How to Increase Your Chances of Being Found: Your AEO Playbook for the AI-Powered Age

Remember when Google dominated professional discovery? When being found meant ranking high on a search engine results page?

That world is over.

In 2025, how people discover professionals has fundamentally shifted. Over 300 million people now use ChatGPT monthly—and they're asking it things like "Find me a UX designer with healthcare experience" or "Who's a reliable machine learning engineer with startup background?"

Here's the problem: if you're not optimized for AI search, you're invisible. No matter how qualified you are.

This is where AEO—Answer Engine Optimization—comes in. And unlike SEO's confusing algorithms, AEO is straightforward: make sure AI systems can find you, understand you, and recommend you.

Let's break down exactly how.

The Discovery Shift Is Real (And It's Happening Now)

The numbers don't lie. 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT as of June 2025—roughly double the number from 2023. Recruiters aren't just searching LinkedIn anymore; they're asking Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT to "summarize the top candidates for this role." Clients are asking Perplexity to "recommend a React developer with ecommerce experience."

Traditional visibility strategies—LinkedIn profiles with bullets, portfolio websites with fancy design—were built for humans. They work fine when a human recruiter reads them. But AI systems? They see them differently. They struggle to understand context. They can't interpret your real value. They don't know you exist.

The result: invisible experts miss opportunities. And discoverable mediocrity wins.

According to recent AEO research, brands adopting AI-focused optimization strategies saw up to 40% higher visibility in generative AI search results compared to traditional SEO-only approaches. Let that sink in.

If you want to be found in 2025 and beyond, you need to optimize for how AI actually sees you.

What Is AEO and Why Does It Matter?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the evolution of SEO for the AI era. Where traditional SEO asks "How do I rank on Google?", AEO asks "How does AI find, understand, and recommend me?"

Here's what makes AEO different from SEO:

Traditional SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, and getting clicks. Your goal? Get to page 1 of Google. AEO, by contrast, focuses on being cited as the right answer. Your goal? Be the expert AI recommends.

Think of the difference like this: SEO is about getting traffic. AEO is about being trustworthy enough for AI to say your name.

The core principles of AEO are:

1. Clear, direct answers first. AI loves professionals who state their expertise upfront. Instead of "Experienced Designer" say "Senior Product Designer specializing in healthcare apps with 10+ years building products used by 5M+ users."

1. Narrative over bullets. AI learns from articles, blog posts, and flowing text. Bullet-point resume formats confuse AI. Narrative-style bios? AI understands those perfectly.

1. Entity clarity. AI cares about what's true about you—your proven skills, verified projects, cited sources. It wants to know you're real and credible, not just well-marketed.

1. Structured information. AI crawlers need to parse your data easily. Messy websites, PDFs, or images? Harder for AI. Clean, structured data? Easy win.

1. Citations and proof. AI loves being able to back up recommendations with real sources. That's why AI recommends professionals with GitHub links, portfolio links, and verified testimonials.

Why You're Invisible Right Now

Most professionals are invisible to AI—not because they lack skill, but because they're optimized for the wrong system.

Let's look at the common mistakes:

Your LinkedIn profile is beautiful but invisible to AI. LinkedIn profiles use bullet points, keywords, and short snippets—great for human scanning, terrible for AI comprehension. AI crawlers have limited access to LinkedIn data anyway. Even when they do access it, the format isn't optimized for AI understanding.

Your personal website looks great but is hard for AI to parse. Many professional websites are JavaScript-heavy, visually gorgeous, but structurally opaque. They're designed for human eyes. AI crawlers see a design showcase, not clear expertise markers. They struggle to extract who you are and what you do.

Your resume is optimized for ATS, not for AI. Applicant Tracking Systems read PDFs by keyword matching. That's a completely different challenge than AI understanding. AI doesn't just want keywords; it wants context, narrative, proof, and verifiable claims.

Your GitHub or portfolio shows what you've built, not why. Pure code and past projects don't tell AI the business impact. AI can't tell if your code is amazing or just functional. It needs narrative context around your work.

The result? You exist online, but you're invisible to the systems that increasingly drive professional discovery.

How to Become More Visible: The AEO Strategy

Increasing your chances of being found in the AI era breaks down into three core strategies:

1. Create an AI-Optimized Professional Profile

This is where everything starts. You need a professional presence specifically engineered for how AI systems work.

An AI-optimized profile:

• Presents you in narrative format (not bullet points)

• Clearly states your expertise upfront

• Includes context around your accomplishments (not just job titles)

• Uses natural language the way people actually search

• Has structured, clean data AI can easily parse

• Includes verified links (GitHub, portfolio, LinkedIn, testimonials)

• Tells a coherent story about who you are and what you do

This doesn't mean starting from scratch. It means transforming what you already have—your resume, LinkedIn profile, past projects—into a format AI systems love.

Example: Instead of "Senior Product Designer – 10 years experience – Healthcare focus," try: "Senior Product Designer specializing in healthcare apps. I've led product design for three healthcare SaaS companies, directly impacting the user experience for 5M+ patients. My expertise: consumer healthcare UX, accessibility compliance, and designing workflows that reduce clinician burden."

See the difference? One is a job title. The other is a story AI can understand and cite.

2. Test Your AI Visibility and Measure It

You can't improve what you don't measure.

The next step is running discovery tests—systematically checking whether AI search engines actually find you. This involves:

• Creating search queries relevant to your expertise

• Running those queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews

• Tracking whether you appear (and where you rank)

• Comparing yourself against competitors

This gives you concrete data. Maybe you find you appear in 3 out of 10 searches for "UX designer + healthcare." That's your baseline. Now you know what to improve.

Tracking metrics might include:

• Appearance frequency: How often do you show up in relevant AI searches?

• Ranking position: When you appear, are you result #1 or #10?

• Visibility score: A composite metric showing your overall AI discoverability

• Competitive intelligence: Who else appears alongside you?

This isn't guesswork. It's data.

3. Optimize Based on AI Insights

Once you have visibility data, the optimization path becomes clear.

Optimization strategies include:

• Adding missing context about your expertise and projects

• Highlighting specific achievements with numbers and impact

• Reorganizing your narrative for clarity

• Adding verified links (GitHub, portfolio, case studies) so AI can back up recommendations with sources

• Staying consistent with regular content and profile updates

The key insight: you're not just optimizing once. You're in a continuous loop: test → optimize → test again → improve.

imvisible: The Platform Built for AEO

Here's where this gets practical.

Creating and maintaining an AI-optimized profile by hand is time-consuming. Running discovery tests manually is tedious. Tracking visibility across multiple AI platforms? Nearly impossible without the right tool.

That's why imvisible.ai exists.

imvisible is the world's first professional visibility platform designed specifically for the age of AI-powered search. While LinkedIn optimizes for human recruiters and Google optimizes for traditional search engines, imvisible ensures you're discovered, understood, and accurately represented by AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Setup (15-30 minutes)
Upload your resume or manually enter your experience. imvisible's AI transforms your bullet points into a narrative-style profile optimized for AI systems. You get a beautiful, public profile page with a custom URL (like imvisible.ai/as/your-name). Your profile is immediately indexed by AI crawlers.

Step 2: Discover (Run Tests)
Generate discovery prompts (AI creates 10-20 relevant search queries). Run tests to see if you appear in AI search results. Get your visibility score. Track competitors who appear alongside you. All the data you need to understand your current AI visibility.

Step 3: Optimize (Continuous Improvement)
Review AI-powered suggestions for improving your profile. Update your profile based on recommendations. Generate thought leadership content to boost visibility. Monitor your analytics. Retest to measure improvement.

The platform gives you visibility tracking you literally cannot get anywhere else. You see exactly when AI crawlers access your profile. You know how often you appear in AI searches. You see which types of roles recruiters evaluate you for. You track progress over time.

Beyond the core features, imvisible includes:

• AI Chat: Visitors can ask questions about your background

• Job Evaluation Tool: Recruiters paste a job description; AI analyzes your fit

• Content Generation: AI creates LinkedIn posts, articles, threads based on your expertise

• Competitive Intelligence: See who appears in the same search results as you

• Analytics Dashboard: Track every view, engagement, and interaction

The result: you're no longer invisible to AI. You have visibility, measurable data, and a clear competitive advantage.

Beyond imvisible: Other Tools in the AEO Ecosystem

While imvisible is your personal AI visibility platform, it's worth understanding the broader ecosystem of tools helping professionals and brands with AEO.

For monitoring broader AI visibility: Platforms like Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush's AIO, and Profound track how brands appear across AI search engines. These tools are broader (company-level, not individual-level) but offer deep competitive intelligence and trend tracking.

For general personal branding: Tools like Canva AI (visual branding), Jasper AI (content creation), and Notion AI (planning and organization) all help you maintain a consistent personal brand presence. They're not AEO-specific, but they complement your visibility efforts.

For content and LinkedIn optimization: ChatGPT (writing assistance), Surfer SEO (content ranking), and Taplio (LinkedIn strategy) help ensure your content gets discovered and ranks well across traditional and AI-powered search.

For broader AI visibility tracking: BrightEdge, SearchAtlas, and Otterly.AI offer enterprise-level AI visibility monitoring, helpful if you're a brand or agency managing multiple professionals.

But here's the thing: none of these are built specifically for individual professional visibility in AI systems. That's imvisible's unique position. It's built from the ground up for one use case: making you discoverable in AI-powered search.

Practical Steps You Can Take Today

You don't need to wait for a tool to get started. Here are concrete AEO strategies you can implement immediately:

1. Audit Your Current Visibility

Search for yourself in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Ask: "Who is [your name]?" and "Find me an expert in [your specialization]."

Do you appear? What information shows up? Is it accurate? That's your baseline.

2. Create a Narrative-Style Professional Bio

Write 2-3 paragraphs describing who you are, what you've accomplished, and what you specialize in. Include numbers and impact. Avoid bullets. Make it sound like an article about you, not a resume.

Example: "I'm a full-stack React developer who builds ecommerce platforms. I've shipped 15 production apps for mid-market brands, consistently improving conversion rates by 20-30%. My specialty: complex real-time features for high-traffic applications."

3. Ensure You Have Verified Links

Create or update:

• A GitHub profile with your best code

• A portfolio site (or Notion page) showing past projects

• LinkedIn profile with accurate, detailed information

• Personal website if possible

• Links to testimonials or case studies

AI loves being able to verify recommendations with sources.

4. Write Content Around Your Expertise

Start a blog, write LinkedIn posts, contribute to industry publications. AI learns from narrative content. The more you write about your expertise, the better AI understands it.

5. Structure Your Information Clearly

Whether it's on your website, LinkedIn, or portfolio:

• Use clear headings

• Include your key skills upfront

• Add metrics to your accomplishments

• Make it scannable

This makes it easier for AI to extract and understand your expertise.

6. Create Multiple Versions of Your Story

Different people (and AI systems) will search for you in different ways. Create content around:

• Your main specialization

• Adjacent skills

• Unique combinations (e.g., "marketing background + UX research")

• Specific tools or methodologies you're expert in

7. Track Your Progress

Run simple tests monthly. Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity relevant searches. Note whether you appear. Over 3-6 months, you should see improvement as you optimize.

The Future of Professional Discovery

Here's what's coming: AI visibility will become as important as Google ranking used to be. In a few years, professionals without strong AI visibility will be at the same disadvantage as someone with no website in 2010.

Early adoption matters. Right now, most professionals are invisible to AI—which means there's a massive opportunity for anyone who optimizes first.

The professionals who are discoverable in AI searches today will have a massive advantage:

• Job seekers will appear in recruiter searches

• Freelancers will get inbound opportunities without bidding wars

• Consultants will be cited as experts

• Thought leaders will get speaking gigs and advisory opportunities

You don't have to wait for the future. You can start building your AI visibility today.

Getting Started

The fastest path:

1. Head to imvisible.ai

1. Create an AI-optimized profile (15-30 minutes)

1. Run your first discovery test

1. See your visibility score

1. Get AI-powered suggestions for improvement

1. Start appearing in AI searches

The platform has a free tier if you want to test it. The Pro plan ($19/month) gives you unlimited discovery tests, advanced analytics, competitive intelligence, and content generation—basically everything you need to dominate AI visibility.

Without a platform:

Follow the practical steps above. It'll take more time and manual effort, but you can improve your AI visibility without any paid tools.

Either way, the key is to start. Because every day you're not optimized for AI discovery is another day competitors are getting found in your place.

The Bottom Line

The world of professional discovery has changed. AI systems are the new gatekeepers. Being visible to them isn't optional anymore—it's essential.

AEO isn't complicated. It's not voodoo. It's simply making sure you're discoverable, understandable, and trustworthy in the systems that increasingly drive professional opportunities.

The professionals who embrace this early will win. They'll be found. They'll get opportunities. They'll build the careers and businesses they want.

The professionals who ignore it? They'll slowly become invisible.

Which will you be?