Your Business Visibility, Ranking & Success in an AEO Future

The mission stays the same: practical, honest conversations about AI and what it actually means for your work, your business, and your life. Nothing in this episode, or any future episode, should be taken as business, legal, or medical advice. For Episode 6, I sat down with Michael Chotikul, an SEO consultant who has spent over a decade getting websites to the top of Google. Here's the thing: in the last several months, the ground under his entire field moved. People aren't just Googling anymore; they're asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini what to buy, where to eat, and who to hire. So the question we kept circling was simple and a little unsettling: when the AI hands someone one answer, how do you make sure it's your business? We also got into the part most people miss. The same reflex that makes you accept whatever the machine tells you is the one quietly costing you the best results. Michael's whole approach is to push back on it, make it defend its reasoning, and treat it as a collaborator instead of an oracle. Michael Chotikul is an SEO and AEO consultant based on the East Coast of the United States, with over ten years in search. His consulting work increasingly centers on getting businesses cited and recommended inside AI answers, not just ranked in traditional search results. In this episode, we discuss: ◾ SEO Is Becoming AEO: Ranking blue links in Google is giving way to getting cited inside AI answers; Michael calls it the biggest shift search has seen. ◾ Good SEO Feeds Good AEO: A page built cleanly for humans and search engines surfaces in AI answers too; the reverse does not hold, so gaming the robots backfires. ◾ Getting Cited by ChatGPT: When someone asks an LLM for the best option in their area, only a handful of sources get named; being the one cited is the new page one. ◾ The Three-Part Playbook: Real value on the page, clean technicals a robot can parse, and getting talked about off-page; reviews, Reddit, and current business info all count. ◾ Use AI as a Collaborator, Not an Oracle: Push back, make it defend its answers, feed it context, and cut the sycophancy; that is where the good advice lives. ◾ The Human Problem: As AI slop gets harder to spot, we game out a company that certifies human-made work, and the worry that a few firms now set all the rules. (00:00) The AI Land Grab Nobody's Named Yet (00:30) Welcome to Let's Rethink AI (01:05) SEO, AEO, GEO: What Actually Changed (07:49) Why Optimizing for Robots Backfires (14:39) What People Really Ask AI About Your Business (19:41) If You're Not First, You're Last (24:04) The Three-Part Playbook to Get Cited (33:11) Stop Offshoring Your Thinking to AI (43:44) What He's Excited About, and What He's Not (49:13) Four Companies and the Human Problem Follow Michael and work with him: LinkedIn -   / michael-chotikul   Follow the show: YouTube - • Let's REthink AI Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1Rs9qgh... Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Instagram - @letsrethinkai Let's automate your work or business: Book a call - https://calendly.com/emmanuel-rethink... Website - https://www.rethinkai.now Explore some of the systems we've built: Funnel, Ads & Marketing AI Software for Digital Marketing Agencies and Entrepreneurs: https://funnelfab.com/ All-in-one CRM + AI platform for home service businesses: https://bookingops.app Next-generation custom software for construction and general contractor companies: https://rethink-titan.web.app AI-powered haircut and barber platform (AWS 10000 AIdeas Finalist): https://rethink-grum.web.app Fully customizable AI CRM tailored to your workflows: https://ai-crm.buildmatic.ai AI-powered platform for wealth advisors and financial teams: https://insureflow-pro.pages.dev