The Code That Helps AI Understand Your Website

Let me guess...

Someone mentioned JSON-LD in a meeting and you nodded like you knew what it was.

Or you Googled it at 11pm, read the first paragraph, and closed the tab.

Both are valid. It sounds technical. It looks technical.

But the actual concept takes about three minutes to understand-- and once you do, you'll wonder why nobody explained it this way sooner.

First: what's actually happening in search right now

Search isn't what it was.

For years, SEO was the game. Keywords, backlinks, page authority. Get ranked. Get clicked. Simple enough.

Then AI changed the question.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini : these aren't search engines in the traditional sense.

They don't return a list of links and let you choose.

They synthesize.

They read across thousands of sources and generate an answer, citing the ones they trust most.

Which means the question is no longer just "can Google find me?"

It's "when an AI is asked about my industry, my topic, my expertise, does it know I exist? Does it trust me enough to say my name?"

That's Answer Engine Optimization. AEO. And JSON-LD is one of the most important tools in it.

Okay. What is JSON-LD.

JSON-LD is structured data. It's a small block of code that sits in the background of your website and tells search engines and AI crawlers - in plain, machine-readable language -- exactly what your content is.

Think of it as a name tag.

Without it, an AI crawler has to infer what your page is about.

It reads your words, guesses at your meaning, tries to figure out whether you're an expert or a passing mention. It's doing interpretive work.

With JSON-LD, you hand it a labeled filing cabinet. This is an article. This is the author. This is the topic. This is the date. These are the questions this content answers. No guessing required.

Pages with clean JSON-LD structured data earn 2.8x higher AI citation rates than pages without it.

That's not a small number. That's the difference between being cited or...

The types that matter most right now

Not all schema is equal. For AEO specifically, three types do the heaviest lifting:

FAQPage - the highest-leverage schema you can implement. AI answer engines are built around question-and-answer format. FAQPage schema maps directly to how they think. Pages with FAQ schema earn a 41% AI citation rate versus 15% without it.

Article - tells crawlers this is editorial content, who wrote it, when it was published, what it covers. Establishes authorship and authority.

Person / Organization - connects your content to a known entity. You're not just a page. You're someone. That matters more than most people realize.

Where most people stop. and where I don't

Here's where I'll be honest with you and also where I won't tell you everything.

Most people implement JSON-LD once, check the box, move on.

That's fine. It's better than nothing.

But it's the baseline.

As super-helpful too, I use Visibl to scan sites I am working on. It literally shows you where the all ghost routes are - every page where where AI crawlers should be finding you and aren't: broken pathways, missing schema, content that's invisible not because it's bad but because nothing is pointing to it. Most people don't know these gaps exist until someone shows them the map. It's genuinely good. It offers correct JSON-LD, does the structural work cleanly, validates correctly, gives you something solid to build on.

Then I add my own layer.

That layer is where the thinking lives. I'm looking at keywords -- not just what ranks, but what your ideal client actually types when they're in the moment of need. What questions are your audience asking an AI right now, and is your schema structured to answer them?

And I'm thinking about your ICP - your ideal customer profile -because the same content can be structured very differently depending on who you most need to reach.

The intersection of those three things is where the real visibility gets built.

Why good AEO is just good SEO plus some

One more thing before I let you go....

There's a version of this conversation where people act like SEO is dead and AEO killed it.

That's wrong.

Good AEO is good SEO. With additions.

The fundamentals haven't changed: quality content, clear structure, real authority, genuine expertise. AI crawlers reward the same things Google always rewarded - they just reward them more directly, with less room for tricks.

What AEO adds: Structured data. Entity clarity. Question-first content architecture.

A deliberate answer to "if someone asks an AI about this, what do I want it to say?"

SEO got you ranked. AEO gets you cited.

Both matter. One builds on the other.

The short version

JSON-LD is a name tag for machines. It tells AI crawlers who you are, what you know, and why they should trust you enough to say your name.

It's not scary, but It's not optional anymore either.

Start with FAQPage schema on your most important content.

Get your Article markup clean.

Make sure there's a Person or Organization entity tied to your site.

Then, if you want to go deeper, think about your keywords, your ICP, and what questions your audience is actually asking an AI at 11pm when they're trying to solve something.

That's where it gets interesting.

A quick aside. There is exactly one software I know of that can scan your entire site and show you where the ghost routes are the places in your JSON-LD where AI crawlers should be finding you and aren't. If you want to know more or want someone to actually look at your site, just reach out -- Happy to share. knowledge.

Jennifer Asbury-Hughes works at the intersection of visibility, strategy, and creative direction. She's based in Austin, TX · @inkandal