What AEO can and cannot do for a bootstrapped SaaS

AEO, as used here, is the work of making your company, founder, product and buyer problem extractable. A person or a system should be able to state who you help, what you do, and what you do not claim, from public pages.

That is different from ‘getting recommended by ChatGPT’. Answer systems change. Sources change. A mention is useful evidence. It is not a contract.

Name the entity: OwnedSignal is a practice founded by Alex Iliescu, not a marketplace and not a four-person agency team. Connect the person to the company in schema and in prose.

Write answer-first sections: the first paragraph should answer the query, then the evidence, then the limits.

Keep FAQ and service markup aligned with the visible text. Do not mark up claims the page does not make.

Run a prompt battery: a short list of buyer questions you ask in public tools on a recorded date. Log whether you appear, how you are described, and what source is cited. Treat the log as research.

If you cannot describe who buys, or you have no way to start a conversation, AEO will not invent demand. Start with the 21-day sprint. If buyers already search or ask for the problem you solve, and your pages do not state a clear answer, AEO and SEO share a queue of pages to fix.