Matt Demers, our SEO coach in the Inner Circle (and our only guy coach, which we love), was presenting to our mastermind group. Everyone on that call knows way more about the technical side of SEO than I do. Honestly, half the time they're deep in the weeds and I'm thinking about what I'm going to buy at the grocery store tomorrow.

Then Matt pulled up a GA4 (that’s Google analytics) report showing all of a client's traffic sources. He wasn't even pointing at it, but there it was. A source called "AI Assistant" was converting at 9.4%. That's more than double the store's organic search traffic, and organic search already converts really well.

After his presentation, I had one question: "Can you go back to that screen?" I had to make sure I saw it right.

I did. And it's not a fluke. Matt told me that for almost every client getting conversions from ChatGPT, AI traffic converts at about double their organic rate.

So I invited Matt back on the podcast for a second week in a row to talk about AEO. A lot of us are already seeing it in our analytics: traffic from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, where people ask really long questions and our stores come up as the answer. Here's what you need to know to get more of that traffic.

SEO Gets You Found. AEO Gets You Chosen.

Here's how Matt explains the difference:

Before you get excited and skip ahead, you should know there's no jumping the line. Good AEO starts with good SEO.

The three pillars we covered last week still apply: on-page, off-page and technical SEO. Each one gets an extra layer for AI. If you haven't listened to last week's episode yet, go back and listen to it first, because everything here builds on top of it.

Why AI Shoppers Arrive Ready to Buy

To see why AI traffic converts so well, think about how search has changed.

The old way: you type "best hiking socks" into Google, hit Enter, and get a list of top websites and shopping results.

The new way: you tell ChatGPT, "I'm a 33-year-old man who loves hiking. I need moisture-wicking socks. I don't like merino wool because I get blisters, and I like to go running in them too. What are my best options?"

That's a lot more context! AI filters everything it has stored to find the best match. Does this sock mention moisture-wicking? Does it mention running? The more detail you've given it, the better your chances.

By the time that shopper clicks through to your store, they've usually narrowed it down to one or two options. As Matt puts it, "they're basically entering your page at a different point in the buyer journey."

To me, it's like having a brick-and-mortar store where people walk in and ask you questions. You give them the exact answer to their exact question, and that's why they buy. And this traffic is free.

Your Product Page Should Answer the Questions Your Customers Ask AI

Let's start with on-page, because you already know what a keyword is.

Your keywords still belong in all the usual places: your product or collection title (your H1), your SEO title, your meta description and your product description. None of that changes.

What's new is that AI needs more context before it feels comfortable recommending you. That's why FAQ sections on your product and collection pages are becoming so important. They answer the questions people are already asking.

Please don't cram all that detail into your product description, though. That would be crazy. Some of it can go into specs or extra tabs on the page. Matt is actually glad things are heading this way:

And FAQs don't just help with AI. They help you sell, because "the number one reason people don't convert is because they have an unanswered question about whether or not it's gonna fit their use." Two birds, one stone.

Links Used to Be Everything. Now Your Brand Name Matters More.

Off-page has always been about building authority outside your website. In traditional SEO, that meant backlinks: a trusted website links to yours, and what counts is the link, the keywords it uses and the authority of the site it's on.

AI looks at it differently. Matt says, "It's more about having your brand being mentioned and talked about."

So if a "best hiking socks" article names your brand and says you make a great moisture-wicking sock, AI learns who you are and what you're known for, whether or not the article links to you. Matt's team still tries to get the link, because it helps your regular SEO, but for AI it's not that important.

This is where some new terms come in, so let's break them down:

Third-party mention: an independent source mentions your brand, like a blog post called "Top 10 Best Hiking Socks" that includes you.

Citation: AI uses that article in its answer. It's the little bubble that pops up in ChatGPT, showing the website where it got the information.

AI mention: AI actually recommends you. The tools call these "mentions," but "recommendation" makes more sense.

Citations matter because, as Matt puts it, "AI is just not independently intelligent to give you these answers. It's scanning everything on the internet to get you the results."

Here's how it all connects, in Matt's words:

One thing to know: this traffic can be hard to track. Lots of people don't click the link in ChatGPT. They go search for your brand name instead, and Matt is seeing branded search go up for a lot of his clients. Connecting your product feeds helps your products show up and improves click-through, which makes tracking easier. So it may show up as unknown traffic or organic search. In the end, traffic and sales going up are the numbers that matter.

Search Isn't Just Google Anymore

People in the SEO community are calling it "search everywhere optimization," because, as Matt says, "it's not just about optimizing for Google anymore."

One of his B2B clients gets about 2% more of his traffic from Bing than from Google. DuckDuckGo is hitting record levels. That's still only around 2% of total traffic, but it used to be about 0.2% a year ago.

Google Search Console, the main SEO tool, also just added tracking for Instagram and YouTube. Connect it and you can see which of your videos show up in Google and get clicks. It's also Google's way of showing it's still relevant, even when people aren't clicking through to your blog posts anymore.

Building authority on all these platforms matters more and more for your organic presence, because "they wanna see that you're a real person, and like that you're a real brand."

How One Brand Became ChatGPT's Top Pick in Just a Month

This is the most actionable part of the episode, so grab a pen.

Matt's team did exactly this for a client who sells boating glassware. They found an article that ranked at the top of Google and was also ChatGPT's main citation. They sent the creator free product (no payment needed) and asked for an honest review. The creator didn't write a new article. They added a review to the article that was already getting traffic, talking about using the glassware on their boat and how it compared to what they had before. It became their favorite.

The result?

That was about a month and a half to two months from when they first found the article. In SEO, where things usually take forever, that's fast. And on top of the ChatGPT sales, they're also getting referral traffic and sales from people who find that article on Google.

Being picky pays off here. One mention in an article with lots of traffic is probably worth more than 10 mentions on low-traffic sites, which might not move anything at all.

Why check Google too? In Matt's opinion, ChatGPT is often doing a Google search, getting those results and reading them. Often it's the same top article in both places.

Behind-the-Scenes Settings Your Customers Will Never See (But AI Will)

On the technical side, your goal is to make sure your products are properly mapped into AI platforms like ChatGPT. If you're on Shopify, you're lucky.

Explore the Agentic sales channel. It should already be turned on. There's a test query area where you can type in different searches and see if you'd be recommended, which products would show up, and ideas for how to optimize. Maybe open it while you read this!

Install Shopify Knowledge Base. This is Shopify's own app, and it suggests questions AI would like answered about your store, like your shipping policies. Matt's advice: "So definitely install Knowledge Base, 'cause it's not gonna be there by default, and go in and answer all of the questions that it has for you."

The best part? None of this shows up on your website, so your shoppers' experience doesn't change at all. "It's basically a feed that goes directly into ChatGPT and Copilot. So you don't need to display these all over your website."

Bonus step almost nobody is talking about: Shopify has a catalog mapping page where you choose what data goes into the Shopify catalog. By default, it sends your product title, description and category. With a custom metaobject, you can send a longer "AI description" instead, packed with FAQs and extra context, without changing your product page. Matt's team only found this a couple of weeks ago, so it's early days, but the first results look good. We'll put the link in the show notes.

The One Thing Every Store Owner Should Do First

If you only do one thing after reading this, add FAQs to your product and collection pages. Matt says, "that, I think, is like the most actionable step for AEO that anyone can take."

Here's why. FAQs work naturally with the keywords you want to rank for. Format them as headings and those keywords land in headings too, which is a huge ranking signal. So they help you rank in traditional search, help you show up in AI answers, and answer shoppers' questions before they buy.

The catch is that Shopify doesn't have FAQs built in, and setting them up on the back end is hard and time-consuming if you don't know your way around. One of our mastermind members did it herself while building her new website. She's a nerd, and we love her. She knew she needed it, and she's seen huge results. Matt has seen the same with his clients.

So Matt created a done-for-you service. His team installs code on the back end so you can easily add questions and answers to any product or collection page, and it automatically creates schema markup, which also helps your SEO. You get a video showing you how to use it and a guide to choosing really good FAQs.

They usually set up five FAQs per page (no more than eight, Matt recommends). If you leave them blank, nothing shows. Fill in two and only two appear. It takes 14 days start to finish, and after that you can do it all yourself.

I kind of want it for my own new little store.

Ready to Become the Answer?

Use the AI Visibility Check tool here: https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/ai-visibility-check

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If you're an Inner Circle member, you'll find Matt's FAQ service in your done-for-you packages, with special member pricing. You can also book a coaching call so Matt can look at your store and give you personal recommendations, or tag him in our Facebook group.

Learn more about Matt's team at diffusedigitalmarketing.com