Three years ago, "SEO" was a complete checklist for web visibility. Get your title tags right, build backlinks, ship a sitemap, monitor Search Console. Done.
In 2026, that checklist still matters, but it's no longer sufficient.
Here's what changed: when someone searches "best italian restaurant in munich" today, they don't always click through to a website. They ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. The answer engine reads the web, synthesizes results, and gives them a curated three-line answer with citations. If your business isn't structured for those engines to quote you, you're invisible, even if you rank #2 on Google.
That's why we score every site we audit on three axes, not one.
SEO: still the foundation
Search Engine Optimization is what you already know. Google's crawler indexes your HTML. Ranking signals: relevant title tags, meta descriptions, proper heading hierarchy, alt-text on images, mobile-responsive design, fast Core Web Vitals, valid sitemaps, working robots.txt, HTTPS, and, for local businesses, LocalBusiness schema with consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) across the web.
SEO drives roughly 60% of the traffic for most SMB sites in our cohort. Cutting it costs you. Doing it well costs less than you'd think. It's mostly mechanical hygiene plus content.
AEO: how ChatGPT cites you
Answer Engine Optimization is newer and more interesting. When an LLM answers a question, it does one of three things:
- Quotes a website directly (with a citation link)
- Synthesizes from many sources (and may name some)
- Hallucinates an answer (and names no one)
You want to be in category 1. To get there:
- Write factual content. Specific facts ("We've operated since 1987 in Munich's Glockenbachviertel") are quotable. Marketing fluff ("the best Italian experience in town") is not.
- FAQ pages with Q&A schema. LLMs love structured Q&A. If your page literally has "Q: What hours are you open? A: …" with the schema markup, you'll be the cited source.
- Clear business summary above the fold. The first 200 words of your homepage should tell an LLM exactly what you do, who you serve, and where.
/llms.txt: a new convention. A plaintext file at the root of your site that gives LLM crawlers a curated summary. Few sites have one. Adding one is a small win.
AIO: the structured data layer
AI-readable structured data is the deepest axis. It's about whether your site can be machine-read at all.
- JSON-LD coverage. Every page should embed at least one structured-data block (LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Service, Product, Article). Most SMB sites we audit have zero. Adding correct JSON-LD can raise an audit score 20+ points.
- Semantic HTML.
<main>,<article>,<header>,<nav>,<section>,<aside>, not endless<div>soup. LLM crawlers (and accessibility tools) use semantic tags to understand page structure. - Content chunkability. Your content should split cleanly into ~200-token chunks for embedding indexes. Long unbroken paragraphs hurt. Subheadings every 200-300 words help.
The three-axis scorecard
When we audit a site, we score each axis 0-100 and surface 3-5 specific findings per axis with severity (high / medium / low) and a fix hint. Most SMB sites we see land in the 30-50 range across all three, meaning a single careful rebuild can move them into the 80+ range and unlock both Google rankings AND LLM citations.
The audit is free. Paste your URL at gohexa.ai/audit and you'll get the same scorecard within 60 seconds.
If the score is low and you want help fixing it, that's what we do: bespoke website builds from €2-5k, scoring in the green on all three axes from day one, plus optional monthly maintenance.
The web didn't stop being important when ChatGPT arrived. It just got a second audience.