5 AEO Best Practices Every PR Team Should Know

5 AEO Best Practices Every PR Team Should Know

1. Create Structured, Scannable Content

AI engines prefer structured content for training, citations, and direct answers. By “structured” we mean using H-tags intentionally, taking advantage of lists, creating FAQs, and being mindful of content length. To get even more specific, here are four best practices you can use to get started.

Effective AEO Tips for Structuring PR Content

• Use Your H-tags: Use clear H2/H3 headings, written as natural-language questions.
• Create Lists: Include short bulleted and numbered lists.
• Include FAQs: FAQs are ideal for snippet optimization. Place them at the bottom of any blog for an instant AEO boost.
• Be Concise: Keep your sentences short, around 15–20 words maximum. This will make them scannable and usable by AI.

2. Prioritize Authoritative Sources & Thought Leadership

“In the old SEO days, domain authority was the number one thing in PR. Cross off the word ‘domain’ and just go with authority. That kind of strategy is going to work for SEO and AEO,” – Joel Richman, Partner, Escalate PR

Both SEO crawlers and AI models value authority. It’s just that AI models are specific about ranking credibility by authority and expert presence. As such, SEO is being supplemented by AEO. That’s why you need a blended, modern approach to PR, particularly for B2B PR teams navigating the fast-paced tech landscape.

Essentials for a Modern PR Approach

Expert commentary

Use expert commentary and attributed quotes from executives to help boost your rank. Every time you mention their names, you build them up, increasing their authority and pleasing AI.

Alignment

Align your PR with trusted outlets in technology and industry-specific niches. The more valuable your contributions are, the more likely they will be to get picked up.

Guest Contributors

Have you heard the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats”? Partnering with and leveraging guest contributions and op-eds on authoritative platforms is a top way to climb together.

Get in the Trenches

LLMs consider forum/individual answers to be authoritative, too. Getting involved in Reddit threads, answering questions on Quora, spending time on YouTube, and responding to queries as an expert when you can will help you earn brand mentions.

The Right Media List

“PR partners live in the PR world on a daily basis. We understand where each one of these media vehicles needs to go. It’s a fragmented world media-wise now, so it’s all about specialization. That means all the way down to how you pitch an individual reporter, knowing how they write, the audience they write for, their style, and making sure you can match all that is key,” – Joel Richman, Partner, Escalate PR

This is probably the hardest to execute and is often better left to PR agencies. Why? Because it all comes down to relationships between members of the media and PR teams. In short, it’s best to give this responsibility to the people who know how to speak the press’s language.

Beyond that, each message must be tailored for the outlet, the reporter’s style, and its audience. This is a lot to manage, especially if your team is small or wearing many hats.

Escalate PR Insight: The goal of every PR activity should be a single-source feature, but that doesn’t diminish the value of significant mentions within a multiple-source piece. Smaller players can gain credibility by being mentioned in tandem with other industry leaders or by being reported about alongside them.

3. Leverage AEO-forward Formatting for Owned & Earned Media

“Why do LLMs value direct questions and answers? Because humans do and they’re serving that content to humans,” – Ben Harper, Founder, LLM.Listed

AI engines love direct questions and answers. That’s excellent news for PR teams, because AEO presents a new way to influence what gets surfaced. You’ll need to work owned and earned differently, so here are smart plays for each.

Formatting Owned Media for AEO

Add Q&As

Adding Q&A sections to press releases, blog posts, and customer stories is a sure-fire way to provide AI engines built using Large Language Models (LLMs) exactly what they need to surface answers to searchers.

Use FAQ Schema Markup

We noted the value of adding FAQ sections at the end of blogs and other media content, but the smartest PR teams create FAQ schema markup for Google and AI snippet compatibility. It serves the FAQs directly to the AIs, making pick up likelihood much higher.

Escalate PR Insight: Schema markup and schema in general is not new, but LLMs use it too! It’s like giving AI and other search engines driving directions. It will get them there faster and your brand seen more often.

Infusing Formatting into Earned Media for AEO

Work With the Press

When you can, collaborate with journalists on structured pull-quotes and interview questions to ensure that you will be positioned to be found once the piece is published.

Hire a PR Team

PR teams draft byline articles, op-eds, and contributed articles authored by executives to be placed into high domain authority and industry publications — a proven tactic in B2B PR and B2B tech PR campaigns. When they are structured forAI engines, they will get more traffic.

PR Opportunity: Looking for a PR content partner? Escalate PR offers Content Strategy & Development for corporate videos, sizzle reels, pitch assets, social/episodic content, and short-form advertising to amplify your online presence.

4. Introduce Data-Driven Insights to Earned Media to Drive AI Citations

There’s nothing like home-growing your content, especially when it’s data-focused. Why? Because generating something that others can’t is a win in and of itself. Also, unique data-based items are just asking to be cited by others!

Proprietary data reports, surveys, and benchmarks are prime sources for AI models, and they’re particularly valuable in B2B tech PR, where audiences rely on fresh, industry-specific insights. A top example of someone doing this well is Semrush. For years, they have been known as an SEO company, but with AEO changing things, they had to expand. Funnily enough, that’s just what their data shows is happening to search!

Here are some strategies to help increase citations using AEO.

How to Spike Owned Media Citations With Data

Build Reports

Develop exclusive reports and publish them in structured formats. Remember the structured elements we talked about earlier? H-tags, bulleted or numeric lists, and FAQs? That’s the ticket!

Visualize and Summarize Your Data

Want even stronger results from your data-driven content? Showcase it visually. Some examples include: charts, tables, and frameworks. Alternatively, you can use words alone to create takeaways and executive summaries. Both methods, visualization and summarization, make for easier AI training pickup.

Escalate PR Insight: As is the case with SEO crawlers, there’s value in exposing your content to AI-powered answer engines. Do not hide it behind a PDF wall. It will do you no AEO good there.

Syndicate Your Content

Once you create something structured and valuable like a case study or report, it’s time to distribute it to a wider audience. You can do this using press releases, blogs, and LinkedIn.

Boosting Earned Media Citations With Data

Create Novel Data That Tells a Story

Proprietary data is wonderful, but proprietary data that tells a new story is even better! Once your data has a narrative, it becomes much easier to pitch to reporters to earn coverage. That coverage generates a long tail of earned media citations for months after the initial news cycle.

PR Opportunity: If your team is small or you struggle to turn data into compelling copy, consider letting Escalate PR create Surveys, Studies & IP for you or analyze your data! We know what PR outlets want and can get the job done efficiently, so you can start ranking.

5. Avoid Common AEO Mistakes

You knew it was coming. The don’ts! Here are things you absolutely must avoid doing if you want your AEO efforts to succeed.

Poor Press Release Formatting

Writing long, unstructured press releases can be the kiss of death for AI pickups. These days, press releases in the way of “company sends long item to journalist as a story lead” are infrequent. Journalists rarely write a story about a press release they found on the wire, which is the benefit of working with a PR team.

However, machines do still derive value from press releases as long as they are concise. Sometimes, well-crafted press releases even get syndicated to high-domain authority outlets like Yahoo, MSN, etc., expanding reach through AI answers.

What gets press releases cited more often by LLMs? “A modern press release should live on your website, provide the value prop right away, include specific dates, be as question and answer-based as possible, take advantage of structured content, and relegate the boilerplate to the bottom,” – Ben Harper, Founder, LLM.Listed

Coming Soon! Our team is currently analyzing the data behind surfacing press releases and plans to share our findings in a comprehensive report within the year. Check back here or watch our socials for the release.

Over-optimizing for Traditional SEO

Ignoring AI-driven discoverability is not advised. If you focus all your efforts on SEO and neglect AEO, you will be outpaced. You must do both.

Devaluing Authority

Who talks about your brand matters. Neglecting authoritative citations and failing to collaborate with trusted outlets is how you disappear into obscurity. Forever. And yes, this should scare you!

Failing the Schema Markup Test

Owned channels are a massive opportunity for schema markup. While in some cases PR teams can’t dictate schema markup for earned, they absolutely can for owned. Missing schema markup on owned channels will cost you.