AEO and AI Search: How Refari Prepares Your Website for AI-Driven Search

This article explains what Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is, how AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews are changing the way people find your website, what your Refari website already has in place, and how to assess the SEO and AEO offers that may land in your inbox.

What is AEO, and how does it relate to SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the long-standing practice of making your website easy for search engines like Google to find, understand and rank. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the newer companion to it: making sure your website is also well represented when someone asks an answer engine (an AI tool that answers a question directly, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews) rather than scrolling through a list of links. You may also see the same idea marketed as GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) or simply "AI search optimisation".

The most important thing to understand is that answer engines do not use some separate, secret version of the internet. They draw on much the same crawled web content and structured data that classic search engines use. A website that is fast, secure, well structured and full of genuinely useful content is well positioned for both. There is no magic "AEO switch" that exists apart from good SEO fundamentals, and you should be sceptical of anyone who suggests otherwise.

What your Refari website already has in place

Every Refari-built website ships with the technical foundations that both search engines and answer engines rely on:

• Fast, secure hosting with HTTPS, so pages load quickly and are trusted by crawlers.
• Mobile-friendly design, which search engines treat as a baseline requirement.
• XML sitemaps and a clean, crawlable structure, so crawlers can navigate your content efficiently.
• Duplicate-content handling and canonical tags, so your important pages are the ones that rank.
• Structured job data: every job advert published through Refari carries schema.org JobPosting markup, the machine-readable format that search engines and AI tools read directly. Your jobs are published as data, not just text on a page.

On top of those foundations, Refari offers two levels of SEO service. Lite SEO lays the groundwork at launch by optimising your homepage and job search page around a focused set of targeted keywords, and Advanced SEO goes deeper with expanded keyword research, on-page optimisation across more of your site, and ongoing refinement. The full methodology is explained in Refari's Standard SEO Process ↗, which walks through how we handle the technical, keyword and on-page stages.

Is SEO being monitored as part of my current arrangement?

It depends on your account. The technical foundations above are part of every Refari website, and our hosting and maintenance keep the platform side healthy. Ongoing SEO work (rank monitoring, keyword expansion and content optimisation over time) is a separate engagement, and what is active differs from team to team. Some teams had Lite SEO completed at launch, some run Advanced SEO as an ongoing service, and some have not taken up an SEO service at all.

Idea: Not sure what is active for your website? Email support@refari.co (or reply to your existing ticket) and the team will confirm exactly what SEO work is in place on your account, and what your options are from there. This is always worth doing before you spend money with an external provider.

Our recommendations for the next 6 to 12 months

AI search rewards the same things good recruitment marketing always has: expertise, freshness and content that genuinely answers what people are asking. If you want to stay ahead over the coming year, these are the areas we recommend focusing on.

• Keep publishing genuinely expert content. Market updates, salary guides, hiring insights and candidate advice all signal authority. Answer engines lean heavily towards sources that demonstrate real expertise, so a steady flow of content in your specialism does more for AI visibility than any technical trick.
• Write content that answers real questions. Answer engines respond to questions, so content framed around the questions your candidates and hiring managers actually ask ("what does a payroll manager earn in Perth?") is exactly what they draw on. Our guide to keyword research ↗ explains how we identify those questions, including question-based keywords.
• Review your keyword coverage as you grow. If your site launched with Lite SEO, the keyword set was deliberately focused. As you add services, locations or specialisms, it is worth revisiting whether your coverage still matches what you want to be found for.
• Keep your measurement in place. Google Analytics shows you how people actually arrive at your site, which keeps decisions grounded in data rather than a salesperson's audit. If you have not connected it yet, see how to integrate Google Analytics with your Refari website ↗.

Being approached with SEO or AEO audit offers?

Most recruitment teams are contacted regularly by digital marketing companies offering SEO audits, website reviews and AI optimisation services. It is worth knowing how these usually work: the "audit" is typically an automated scan generated by a tool in minutes, and its job is to open a sales conversation. The findings are often generic, already handled on your site, or presented without the context needed to judge whether they matter.

A convincing report is not evidence of a problem

In this day and age it takes minutes to have AI generate a report, a web page or a presentation that looks thoroughly professional and appears to prove there is something wrong with your website. The polish of the document tells you nothing about the accuracy of its claims. These reports are deliberately framed to create urgency: red scores, alarming charts and language suggesting you are losing business every day you wait. In reality, what they point at is usually a couple of minor items that amount to basic housekeeping, such as publishing fresh blog content or tidying up meta tags. That is the general upkeep every website in the world needs from time to time, not an emergency, and certainly not a reason to sign an expensive retainer on the spot.

Many of these approaches are not even people

A growing share of this outreach is not a person who has looked at your website at all. It is an automated, AI-driven pipeline emailing thousands or even millions of businesses, generating a personalised-looking "audit" for each one, and relying on a tiny percentage of recipients being worried enough to buy. A quick look at the sender often tells the story: a website registered recently, no verifiable history of past work, and no presence on independent review platforms, because the operation has not existed long enough to earn one.

When you do want to check a provider out, independent reputation platforms such as Trustpilot and Clutch are the most reliable signal available, because reviews there are attached to a track record the provider cannot simply write for themselves. Treat testimonials on the provider's own website as unverifiable, and weigh Google reviews with some care as they are easier to manufacture. Strongest of all is a real referral: a provider that another business you trust has actually worked with and vouches for.

That does not mean every external review is worthless. An independent set of eyes from time to time is a reasonable thing to want. If you are considering one, look for a provider who can show experience with recruitment websites, explains what data their findings come from, and is happy for you to seek a second opinion. Be cautious when you see any of these warning signs:

• Guarantees of a number one ranking, or guaranteed inclusion in ChatGPT or AI Overview answers.
• Claims of secret or proprietary "AI optimisation" techniques that cannot be explained.
• Pressure to sign quickly, or a price quoted before they have understood your site and goals.
• A request for admin or hosting access before any engagement is agreed.
• No independent track record: a brand-new website, no reviews on platforms like Trustpilot or Clutch, and only testimonials they publish themselves.

Note: Nobody can guarantee placement in AI answers or a number one Google ranking. Answer engines and search rankings change constantly and are not for sale. Treat any guarantee as a red flag on its own.

Warning: Never hand website admin, DNS or hosting access to an unsolicited provider. Third-party changes made outside your arrangement with us can break your site's integrations, tracking or security, and we cannot support changes we did not make or approve.

Before you spend anything, send the proposal or audit report to support@refari.co. We will happily give you an honest view of which findings genuinely matter for a recruitment website, which are already covered on your site, and whether the work being quoted is worth the money. Because we can see exactly what is in place on your account, we can usually tell you in one reply whether an offer is worth pursuing. This is a genuine offer, not a brush-off: from time to time an external audit does surface something truly worth doing. If an audit you receive looks credible and substantive, send it through, and we will happily review it and implement any concrete changes that would genuinely improve your website.

Final Notes

SEO and AEO are a marathon, not a sprint: the fundamentals move slowly, and the teams that win are the ones that keep publishing useful, expert content on a sound technical base. Your Refari website gives you that base. When an offer, an audit or a new AI acronym leaves you unsure where you stand, ask us first. We would much rather give you a straight answer than have you spend money finding out the hard way.

Other articles you might be interested in:  Refari's Standard SEO Process: Technical, Keywords, On-Page Explained  |  Technical SEO: A Comprehensive Guide by Refari