Episode 778: Is Your Blog Ready for AI Search? The AEO Strategy You Need Now With Hanelore Dumitrache

EBT778 – Hanelore Dumitrache

[00:00:00]  Megan Porta 

As you know, search has changed drastically recently, and if your blog is not AI ready, your traffic could be at risk. Hanelore Dumitrache founder of Whimsy AI, joins us in this episode to introduce AEO Answer Engine Optimization and why it’s the future of visibility in an AI driven world. She shares what makes AEO different from SEO, the key shifts you need to make now, and. And she has a special offer just for Eat Blog Talk listeners only available in the show notes. You can head to eatblogtalk.com/hanelore to find those. Enjoy the episode.

[00:00:41]  Intro 

Hi, food bloggers. I’m Megan Porta and this is Eat Blog Talk, your space for support, inspiration and strategies to grow your blog and your freedom, whether that’s personal, professional, or financial, you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:57] Megan Porta   

Hello, Han. It’s so great to have you again on the podcast. Welcome.

[00:01:01]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Hi, Megan. So nice to see you again. Yay. Happy third time.

[00:01:05]  Megan Porta 

Yes. Oh my gosh, it’s. Third time’s a charm. But the other times were charms too. So always great to have you. Today we’re going to talk about AEO and you do AEO audits, what that means, why food bloggers might need them. We’ll get into all the juicy details, but first I wanted to ask you, Han, what pain point does this episode address for food bloggers?

[00:01:30]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

I think the biggest pain point for every type of blogger right now is loss of traffic. And a lot of that loss of traffic is inevitably because of AI. And I’m hoping that the AE optimization tips and tricks I’m sharing in this episode will help bloggers regain some of that traffic and gain a bit more search visibility across AI engines.

[00:01:52]  Megan Porta 

Such a huge pain point. You’re. This is probably the biggest pain point at the moment, so you’re nailing the solution for so many problems. Thank you.

[00:02:00]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

My pleasure. Hopefully I’ve been through it. I know the drill.

[00:02:04]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, a lot of people have. So, to start, would you just tell us a little bit about you? What is. What do you do? What is your business all about?

[00:02:13]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah, sure. So I do a lot of stuff. I call myself self entitled multi potentialite, which means I’m interested in a lot of things, but the big bulk of my interest is. Is tech and AI in general. So as a base profession, I’m an architect. I also have a background in programming and technology.

[00:02:31]   

And then I started a food blog about five years ago. Sugar Yums. And when AI became a thing about three years ago, I jumped on the wagon and never looked back. And since then, I started my AI company called Whimsy AI where we develop tools for food bloggers and bloggers in general. And now I’m offering a new service called AO Audit, where I basically teach people how to become visible in AI engine’s eyes.

[00:02:59]  Megan Porta 

Great. And are you still doing food blogging actively?

[00:03:03]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yes, I am a bit slower than before because there’s only, unfortunately there’s only one of me and multiple GPTs, but unfortunately just one of them. So much slower than I would have liked, but still, still kicking. Yeah.

[00:03:18]  Megan Porta 

If you figure out how to clone humans, let me know because I could use a couple versions of myself as well.

[00:03:24]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

I’ll put you on speed dial.

[00:03:25]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, okay, sounds good. Okay, so let’s just get right into it. Do we want to start with how search has changed? I think we all know that it has, but from your perspective, how exactly has it changed?

[00:03:38]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah, definitely. I think this is where the confusion is, because a lot of people, when they think about AI engines, they just think about ChatGPT and Bing and Copilot. But in fact, all search engines are AI powered at the moment, so they all have LLMs as a base. LLM stands for large language model.

[00:03:58]   

But first, let’s understand how Google used to work before the AI revolution. So Google used to work like a digital directory, almost a mechanical type of algorithm, which means it relied massively on crawling and indexing. So bots would look at titles, keywords, backlinks, and other types of technical SEO signals, and then decide where to rank your site or your page.

[00:04:22]   

The algorithm basically judged based on signals like backlinks and click through rates and keyword density. So it’s very rigid. And we all know that that system used to work really well. So Google’s algorithm used to function on something called exact match retrieval, which means basically the search query you put in, that’s exactly what Google would match you with.

[00:04:46]   

So the system rewarded technical optimization and volume. So that’s why heavy SEO strategy worked for a long time. And the more you posted, the more chances you had to appear in these top pages. But that has changed now. A lot of it has been turned completely upside down. And I think it’s clear to see because every single blogger I’ve talked to has suffered some form of traffic loss and most of us are attributing it to AI, which is true to some extent.

[00:05:15]   

So the things that used to work no longer work. And let’s look at why instead of these rigid algorithms, most search engines nowadays, and again, this also means Google and Bing and everything Else use large language models to surface content. So it’s not about keyword matching anymore. It’s about understanding intent through something called semantic search.

[00:05:38]   

So what does semantic search mean? It’s an AI retrieval technique that looks into user intent and context, not just a query. So it’s no longer about keyword stuffing, and that does not work anymore. And if anything, it’s negative. It’s not. It just don’t do it. Yeah. So in other words, search has changed from finding content to understanding it.

[00:06:02]   

Okay, and now if I can get into what does this actually mean?

[00:06:06]  Megan Porta 

Right, what does this mean? Yes, exactly.

[00:06:10]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

This is going to be quite heavy, but I’m going to ask everyone to please bear with me. I will try to leave the tech jargon aside and explain as simply as possible. So how do AI engines work? Search engines, they don’t just index your posts, but what they do is they try to understand context.

[00:06:29]   

So who wrote the post, what expertise it conveys, and how it connects to other related ideas or other topics. They do this through a process called entity recognition. So this means identifying and classifying all the elements in your content. Now let me give you an example so it makes a bit more sense.

[00:06:50]   

Let’s say a user searches what’s an easy chewy brownie recipe I can make without a mixer? Before, Google used to surface a post that had that exact keyword, what’s an easy chewy brownie recipe? Yada yada. But now AI uses semantic understanding to interpret intent. So what this means is from that long query, it takes specific parts.

[00:07:15]   

So the word easy, this refers to a short prep time. The word chewy, this refers to texture. Without a mixer, this means minimal equipment or minimal prep time. And then brownie recipe, that is your main entity. And to define entity, because I don’t know if I’ve done it before, an entity is basically a unique, identifiable thing or element concept that has a meaning on its own.

[00:07:42]   

So this could be. Again, this is through AI’s eyes. This is quite technical. So this could be a person, a place, an ingredient, a product, cooking technique, anything. Since we’re talking about food blogs. And once AI has understood what the user’s intent is about that recipe, the easy chewy brownie recipe without the mixer, it tries to understand what the user means through that query.

[00:08:10]   

And then once it understands the intent and the meaning, it uses something called RAG. This stands for retrieval augmented generation to pull information from trusted sites in its database and synthesize the answer or however it surfaces that content. And what this means, if your content isn’t structured clearly. Well, the AI can’t identify your intent, it doesn’t understand what you mean, and that means it can’t surface you.

[00:08:46]   

And this is where AEO comes in to bridge that gap and help you be able to surface your content better in AI search engine results.

[00:08:57]  Megan Porta 

Okay, yeah, you did a really good job of. No, I know it was. But you did a good job of simplifying it for people like me who aren’t super tech minded. So is this everything you described? Is that what you would reference AEO? Is that called AEO?

[00:09:15]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Exactly. So AEO basically stands for Answer Engine Optimization. So it’s the process and strategies you use to implement in your blog, in your post, and so on in order to surface your content for these AI engines.

[00:09:31]  Megan Porta 

Okay, all right, so you said structuring clearly. Can you talk about how, how to do that for a food, for a recipe post? And how is that? This is two different questions. How is it different from SEO?

[00:09:45]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

This is the big answer. AEO and SEO are two. Two. I’m going to go into this answer. First are two complementary strategies, but they’re not supposed to work alone in this day and age. They’re supposed to work together. So whenever I get the answer, does this mean SEO is dead? Absolutely not. It’s not dead.

[00:10:06]   

SEO still forms the foundation. So the technical setup, the keyword research, which is still a thing, but in a bit of a different way, backlinks and all of that matter, but again just a bit differently. And then AEO adds another layer on top of this technical SEO to make your content more visible.

[00:10:26]   

So, nope, AI is not here to replace SEO strategies. And in practice, it means to combine both in order to structure your post and your entire site as a whole through AEO, and by also having strong SEO hygiene. So what this means, the way I would explain it, SEO is a bit more focused, so it’s more precision based, whereas AO is more of a holistic approach.

[00:10:53]   

It’s about your entire image, your entire authority, your entire web of content, and everything else that sort of falls under your site. So, yes, SEO is the foundation and then the AO is the entire mumbo jumbo on top of this.

[00:11:08]  Megan Porta 

Okay, so how do we comb through our sites and posts and make sure that AEO is optimized?

[00:11:16]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Oh, interesting question. Well, first of all, you need to understand what AEO actually is. You need to know about AEO strategies. And the reality is that at the moment there isn’t a lot of, there aren’t a lot of resources available on proper AEO. And how to do it. And a lot of the resources that are available are sometimes technically incorrect.

[00:11:38]   

And I’ve heard. I’ve heard some stuff. So one thing you can do is try to educate yourself from reliable sources. And I can, of course, after this episode, I can pass on some sources that I trust, or you can come to someone like me and have an audit, and then I do all that strategy for you and also educate you on everything that needs to happen on your site in order to have that good AEO practice.

[00:12:06]  Megan Porta 

I don’t feel like this is a term that’s really common yet. I. I feel like this is going to educate people. And really, I mean, I can see it sending some people into a bit of a tailspin, like, oh, oh, no, what am I behind on? What do I need to do? You know, like, instead of helping, it’s.

It has the potential to stress people out. So can you help with that? Yeah, definitely.

[00:12:30]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah, definitely. I agree. And yes, it is a lot. And for me personally, I am very technical, so I do understand a lot of these things. So I sympathize a lot with my fellow bloggers because I know how difficult and scary it is to all of a sudden lose more than half of your income because of all these changes happening.

[00:12:49]   

But what I will say is that it’s not the end of blogging. SEO is not dead. Blogging is not dead. So we just need to adapt once more. And what this means is it doesn’t mean you have to rehaul your entire site and do everything from scratch. It just means you need to slowly start implementing a few additional strategies in order to start ranking again and to regain some of that traffic loss.

[00:13:16]   

So I don’t recommend, you know, losing your mind over it, but I do recommend taking a step back, educating yourself as much as possible, asking for help. Shoot me an email whenever you want. I’m happy to discuss with people. People. And then slowly start implementing a lot of these strategies, which I will discuss in the podcast as well.

[00:13:38]  Megan Porta 

Okay, Is there anything else? We need to frame it before we talk about some of the strategies involved.

[00:13:44]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Let me think. We’ve defined AEO No, I think we can probably go straight into how to optimize. The only thing that we haven’t yet touched on is what happens when you optimize for AEO. What, like what the process, kind of what process you set off once you optimize for SEO.

[00:14:04]  Megan Porta 

Oh, what is the process that you set off?

[00:14:08]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

So basically, once you start optimizing, your content is not no longer just about keywords and ranking. AEO is not about ranking in ChatGPT, that is not a thing. It’s about building clarity and solidifying your existing authority so that AI engines recognize you as an expert in your niche, in your field. So when you optimize for SEO, you’re essentially teaching AI systems and AI search engines what your content is about, why it’s trustworthy, and why you’re trustworthy as an author, and when and why to surface it.

[00:14:44]   

So AEO has basically shifted the goal from visibility to understanding and comprehension. That’s. That’s the main key point to take away.

[00:14:55]  Megan Porta 

So it aligns a lot with EEAT, correct?

[00:14:59]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Absolutely. AO is very heavy on EEAT, and I’ll actually talk a lot about that once we get into actual strategies for optimization.

[00:15:09]  Megan Porta 

Okay, that gives me a much better understanding. So give us some of the strategies that we can implement now.

[00:15:17]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah, absolutely. Again, please take this with a pinch of salt. It doesn’t mean this is an exclusive list, and it doesn’t mean this is the entirety of AEO. This is as much as I could fit and still try to keep it intelligible for everyone. So I like to sort of categorize AEO into three different pillars.

[00:15:38]   

This is my own kind of definition. The first being authority, the second being clarity, and the third is connectivity. And now let’s get into each of them individually because they also have subcategories. Okay, but again, please, anyone listening, don’t feel overwhelmed. If you just learn one tip from. From these strategies, that’s already a great first start.

[00:16:03]   

So just pick whatever sounds easiest for you and do that, and then you can revisit, listen again, and go for step number two, and so on. So authority, the first pillar of AEO is about building trust signals. So exactly like you said, Megan, it’s about that eat the experience, expertise. What was it?

[00:16:23]   

Authoritativeness and trustworthiness. I always forget that. So it’s basically how AI determines who is speaking and why you’re credible. Now, this authority further divides into two branches that are equally as important. The first one is author authority, and the second one is topical authority. So the first one, author authority, is about your identity and expertise as the author, making it clear who created this content and why you’re trustworthy in this specific niche or topic or subject.

[00:17:02]   

And then topical authority is about consistency and depth across your content. So it’s about how thoroughly you cover a subject area. And now I will start giving you practical tips on how to optimize for both of these. Author authority and topical authority. For the first one, I’ve said authority so many times. Let’s go into how to enhance your author profile, let’s say.

[00:17:28]   

So I don’t repeat it again. So AI engines use something called entity recognition to link your name and brand and domain and everything else under one author entity. So it triangulates all the information it can find around you, about you into one single source. And that’s, it’s. That is its sort of base knowledge about person X, about Hanelore, let’s say.

[00:17:54]   

So how to optimize this? The simplest thing you can do is to use a consistent name and bio across all your sites and platforms. Don’t use variations. So for example, I go by Hanelore or Han, but on public profiles that I want related to my businesses, it has to be hanelore. I cannot use both of them because then the large language models see me as two distinct entities, two different people. This process is something called entity disambiguation.

[00:18:26]  Megan Porta 

Whoa, that’s a big word. Disambiguation. What?

[00:18:30]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Disambiguation. So it’s basically how AI distinguishes between two people with similar names. That’s why, and especially nowadays, people that have, let’s say, a blog name very similar to a big brand, they might have issues getting higher traffic because large language models might sometimes cross wires and not really know who’s who. Yeah. Another thing you want to do is to create a dedicated author profile on your site and use person schema if possible.

[00:19:05]   

Try to make it as concise as possible and include your credentials, your niche and experience. Basically telling everyone, both your users and the AI, why you’re a trustworthy person and why they should listen to you and surface your content. Then another thing is, and this actually surprisingly, across all the audits I’ve done, almost no one does it in WordPress.

[00:19:30]   

Make sure you fill in your user and author profile. It’s very simple under settings. I don’t remember exactly where it is, but under settings, if you go to user, just fill in all that information with bio and handles and everything else. It really is that simple because then you add another layer of this is who I am.

[00:19:49]   

So every time you publish a post under that author or username, it links back to what you’ve linked in there with the bio and everything else. Another thing would be to link all your external profiles on your site. So if you have Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, everything else, cross reference them everywhere. So they should all be interconnected with each other.

[00:20:12]   

Also link them on your Instagram and your LinkedIn and everything else. And another thing I like to do in my posts and I encourage everyone to start doing it is when you’re talking about experience. Let’s say we’re making a recipe. Use some first person statements to introduce that authentic experience more naturally. For example, I could say I like making this recipe ever since I visited Seoul and I tried it on the street food and whatever.

[00:20:43]   

Doesn’t have to be an entire story. It could literally be one sentence. And one thing I started doing across my post is I added almost like an author box somewhere in the post that’s called Hanelore’s Notes or Hanelore’s recommendation or something. And that’s where I add my personal touch, like why I specifically love this recipe.

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[00:21:58]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

So these are some tips on how to improve that author authority and the second type of authority. This is the big one, my friends. It is something I’ve been banging on about for years and I’ve been screaming into the void. But please, please people, listen to me because I’ve tried and tested it and it works.

[00:22:19]   

This is topical authority. Topical authority means basically being recognized as an authority on a specific subject that you’ve covered in depth. So for example, on my blog, that could be Korean street food because that’s the kind of recipes I make. So it’s very hyper focused. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to all of a sudden niche down your entire site, but you need to carefully start countering that topical authority.

[00:22:45]   

So it’s basically about that, about forming that topical depth. And it’s about how well you’ve covered a specific theme or group of recipes in a connected and coherent manner. Now, topical authority feeds into something called another disclaimer, another AI term, something called knowledge graph connectivity. This means that the stronger and the clearer your topic clusters, the higher your topical weight is in AI driven retrieval.

[00:23:20]   

So the more authority you have in a specific topic, the more likely these AI engines are to surface your content when a user queries about something related semantically to your post. So how do you develop this? The first thing is to build something I called topic clusters or content clusters. And this is starting to become more like an industry wide denomination around your core entities.

[00:23:47]   

So for example, on my site, let’s take kimchi as a, as a keyword I could have, so I could have a post about how to make kimchi, the recipe itself. Then I could have a post about troubleshooting guide. But then I could also have every single recipe using kimchi under the sun connected and then roundups and posts with ingredients that connect back to kimchi.

[00:24:12]   

So all of that is about creating one single topic cluster around kimchi. Now this doesn’t have to be a specific ingredient. It could also be a specific type of dessert or cooking method or people that use specific machinery like Ninja cooker and whatever they’re called. Another tip is to interlink these pages contextually.

[00:24:35]   

So not just through categories, but you want to build semantic proximity within your domain. What this means is how closely related two pieces of content are on your site. So this means like how I said earlier in my kimchi cluster, creating supporting content. So I could make a post about the ingredients I use separately to make kimchi.

[00:25:02]   

So I could have one about Korean chili flakes, another one about Chinese cabbage or Napa cabbage. And all of that sort of helps to push together that topic cluster and surface it more more often in these LLM search engines. One thing I like to advise people, and again, across the sites that I’ve seen that have lost quite a lot of traffic, my number one tip is to avoid topic hopping. This is my own terminology, thank you very much.

[00:25:31]  Megan Porta 

I like it.

[00:25:33]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

It’s cute, isn’t it?

[00:25:34]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:25:35]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

So for example, on my site I make East Asian desserts and Korean street food. I can’t all of a sudden start making French recipes because that has nothing to do with the topic clusters I already have. And when you do this, you’re kind of spreading yourself thin and then the AI see you as a generalist, not a specialist in any kind of topic.

[00:26:02]   

That is the problem. And this is where we need to change a lot of our strategy. But yeah, this is everything that goes under authority.

[00:26:12]  Megan Porta 

This is very intriguing. So yeah, you’ve thoroughly covered authority. Are you ready to move on to clarity?

[00:26:20]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah. Okay, so clarity, this basically means how easily AI search engines can interpret your content and what it actually means clarity is about structure, language and intent and all of that context. This is where post structure is very important. In order to optimize for clarity, I try to break it down into three other categories.

[00:26:49]   

The first is semantic clarity and I’ll get into it in a second. Then we have entity clarity, and the third is optimizing for answer delivery and I will get to it in a second. So the first one, semantic clarity. This basically means that AI engines rely heavily on something called semantic segmentation. This means that they break down every single bit of your post and they try to individually assess what that part is about.

[00:27:20]   

So the clearer you are in formulating and writing your post, the better AI can interpret your answer. So don’t start talking about about storage tips somewhere halfway through the post and then do it again at the bottom. Just keep a logic and a clarity within your post structure. One thing that I like to do, and I’m advising everyone to do, is at the beginning of every post.

[00:27:42]   

For example, for recipe, start with a clear definition style statement. So what this recipe is why it matters and what makes it unique. So from the first two sentences you want to say that this gives the AI something called the semantic anchor, and it knows from the very top of your post exactly what this post is about and then it can surface it.

[00:28:07]   

It can actually start citing it in answers when it generates an answer. So this applies to both generative answers. So a reply you get from ChatGPT, but also in Google AI mode or even traditional Google search. Another thing that I’ve started doing as well, and I need to go back and do it across all my posts.

[00:28:27]   

But again, time is my enemy is to add a short recipe snapshot. So this is like a summary box. I do mine personally immediately under the hero image and I recommend having it somewhere at the top of the post because again, AI engines kind of go chronologically through your post and in this box I call it recipe snapshot.

[00:28:49]   

And you can include stuff like ingredients, cuisine type, cooking time, or anything else that’s relevant to your type of blog and to that type of recipe. So for me, because I’m Korean, it’s going to be important to specify the cuisine type. Is it fusion? Is it purely Korean? What is it? But for other people that maybe have a baking blog, you don’t need to include stuff that are irrelevant to you.

[00:29:13]   

Another thing that helps clarity is having and this again works with traditional SEO principles, is to have very descriptive headings that reflect intent. So for example, why this kimchi recipe works that we’ve all kind of been doing this, but we need to make sure we signify and we draw attention to the intent, even in the headings.

[00:29:37]   

And the last tip for semantic clarity is to avoid keyword stuffing like the plague. AI engines are smart enough that they don’t need to hear the same keyword again and again and again. And like I’ve mentioned before, it’s no longer about just matching the query with the keyword. It’s about the holistic approach and the intent and context and everything else.

[00:29:59]   

And then we have entity clarity. This is a bit less dense. So what this means is that you want to be consistent with how you name stuff on your post. So ingredient techniques don’t use one definition in one post and then you spell it differently in another one. You want to have consistency across the board.

[00:30:20]   

Another thing would be to define terms naturally. So for me, as an example, if I talk about a Korean ingredient, let’s say gochujang within the post, I would naturally explain what this is. So I’ll say gochujang is a Korean fermented chili paste. And then you also want to use schema. And this again works with that technical SEO to use FAQs and how to schema.

[00:30:44]   

So that type of information is very well structured. And the last point under clarity is optimizing for answer delivery. This is where you want to be quoted or referenced by AI engines. And the way to do that to improve your chances is to use FAQ style questions within your post. So using the Yoast FAQ to answer frequently asked questions, but genuinely useful ones that a user would actually ask, not just random ones.

[00:31:15]   

And then you want to give very short, sweet and concise answers within one or two sentences. And then you also want to if you have like a very technically dense post for let’s say you’re a baker and this is a very complex French patisserie stuff you’re making. You want to summarize big and information dense sections.

[00:31:37]   

So add make maybe a small box that says in a nutshell this, this, this and that what this section is about. And AI models love this because they can easily retrieve that information without having to scan through the entire thing. And oh, another tip is to properly use alt text. So when you define your image, make sure your alt text describes the action, not the aesthetic.

[00:32:01]   

So stay say stuff like mixing batter in a bowl as opposed to a pretty image of a saucepan.

[00:32:09]  Megan Porta 

Ah, okay, that’s a good tip. So much there. Oh my gosh. Okay, keep going. I’m ready. That’s a lot absorbing all of this.

[00:32:19]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Amazing. And the last pillar of AEO would be connectivity. So this is how your content links semantically to other relevant knowledge. And now we go back to that knowledge graph connectivity I’ve defined earlier. So this is basically the way AI sees relationships on your site between entities, topics, author, and so on. So you need to make sure.

[00:32:45]   

And again going back to the idea of having a holistic approach. You need to make sure that everything is linked together. Your author, profile, bio, recipes, interlinking, that everything makes sense and it works like a well oiled machine rather than having random bits of scattered content. So how to optimize for this? The first thing would be to have to implement proper breadcrumb strategy.

[00:33:09]   

Again going back to SEO principles, then you want to create logical content hierarchies. So having parent pages, sub pages, child recipes, subtopics and so on. Whatever is relevant for your blog. And then you can also this is where internal linking is very important, so very very important. At the core of AEO, both internal linking and backlinking.

[00:33:35]   

So when you add an internal link, you want to make sure that you kind of reference it contextually. So don’t just say you might like these recipes, boom, boom, boom. Say this brownie recipe works really well with this ice cream recipe I made last or whatever. So do it within a sentence so it makes sense logically and you give some context.

[00:33:56]   

Then you also want to cross reference topics to reinforce that semantic connection. So for example, if you have a post about a specific type of cooking technique and you use that cooking technique in a recipe, make sure you link that in and you reference it. And then connectivity also goes beyond your site as well.

[00:34:19]   

So this is what you can do for your site, but outside of it. Again, maintain consistent bios everywhere. So make sure that if you say I make Korean street food, all your profiles say the same thing and it’s coherent. Another thing would be to work on your backlink strategy. So submit as much as you can and roundups or anything else you want that juice because that helps with your authority but also with the connectivity.

[00:34:51]   

And especially if you get like good backlinks from reputable websites, it adds to that validation and trustworthiness and that eat. And the last one would be to work on your topical depth. So going back to the topic clusters, the more the pieces of your content relate to each other, the denser that sort of spider web becomes.

[00:35:15]   

So think of your site as a big spider web or knowledge node, however you want to call it. And every bit of content sort of works together to form the bigger picture. And then the clearer that web is and the clearer the image of your site is, the higher your chances of surfacing in AI answers are.

[00:35:38]   

And the same with Google results and everything else. So that was a lot.

[00:35:45]  Megan Porta 

That was a lot. And I feel like I have a million questions, but I don’t even know where to start. That was so good. Thank you for sharing all of that. I think that gives us a pleasure, a clear picture of what it is, what AEO is, and some strategies to get started with it.

[00:35:58]   

If you, if we want help with it, obviously you offer that service. I guess one question I have is like, obviously people don’t aren’t super familiar with this term and this concept yet, but is it going to be beneficial to get on this as soon as possible and just make sure we’re on top of it now?

[00:36:22]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

100%, yes. That is the short answer. The long answer is if we look back at the SEO boom more than a decade ago, the people that jumped on board as soon as it became a thing are the ones that are the big bloggers. We know nowadays because the way LLMs work is they start, they work on data sets that are curated bits of information.

[00:36:49]   

That’s how they train their models. And the more information they have in their data data sets historically, the more accurate their picture of you is. So the quicker you start implementing these strategies, the quicker AI engines can understand who you are, what you do, and what sort of thing you’re reputable for, and the more they can start surfacing you and trust you.

[00:37:13]   

So, yes, definitely start implementing even small strategies as early as you can because it will start to show very quickly because again, Google used to take maybe a few days to index, but everything is moving at lightning speed nowadays. And these large language models are extremely clever and they work very fast.

[00:37:36]  Megan Porta 

Okay, yeah, great answer. And you’re right. The, the bloggers who hopped on SEO immediately are, I mean, it’s set the stage for so much, so much success for their businesses.

[00:37:49]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

So 100%.

[00:37:51]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that definitely makes a case for it. I have so many. Maybe just one of these questions I’ll ask you because I was curious about. You mentioned schema a few times and how important that is. We’ve heard that for so many years. Did you say person schema is. What is person schema? Or did I hear that wrong?

[00:38:09]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Yeah, so you can implement that manually as well. You just need to write. I think it’s like a JSON code, but I mean, this is just an extra layer you don’t necessarily have to do it. But plugins like Yoast and Rank Math, I believe both of them have something called, what was it?

[00:38:29]   

User something something. So I think if you have the Premium plugin, you can also set that in its knowledge base so it has a user profile that you can fit in and it sort of surfaces that and even recipe cards. I use WPRM. When you look at the author, it has that person schema.

[00:38:50]   

So you need to use all of these plugins that sort of attribute who that, who that post belongs to. Yeah, correct. That is correct, yes.

[00:38:59]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. No, I just never heard that term before. So one of the things I can add to my brain and if people are interested, I will say.

[00:39:07]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Sorry to interrupt you. It’s. This is just being extra. You don’t have to implement it. But I mean it’s more important to have that, that FAQ. So if you do FAQs, don’t just write them as headings. I recommend using the Yoast, the structured FAQ because that already assigns schema to it. The same with recipe cards, don’t just type them out, use a proper recipe card plugin.

[00:39:32]   

But for person, just make sure you’re consistent across the board and that should be more than enough.

[00:39:37]  Megan Porta 

Okay, if people are interested in getting help with this, if it just feels too overwhelming to tackle on their own, which I assume is most people, what do you provide and how can they get a hold of you? I guess, yeah, sure.

[00:39:52]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

So my service is called AEO Audit. Very simple. I offer three types of audits because I’m a food blogger myself and I know especially in this climate that no one can afford a very pricey audit. So I’m offering three different tiers. The light audit, which is basically like a overview of your site and how AI sees it and basic recommendations.

[00:40:14]   

This is very affordable. It’s of course not as comprehensive, but it’s enough to get you started so as to get your foot in the door. Then the next one is the advanced. It’s a deeper dive and we’ll start looking into entity mapping and topical authority and all of that stuff. And the most advanced one is the Pro audit, which is a full scale review of your site with customized full topic strategy and detailed prioritized action tracker and everything else.

[00:40:43]   

And these audits are fully customized and personalized to your site. I also try to align it with what your vision is of your site and of your brand so we can come up with a strategy that helps you become more visible for AI engines and become a trustworthy source to get cited as much as possible.

[00:41:04]  Megan Porta 

Okay, great. And then I see we can go to Hanelore.com for that. Correct?

[00:41:10]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

Exactly. That’s where you can find me. Hanelore.com I also offer a discovery call if anyone’s interested. We can chat for 15 minutes. I can run you through if you have questions about a. That’s also perfectly fine. Or you can also email me on [email protected] and I’m always happy to talk about anything AI because I am a geek and I love those questions.

[00:41:33]  Megan Porta 

That means you’re the perfect person to come to because a lot of people don’t. So thank you for, you know, loving this topic and exploring it for us.

[00:41:41]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

My pleasure. Thank you for bearing with me and all the tech stuff. I hope it wasn’t too much.

[00:41:47]  Megan Porta 

No, it wasn’t. You did a really good job of talking through it and I again, I just feel like I could follow up with so much but I we would go on forever. So I’ll just leave it at what you said. Everything is perfect. Thank you. We will put together everything in the show notes.

[00:42:03]   

So if you want just quick links to get to where Han is offering her services, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/hanelore and that is H A N E L O R E so to wrap up, do you have a top tip for food bloggers in this day and age?

[00:42:23]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

My top tip would be to stop fearing AI. And I’ve said this probably in previous episodes as well. AI is not the enemy. It can be when it’s used unethically. But it can also be a very valuable ally in making your blog more discoverable and keep doing what we love doing. So instead of being resistant to it, try to understand it, start implementing and eventually you will start seeing results. I promise you this because I’ve seen it across multiple sites that are already implementing these strategies.

[00:43:00]  Megan Porta 

Love it. Such a great tip. Outside of the website we mentioned and the show notes, is there any way any place you want to direct people to go to find you?

[00:43:10]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

You can also find me on Instagram @sugaryums. That is my food blog. But I’m using it more as a personal playground at the moment and via email. So emails you can contact me either on [email protected] or [email protected] that is the company website. So anything that floats your boat, I will be happy to answer.

[00:43:32]  Megan Porta 

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope this wasn’t like overload for you for the day…

[00:43:38]  Hanelore Dumitrache 

No, not at all. It was an absolute pleasure. And I, you know me, I’m a geek. I love geeking out about everything tech and it’s a pleasure. And I also love receiving questions after every podcast episode I do with you, Megan. And thanks for having me again. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

[00:43:55]  Megan Porta 

Thank you so much. We appreciate you so much. And thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:43:55]  Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. I would love your help with something special. I’m putting the finishing touches on my memoir, Take the Exit together. If you want sneak peeks, cover reveals, and a say in how it all comes together, join me on Substack through the link in the description. I can’t wait to bring you along. You can also join the email list at eatblogtalk.com/takethexit.