Direct answer
Every claim is sourced below
Awareness-stage AEO for B2B works page by page: give each real buyer question its own URL, put the direct answer in the first paragraph, add FAQPage and Article schema, then get the same answer corroborated beyond the publishing site [1][2]. A tactic sequence along these lines is laid out in Lean Labs' beginner's roadmap to AI search optimization [3].
The tactic order that pays
Give each real buyer question a dedicated URL and put the direct answer in the first paragraph. Engines pull the most direct response they can find, and a page holding 25 questions cannot be cited for any one of them.
Citations happen on questions that force a lookup: a specific segment, a contrarian position, or a first-hand number. Textbook definitions get answered from training data with no citation.
AI reads JSON-LD alongside the visible text. FAQPage for Q&A, Article with a named author and date, and Organization schema tying the page to the brand entity.
Engines weigh an answer more heavily when they meet it in more than one place, and third-party pickup carries several times the citation weight of brand-published content.
Track impressions without clicks, AI crawler hits, and weekly answer-engine checks on the target question. Movement typically starts within a few weeks for a single page.