Short answer
Healthcare AEO, Answer Engine Optimisation, is the practice of structuring website content so search engines, AI Overviews and voice assistants can extract a direct, clear answer from your page, rather than requiring a click-through. It sits on top of standard SEO rather than replacing it.
How AEO differs from traditional SEO
Traditional SEO is largely about ranking well in a results list, appearing as high as possible among ten blue links a person has to evaluate themselves. AEO is about being the specific source Google or an AI system extracts and displays as a direct answer, in a featured snippet, an AI Overview, or a voice assistant's spoken response. A page can rank reasonably well and still never be selected as the extracted answer if it isn't structured for extraction, which is the specific gap AEO addresses.
What AEO actually looks like on a page
In practice, it means restructuring content so the direct answer to a specific question appears clearly and concisely near the top of a section, typically in the 40 to 60 word range, before the fuller explanation and supporting detail continues. It also means using FAQ and Q&A structured data (schema markup) that explicitly labels question and answer pairs, so a search engine can identify and extract them with confidence rather than guessing at the structure.
Why this matters more for healthcare specifically
Healthcare questions, cost, duration, whether a referral is needed, are exactly the kind of clear, factual query pattern that answer engines were built to serve well. A practice that structures its content to answer these questions directly tends to capture the answer position more consistently than one relying on longer, well-written but loosely structured educational content, even when the underlying information is equally accurate.
What AEO can't do
No agency can guarantee a specific page will be selected as a featured answer or included in an AI Overview, since that placement is controlled entirely by the platform. AEO also can't compensate for weak underlying content or poor technical SEO; it's a structural layer on top of a genuinely solid foundation, not a substitute for one.
A concrete before-and-after example
A typical, unstructured page might bury the answer to how much a root canal costs in the third paragraph of a long, general article about root canal treatment. An AEO-structured version leads with a direct, specific answer in the first sentence or two after the heading, then continues into the fuller explanation, the factors that affect cost, what's included, financing options, for the reader who wants more detail. Both versions can contain the same underlying information; only one is structured in a way a search engine or AI system can confidently extract as a standalone answer.
How AEO content differs from writing for a human reader alone
Writing purely for a human reader gives you latitude to build up to a point gradually, using narrative or context before arriving at the answer, which often produces genuinely engaging, well-crafted prose. AEO asks you to front-load the answer instead, which can initially feel unnatural or overly blunt to a writer used to a more traditional structure. The skill is learning to do both at once: lead with a clear, extractable answer for the system, then use the same narrative and context-building skill immediately afterward for the human reader who wants the fuller picture.