What it is
AI SEO is the engineering layer of optimizing for AI. It is less about keywords and more about whether a machine can cleanly parse your page, understand what each part means, and trust it enough to quote it. Same foundation as good technical SEO, pointed at a new reader.
Why it matters
AI search reads passages, not just pages. It rewards content it can understand at the sentence and section level. A page that is fast, well-structured, and marked up correctly gives an AI engine fewer reasons to skip you and more reasons to cite you.
What to do
Tighten the technical basics first: semantic headings, valid schema, internal links that show how topics relate, and Core Web Vitals in good shape. These are the signals AI engines lean on most.