Long gone are those SEO keyword research days.

Tbh, it was pretty fucked up. Boringgggggggg!

I asked my friend, Daniele Manca, if AEO was an upgraded version of SEO. I thought then maybe we need an upgraded version of keyword research too (for tapping AEO).

Daniele said,

Traditional SEO got us ranked. AEO gets us quoted.

Not relevant. Just attached this image bcz it looks good to me.

Which is very true, I mean previously we saw 10 links where we were supposed to find answers ourselves. Whereas now the LLMs do all the digging & synthesize all the data into one answer.

That's why, you'll have to do things differently.

Most people pick keywords & target prompts by guessing. Then they wonder why nobody — human or AI — ever finds them.

Here's the system I designed & actually use. It takes an afternoon and it pays you back for months. Here's the step-by-step process:

Dump your seeds. List every keyword your reader might type (take Claude's help). Run them through Semrush or Ahrefs.
Sort by difficulty (KD). Split the list into three buckets:
- Quick Wins (KD 0–40): easy to rank. Good content can land in days.
- A/B Tests (KD 40–70): need a bit more — internal links, better structure.
- Long Game (KD 70+): hard. These need real authority. Play the long game.
Note: In a single piece of content, you can target keywords from each bucket (only if they're related).
Surf Google (manually). Google each keyword. See what's ranking. Informational intent → write a blog. Commercial intent → build a landing page. Don't trust a tool for this. Look yourself. Copy the links somewhere.
Mine the questions. Drop your keyword into AnswerThePublic. Every question it spits out is a prompt real people (and AI) are asking.
Group the prompts. Use Claude to cluster the closest ones. Those become your secondary & semantic keywords. Note: you'll have to write around those prompts, answering each of those questions somewhere. Ideally having those prompts in H2s & H3s.
Write. Answer those questions around your main keyword. Clearly. That's what gets pulled into an AI answer.

Daniele also recommends having structured content, clear direct answers near the top of your pages, and schema markups should keep you at a better spot than most of the competitors.

That's it. A list built to be found, content crawled, and website — Cited.

Check out Daniele's Substack.

Thanks for reading!

~ Somy

PS: Do steps 1 and 2 this week. Reply with your #1 Quick Win keyword and I'll tell you if it's worth writing.

another ps: When I say "you'll have to write," I mean "Your Claude!"

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