Summary:
In this episode of The Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook, Mark Mersman unpacks the rising importance of “Answer Engine Optimization” (AEO) — a new evolution of traditional SEO shaped by how consumers are now using AI tools to find information. He begins by sharing recent examples from USA Financial, where new advisor leads came directly through AI-driven searches like ChatGPT. This, he explains, marks a major shift in how people seek answers online. For the first time in over a decade, Google’s market share has dipped below 90%, signaling a slow but meaningful migration from search engines to “answer engines.” Supporting this point, Mark notes that 71% of Americans have already used AI tools for search, and 14% use them daily. Even Google has integrated AI summaries into 18% of its search results, and while search impressions have increased 49% year over year, click-through rates have dropped by 30%. This means more people are finding what they need within AI-generated overviews—without ever visiting a website.
Mark emphasizes that this shift requires advisors to rethink their website and content strategies. The traditional keyword-stuffing approach of SEO is no longer enough. Instead, content must be written to address user intent—the why, how, and what-if behind every question. Rather than matching phrases, advisors should think about the psychology of why someone asks a question and deliver helpful, human, conversational answers. For example, if a consumer asks, “At what age should I take Social Security?”, a well-optimized response won’t stop at the basics—it will also explore follow-up questions such as how health, longevity, or other assets influence the decision. By layering in related sub-questions, advisors make their content more comprehensive and more likely to be surfaced by AI engines.
Depth and breadth of content are key. Shallow or generic pages are less likely to be referenced by AI tools than well-rounded, detailed content that anticipates and answers multiple facets of a topic. Mark encourages advisors to think beyond single blog posts and to build clusters of related content that provide full context on financial topics. He also stresses the importance of clarity and structure—organizing content in a way that is easy for AI to read and summarize. Traditional SEO best practices like meta descriptions, clear headers, and optimized formatting still play a role, but AEO requires adding layers of intent and natural conversation.
Another major factor, Mark explains, is credibility. AI tools favor content that is supported or cited by trusted external sources. When a website is mentioned by reputable outlets or quoted in articles, it signals authority. Advisors who have earned third-party exposure—whether through PR, media mentions, or guest appearances—should showcase that credibility on their sites. Not only does this build trust with prospects, but it also increases the likelihood that AI systems will view the content as reliable and reference it in their answers.
Freshness also matters. Mark advises keeping websites active with new or updated content at least once or twice a month. Regular updates that tie into current topics or timely questions can signal relevance to AI search engines. Even though content doesn’t have to be “news-cycle” fresh, it should reflect current insights or evolving financial realities.
For advisors looking to take immediate action, Mark offers a few simple starting points. One of the most effective steps is to create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section or Q&A page on their website. AI systems thrive on concise, structured questions and clear, digestible answers. Embedding mini Q&A sections at the bottom of blog posts can also help AI engines identify relevant snippets to include in summaries. He cautions, however, against overly mechanical or generic AI-written content; writing should sound natural, with genuine voice and tone. “Weak, spammy AI content,” he warns, will likely get ignored.
Mark also recommends including concise summary paragraphs at the top of each page or article. These summaries should clearly outline the content that follows—essentially giving AI a roadmap of what to expect. This not only improves user experience but also increases the chance that an AI engine will use the summary as part of its answer. Advisors should also experiment with targeting low-volume, niche questions that large sites may overlook. Competing for broad topics like “how do I roll over a 401(k)?” is difficult, but a specific question like “how do I roll over a 401(k) from XYZ company?” offers a better chance of being surfaced and establishes authority in niche searches.
To bring it all together, Mark reinforces that the rise of AI search doesn’t mean traditional SEO is obsolete—it just means the two must now work hand-in-hand. Advisors must think strategically about how AI reads, summarizes, and cites information. Websites that combine relevance, authority, and clarity will be the ones that appear in AI-generated responses. Finally, Mark reminds listeners that public relations, earned media, and consistent content updates aren’t just for branding—they now directly impact how visible an advisor becomes in the new world of AI-driven discovery.
In essence, Answer Engine Optimization represents a pivotal evolution for financial advisors who want to remain discoverable. It’s about writing with human intent, structuring for machine comprehension, and consistently demonstrating authority and credibility. As Mark concludes, this new frontier is not about gaming the system—it’s about delivering genuinely useful, trustworthy answers in the most natural way possible, so that when clients and prospects ask AI a financial question, it’s your voice that comes back in the answer.
Transcript:
Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial - Welcome to another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook. Today, I wanted to talk about Answer Engine Optimization. That might be a term you're not familiar with, it kind of bring part of what brought me to want to do this episode. Just over the past month, we here at USA Financial have generated a few different leads that upon talking with these advisors, they discovered us through a chatGBT search or another AI engine search. And it, just kind of solidified this new era that we're in. Now, no doubt you've heard of SEO search engine optimization, answer engine optimization or AI search optimization is kind of the taking over. won't, I don't want to say that SEO is dead. Of course, I won't, I won't say that because that strategy comes alongside, the answer engine optimization. But the reality is. The usage of AI as a search tool to get answers is growing tremendously.
In fact, for the first time in over a decade, Google's market share dipped below 90%, which basically tells you that that's still a tremendous market share. But it tells you that there's slowly this shift. And interestingly enough, a recent survey found out that 71 % of Americans have used AI tools for search and 14 % of them use them daily. In fact, now, you know, if you think about Google, Google has embedded AI generated summaries inside of their searches. So 18 % of all Google searches now contain some sort of an AI generated summary. And what's interesting about that, if you pair that stat, with another stat from Google that says their search impressions are up 49 % year over year, but their click through rates are down 30%, which tells us that the AI overviews and the summarizations are essentially siphoning away clicks from any of your prior efforts at SEO. And so we really want to start thinking about within your website strategy, you know, exactly what we can do to surface in some of those searches.
So let's talk a little bit about some foundational ideas that you're going to want to think through as you, as you think about, Hey, I want to be one of the advisors that shows up in some of these searches that are, that are being done. So the first is to really focus on user intent. know, lot of, you know, the old traditional stodgy SEO strategy focused on kind of just stuffing keywords in there. Well, that's got to change a little bit. Your content should answer the why, the how, and the what if angles that consumers are thinking when they're asking, you know, for that search or they're bringing that search to the table. So you want to think through and not just try to match search phrases, which was kind of an SEO strategy. Think through some of the psychology of why is somebody asking this question and start to answer it from a human element. Another thing to be thinking about within your website strategies or thinking about, you know, playing to these AI search engines is to make sure that you have depth and breadth within your website. That's going to be much better than just having shallow coverage, the more comprehensive and well-rounded that your content is, the much better chance that AI is going to be able to pick it up or have a desire to pick it up. You want to address kind of some sub questions or give some examples. you know, try to go, you know, double click on certain questions. A lot of times you might answer or ask a question or use a question as a part of your strategy. I want you to to click in even further, bring some sub questions up that a consumer might not be thinking about when they first type a question in, but there's some of those follow-up questions that have to go along with it. I'll give you one really quick example. If a consumer types in, at what age should I take social security? Well, you can go through that and provide the answer to that to the best of your ability in your content. But I would encourage you to bring some of the sub questions that come up with that inside of your answer to it. you know, questions that you might also need to be thinking about. If you ask that particular question, things like, you know, how does health fact in longevity factor into my social security decision? How do my other assets factor into the social security decision? So all the questions that as a good financial advisor, you're asking in a meeting and kind of trying to pry them or prod them along a little bit further. Work that into your content strategy within your website. You've obviously got to structure it clearly. So we'll talk a little bit about that in moment.
You can't ignore some of the foundational SEO elements. know, traditional SEO things are still going to impact your AI presence. But you'll want to just you know, make sure that you're thinking slightly different around the content and focusing a little bit more on a natural conversation. A big one right now, and this is one that I would stress to you, is earning some of the external trust in citations. So if other credible sources see you as an authority, whether they're citing your website or They're quoting you in an article. That is only going to enhance your efforts to get on, to be captured inside of some of these AI searches. So if you've gotten some of that exposure, you'll want to bring that into your website in some way, shape or form. That's just a good practice anyways to establish credibility with prospective clients, but It also becomes even more important when we're thinking about answer engine optimization. And the other big thing is staying up to date and maintaining fresh content. if you're not updating your site, at least somewhat regularly, maybe whether it's once or twice a month, you're adding some new fresh content that speaks to recent things or relevant information that is, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be daily timely, but something that has happened recently, if you can pull in some relevance there.
So some action steps that you could consider taking the easiest one that I think everybody should be thinking about is adding some, frequently asked questions or a Q&A section within your website as a standalone page. But you can also do that in all of your blog content. So, you know, if you're writing an article, summarize it at the bottom or, you know, add some questions that can maybe would be relevant to the context of that particular blog article, you know, three, four, five, six questions, add that sort of thing because AI is really looking for simple, easy, digestible questions that you go into with, with some answers. So think about that. You have to write in a concise manner. you have to do it in a natural tone. Avoid using, some of the really stuffy AI content that, you know, really feels a little bit spammy or it's, it's a weak AI generated content. You really need to put some of your own language and verbiage in there to make it feel really natural.
One other important thing that I would encourage you to look at doing, and you could do this on, you know, most of your pages on your website, which would be to write some really concise answer summaries of what is on that page at the top of your content page. So, you know, maybe you've got a blog that you're going to go into some detail on any particular topic. Give it a paragraph in very simple, concise language, a paragraph summary at the top to let the search engine know and the AI engine know. Here's the quick summary of what's on this page so that as it's scanning and doing its thing out there, it's going to know, okay, I got to continue to look for this as a potential source to serve up as a result of a search. I'd encourage you to target some low volume niche questions. The idea of that you are going to be served up for a question like, "how do I roll over 401k?" is very small. But "how do I roll over a 401k from XYZ company?" All of a sudden that becomes a little bit more niche-y and you can get into a level of detail within that answer that is different and way more in depth than the generic how do I roll over a 401k. Obviously you can have some of the general content but as you go through that answer you'll want to get a little bit more specific within that niche piece there. and certainly leveraging the third party mentions is, is a no brainer. So that's an action step. If you're not doing, the third party mentions, or you don't have any of those, or you're looking for a PR strategy, there's been a couple of episodes that I've recorded here on the playbook that I'd encourage you to go back and check out. I share a few ideas where how to get PR and how to get some of that credibility established that you can then take over and bring into your website. That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Good luck out there and get writing for the AI bots.
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The Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook is a podcast/video series for high-performing financial planning professionals that are committed to improving their craft, helping their clients, and growing their business. Hosted by Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial, this series contains a wide variety of content – from quick win ideas to long-form interviews, each episode provides actionable marketing ideas and insights that can be implemented easily into your practice. From digital marketing to traditional direct-response marketing, each episode delivers straight-forward and engaging content that any financial professional can use to improve their bottom line and grow their practice.
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