From SEO to AEO: How to Build Your Website for AI (Webflow Guide) – Talk with Christian Schmitt

AI doesn’t recommend you? That’s not random – it’s a matter of structure.

In this Webflow Talk I speak with SEO and AEO expert Christian Schmitt about how to build your Webflow website so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity actually cite and recommend you.

You’ll learn:

• What AEO, GEO and AI Visibility mean and how they differ from SEO
• How to use Schema Markup and microdata correctly in Webflow
• Why YouTube is a secret weapon for Gemini
• What llms.txt is and whether it’s worth it
• How to measure AI visibility with Cloudflare and Ubersuggest
• Content structures that AI systems understand and cite more easily
• Limits and hype: what’s actually proven in GEO/AEO – and what isn’t

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AEO instead of SEO – why your Webflow website needs to be built differently now

SEO is not dead. But it’s no longer enough on its own.

That’s the core message from my conversation with Christian Schmitt in the latest Webflow Talk. We spent nearly an hour and a half discussing what has changed through AI search systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity – and what you can do today to make your Webflow website show up there.

What is AEO – and how does it differ from SEO?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It describes how you structure your content so that AI systems can understand, categorize and cite it. Alongside it is GEO, Generative Engine Optimization – which means optimizing your content specifically for the prompts your target audience types into AI tools.

The key difference from classic SEO: before, you wanted to rank number one on Google. Today it’s about appearing in an AI’s answer to a very specific question – not as a link someone might click, but as a directly cited source. Studies show that an AI recommendation can generate up to ten times higher conversions than classic organic traffic.

Schema Markup: the technical foundation

AI bots work differently from Google crawlers. If it’s not immediately clear what a page is about, they move on. A structured Schema Markup gives the bot the orientation it needs within seconds.

Webflow lets you add Schema Markup directly in the page settings – including with AI assistance. That sounds convenient, but there’s a catch: automatically generated schemas need to be reviewed regularly. Outdated prices, invented categories and formatting errors are more common than you’d think, as the schema.org validator quickly reveals.

Important to know: errors in the schema are usually ignored by AI bots – they’re not a showstopper. Wrong or contradictory information, however, can actively damage an AI’s trust in your website.

Microdata: schema directly in the HTML element

What many web designers don’t know yet: schema doesn’t have to live only as a JSON-LD script at the page level. You can also add attributes directly to HTML elements – so-called microdata.

This is especially useful for dynamic content like FAQs pulled from the Webflow CMS. In Webflow you can set the corresponding itemtype and itemprop attributes directly via the Attributes panel in the element settings. That way the AI recognizes a FAQ section even when the content is loaded dynamically.

If you don’t want to go through it manually: an AI like Claude can be given your HTML structure and the Schema.org documentation and generate the right attributes for you.

llms.txt: useful, but with limitations

The idea behind llms.txt: you pack all relevant information about yourself and your website into a compact text file on your domain. AI bots should use this file instead of crawling your entire site.

In Webflow you can upload this file in the SEO tab. Christian recommends doing it if you have the option. However, its effectiveness has not yet been scientifically proven. Keep the file short and high-level – too detailed, and it’ll be outdated faster than you can update it.

How to measure your AI visibility

Optimizations are pointless if you don’t know whether they’re working. Christian presented two approaches:

Cloudflare AI Crawl Control: If your site runs through Cloudflare, you can see which AI bots accessed your site and how many then actually clicked through. Even with the Pro Plan (around $20/month) you get data for the last seven days.

Tools like Ubersuggest or Clarity: Here you can store prompts and measure how often you appear in AI answers to specific queries. That gives you a solid basis for evaluating and justifying your optimizations.

Webflow plans to make similar data available directly in Webflow Analyze for Enterprise customers – which would make using it for client projects significantly easier.

Conclusion: Webflow is well positioned for AEO

Clean, semantically correct HTML, server-side rendered content and a growing AEO toolchain make Webflow a solid foundation. If you build websites for clients, AEO will become a permanent part of your offering – especially for local service providers and businesses with specific target audiences.

Want to go deeper? Find my Webflow online courses at Formburg: https://www.formburg.com/courses