What is AEO? The Simple Explanation for Singapore Business Owners

Something Changed—And Most Businesses Missed It

Here's what happened: your customers stopped searching the old way.

Used to be, someone needed a service, they'd Google it, scroll through results, click a few links, compare. You optimised your website, maybe ran some ads, waited for them to find you.

Now? They open ChatGPT or Perplexity and just ask: "What's a good CRM for small business?" or "Who does email marketing for SMEs in Singapore?"

The AI doesn't show them 10 options. It gives them 2 or 3 recommendations. Maybe just one.

If you're not one of those recommendations, you don't exist in that conversation.

That's what AEO is about—making sure you're in the conversation.

"But I Already Have Good SEO"

I hear this a lot. And look, SEO still matters. Google isn't going anywhere.

But here's the thing: SEO and AEO solve different problems.

SEO gets you on the list.
When someone searches "digital marketing agency Singapore," good SEO puts you somewhere on page 1. Maybe position 3, maybe position 8. The customer still has to click around, compare, decide.

AEO gets you recommended.
When someone asks ChatGPT "Which agency can help my SME with email marketing in Singapore?"—AEO determines whether the AI mentions your name or your competitor's.

One isn't better than the other. But if you're only doing SEO, you're only playing half the game now.

Why This Matters More in Singapore

Singapore is small. Word travels fast—good and bad.

We've always been a recommendation culture. You ask your colleague where to get your suit tailored. You ask in your condo WhatsApp group who's a good renovation contractor. You trust recommendations over advertisements.

AI search is just that behaviour, scaled up.

When someone asks Perplexity for a recommendation, they're trusting it the same way they'd trust a friend's suggestion. The difference is, the AI has to decide who to recommend based on what it can find and verify online.

So the question becomes: when AI looks at your online presence, does it see a business worth recommending?

The Problems We See Every Day

Before we started focusing on AEO, we were solving other problems for Singapore SMEs. The patterns were clear:

The cake shop drowning in WhatsApp messages.
Orders coming in from Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger—all at once. No way to track who ordered what, who paid, who was still waiting for a reply. They were losing sales not because people didn't want to buy, but because enquiries got buried in the scroll.

The enrichment centre burning money on ads.
Spending thousands on Facebook ads every month. Clicks were coming in. But conversions? Terrible. The problem wasn't the ads—it was the follow-up. Leads would enquire, get a slow response or no response, and sign up with a competitor who replied faster.

The architecture firm with a website that kept breaking.
They'd invested in a nice-looking website, but it was slow, unreliable, constantly having issues. Every time a potential client tried to view their portfolio, the site would time out. They were dropping the ball on leads they didn't even know they had.

These problems all have one thing in common: visibility alone isn't enough. You can rank on Google, run ads, have a social media presence—but if the infrastructure underneath isn't solid, leads still slip through.

AEO is the same principle applied to AI search. It's not enough to exist online. You need to exist in a way that AI can understand, trust, and recommend.

Why We're Doing This on Ourselves First

Here's the honest truth: we don't have AEO case studies with neat before-and-after citation metrics yet. AEO is new. We're building this methodology in real-time.

But we do have our own website.

When we started implementing AEO on loop.com.sg, our PageSpeed score was 56. Mobile experience was rough. Schema markup was minimal. We weren't blocking AI crawlers, but we weren't exactly rolling out the welcome mat either.

Now? PageSpeed score is 93. Full schema markup across all pages. AI crawlers explicitly allowed. Content structured for extraction. FAQ sections with proper markup. Everything we're writing about in our AEO Guide—we did it on our own site first.

We're not asking you to trust strategies we wouldn't use ourselves.

What Actually Makes AI Recommend You?

Without getting too technical (there's a full guide if you want the details), AI decides who to recommend based on a few things:

Can it understand what you do?
Vague marketing speak doesn't work. AI needs clear, specific answers. Not "we help businesses grow"—but "we help Singapore SMEs set up WhatsApp CRM systems to track leads."

Does it trust you?
Reviews, testimonials, how long you've been around, who links to you, whether you show up on credible platforms—these all signal trustworthiness.

Is your information current?
AI deprioritises outdated content. If your last blog post was 2022, that's a problem.

Can it easily extract answers from your content?
AI pulls specific passages to cite. If your content isn't structured for that, you won't get quoted.

A Simple Test You Can Do Right Now

Open ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Ask: "[Your service] in Singapore" or "Best [what you do] for [your target customer]"

See what comes up.

If you're mentioned—great, you're ahead of most. Check how you're mentioned. Is it accurate? Positive?

If you're not mentioned—now you know where you stand. Your competitors who are mentioned? They're getting leads you'll never even know about.

The Full Stack Matters

One thing we learned from helping clients like EGN—who we helped go fully digital during COVID and generate over a million dollars in 6 months—is that no single piece works in isolation.

AEO gets you found. But then what?

• If your website is slow, visitors bounce before they enquire
• If your CRM is chaos, leads get lost after they reach out
• If your email follow-up is inconsistent, warm leads go cold

That's why we built LOOP as a full ecosystem: AEO for visibility, Kommo CRM for lead management, LOOP Email for nurturing, LOOP Hosting for reliability. Each piece supports the others.

But you don't need to do everything at once. Start with what's most broken. For many businesses right now, that's AI visibility—because it's the newest gap and most competitors haven't addressed it yet.

The Window Won't Stay Open Forever

Right now, most Singapore SMEs haven't heard of AEO. That's an advantage for those who move early.

But this window closes. As more businesses figure this out, the competition for AI recommendations gets tougher. The ones who establish themselves now will be harder to displace later.

It's like SEO in 2010. The businesses who took it seriously early built positions that competitors are still struggling to catch up to.

AEO is at that same inflection point.

What's Next?

If you want to understand AEO in depth—the technical foundation, content optimization, authority building, monitoring—read our Complete AEO Guide. It's comprehensive, practical, and based on what we're actually implementing.

Or if you just want to know where you stand, get a free AEO audit. We'll test your visibility across AI platforms and show you exactly what's working and what isn't.

Either way, the search landscape is shifting. The question is whether you'll be part of the conversation or invisible to it.