AEO and The Future of Online Visibility for Mortgage and Real Estate Leaders

In 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches in the United States ended without one single click to a website. And that number is only increasing. Users found the information they needed on the top of the search results page in what’s known as “position zero.”

This trend, known as zero-click searches, is a major shift in behavior enabled by answer engines like Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and many others. This trend is having a direct impact on the mortgage and real estate industries as many lenders continue to invest in SEO with little, if any, consideration given to the rapidly rising importance of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization).

Accordingly, CEOs and production/sales managers will face a growing challenge in the months to come: overreliance on traditional SEO could render you invisible to a large cohort of prospects for the services you offer.

The goal of this article is to provide you with the insight you need in the near and long-term regarding search so that you can take action immediately. You have a chance right now to leapfrog your competition. But the window of opportunity is going to be narrowed as more and more of your competitors wake up to the new realities of search behavior and adjust their strategies.

The Shift from Search to Answer

The search engine landscape for those seeking information, products or technology having to do with mortgage or real estate is undergoing significant transformation. This transformation is driven by the rise of AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others that provide direct answers to questions with zero clicks in a conversational setting. This advancement removes the need for you to conduct a keyword search and scroll through a page of links hoping to find your answer buried in an article. That takes a time commitment. Answer engines circumvent that by just giving you the answer.

Therefore, companies now need to think much more about how they will write and optimize their content for this new reality regarding search behavior.

Here’s a comparison table that highlights the differences between the traditional Google search and answer engine searches through platforms like Google’s Gemini. This table answers the question as to why traditional SEO efforts that have underpinned Google searches will no longer be enough to attract today’s business prospects as these prospects value their time and are becoming more savvy:

Here’s a real-life example of how a prospective homebuyer might search for information using a traditional Google search vs. an answer engine.

In a traditional Google search, a homebuyer may ask a question like “How much home can I afford?” The result would yield a page of links to articles, calculators and guides from a variety of websites. This forces the user to determine, before clicking, which click will likely provide them with the quickest, most reliable information without having to dig too far to uncover the answer they seek.

However, using an answer engine, that same prospective homebuyer could be engaged in a conversation with an answer engine like Gemini. During that conversation, they may ask how much home they can afford based on their annual income and available money for a downpayment. The query might read more like this: “Based on an annual income of $125,000 and $20,000 saved for a downpayment, how much home can I afford?” because an answer engine has a conversational format where a user would be more inclined to provide more context. Gemini would then analyze this data in real time and incorporate any necessary context and then provide a tailored answer, maybe even including information around DPA (downpayment assistance) programs available in your area and more.

With an answer engine, all queries become part of the context of your conversation and previous questions and answers are referenced without starting a new session. With a search engine like Google, each query is new with no reference to the prior query.

SEO vs. AEO — What’s the Real Difference?

SEO and AEO goals are aligned at their core. Although they share the common goal of heightening your website’s authority and rankings, the way they achieve that is fundamentally different. They complement each other, so you need both for the health of your business and how it shows up online.

Here’s a deeper dive into how AEO compares to SEO:

• Why does AEO matter for companies in the mortgage and real estate industries? AEO is tasked with the goal of getting your company’s information directly in front of the user in search queries and AI answers so that the user doesn’t even need to click to learn more. They just get the information they seek instantly. The purpose of SEO, on the other hand, is to get users to click on a link in a search results page to access a page on your website. This is accomplished by ensuring that the content on your website pages is information and keyword rich, and that your content quality drives backlinks from other reputable websites that refer to the solid topical information you have on your website which provides your site with a certain level of authority.
• How is content format and structure different for AEO compared to SEO? Effective content for SEO consists of longer, keyword-rich pages that go deep into a topic. AEO is about a website’s authority and how well that content answers direct questions, like FAQs, via structured data. Structured data is grounded in code that needs to be added to web pages to help Google, Bing and AI tools understand what a question is and what the answer is, what a mortgage rate is, what a review is, etc. so those answers can be easily sought and provided to the user. For example, if you indicate that the current FHA loan limit is X, with no proper structured data coding involved, this would be read as normal text. Programmed properly, the website tells Google: 1) this is an FAQ, 2) here is the exact question, and 3) here is the official answer. Taken together, this increases the likelihood that your content will be used for featured snippets at “position zero,” answer engines, and voice search results – a core part of Answer Engine Optimization.
• What role do voice search and AI-powered search play? Voice search queries like “What are today’s mortgage rates?” depend on AI-ready content as I just shared. Accordingly, optimizing for various frequently asked questions as noted in the previous question ensures your content is considered by the answer engine to provide that answer when these searches are conducted.
• What competitive advantage can companies gain if they adopt AEO now while competitors are still focused on just SEO? Most of your competitors are still focusing their efforts on SEO alone. They may view AEO, if they are even aware it exists, as something that doesn’t require their immediate attention as they swim in a pool of competing priorities. By moving on this quickly, it can help you dominate the future of search behavior, which is right now.

Blending SEO and AEO — A Playbook for Mortgage and Real Estate Industry Leaders

Here are steps you can take right now to gain the advantages associated with having your website content optimized to accommodate popular answer engines as well as the new Google search feature that offers zero-click snippets at the top of result pages.

Step 1: Identify top prospect questions like loan limits, preapproval steps, and refinancing options if you’re a lender, and other top questions if you’re a B2B company providing services or technology to the mortgage or real estate industries.

Step 2: Add an FAQ section to your website that will answer all these questions clearly and concisely.

Step 3: Use structured data and schema markup to help search engines and answer engines identify your content and then serve it up to the end users.

Step 4: Optimize your content for voice searches by ensuring it has a conversational tone and the answers you provide within that content are, again, concise and direct.

With all this said, what I do not want to do is convey to you in any way that you should abandon SEO. Quite the opposite. You must continue your work pursuing best practices in your SEO because 1) people will still conduct Google searches to access diverse sources of information, verify information found in answer engines, explore multiple viewpoints, and conduct deep dives into specific topics; 2) as I stated earlier, the success of AEO works in conjunction with your success in SEO. These two disciplines are not mutually exclusive. They depend on each other.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Now, let’s put what you learned in this article to practical use, right here, right now! Here are some FAQs about AEO you may be interested in. I would encourage you to continue your exploration in your favorite answer engine which may convince you of the urgency of AEO for your business.

Q1: Is AEO replacing SEO? No. AEO is an evolution of SEO and not designed to replace it. In fact, you cannot have a successful AEO without the foundation of SEO best practices. AEO ensures that your brand shows up when your audience is looking for instant answers, with or without clicks.

Q2: Do CEOs and Production Managers need to care about AEO? Yes. Both SEO and AEO impact lead generation and brand visibility. Leadership must buy into the strategy so that AEO is given the respect that it deserves now to be successful.

Q3: Is AEO only relevant to Google? No. In the current environment, Bing, Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT, Gemini and many other engines are used in searches and they are all involved in the business of providing direct answers to their users. Ignoring this reality is no longer tenable.

Q4: How quickly can we implement AEO? You can start today! A full roll-out can take from three to six months. The long-term advantages are great, and if you start now, you get that first-mover advantage while your competitors sit on the sidelines.

As a next step, I encourage you to talk to whomever is handling your SEO today or get that call on the calendar with them. Ask them what steps they are taking to optimize your content for answer engines.

The mortgage and real estate industries are exceedingly competitive. There have been many recent moves made by large players to gain a competitive advantage, so don’t let this opportunity to help drive yours slip through your fingers. Optimizing your content for answer engines is something you can do immediately and within your complete control. It does not require a billion-dollar merger to implement – just your swift attention, a small amount of money, and a sharp website optimization expert. Do not wait because getting started is simple and will set you up well for long term success as more and more people flock to answer engines to get their information. The number of Google searches with no clicks is getting higher by the day.