Now we write. Two pieces a month on Foundations, more if you want it. See content marketing.
What I'll do. What I won't pretend.
Other agencies have a longer menu. I'd rather you know exactly what you're getting before you pay for it.
What I will do
- Find and fix the technical, schema and structure problems stopping AI from reading and quoting you.
- Write the spec your developer can ship in an afternoon, not a riddle they'll need a meeting to decode.
- Show you the numbers every month: AI citations, impressions, which pages are getting quoted.
- Tell you when to stop paying me. If the foundations are done and you don't need content, I'll say so.
What I won't pretend
- Guaranteed citations. Nobody controls what ChatGPT says. Anyone promising you a spot is guessing, or lying.
- Results in 30 days. The fixes ship fast. Citation volume usually takes three to six months.
- Link building or PR. I don't do it. I'll tell you where you need to show up, and who's good at it.
- A rebuild. You almost never need a new website to fix this. If someone's quoting you one, get a second opinion.
The same playbook, on real sites.
Straight up: the first two are from my in-house role leading marketing at a B2B SaaS company, not Cut the Waffle clients. Same method, same person doing it. I'd rather tell you that than let you assume otherwise.
Everything under AI Search.
AEO foundations: the practical stuff.
Fix the foundations.
Then we'll talk content.
One call, a straight answer on whether you need me, and a fixed plan if you do. If you don't need me, I'll tell you that too. It happens more often than you'd think.