A real before/after case study

A real before/after case study applying Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) principles to short-form video content for AnimalVaultFactz.

The problem: standard social captions are written for scroll-stopping engagement, not for AI answer engines — they bury the actual answer under hooks and flourish, giving AI systems nothing clean to extract or cite.

The work: restructured a real video caption from narrative-first to answer-first — leading with a direct, factual claim in the first 40 words, supported by accurate facts, instead of vague hooks. Also built and validated a working FAQPage schema (JSON-LD) implementation, tested through Google's Rich Results Test.

Note: Google restricted classic FAQ rich-result display to authoritative gov/health sites as of August 2023 — this work focuses on genuine machine-readability and AI-citation readiness (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews), not guaranteed search snippet display.

Also included: a 6-step AEO audit framework (establish baseline, prioritize content, evaluate structure, check freshness, categorize, take action) and a measurement approach for tracking AI referral traffic and citation frequency — since AEO doesn't rely on traditional click-through metrics.