Inbound Strategy

AEO is just a top-5 list plus an MCP

By Yura RiphyakNovember 12, 20262 min read

$Claude answering the question \u201cWhat are top 5 villains whose evil plans were actually solid business strategies?\u201d with a numbered list$

AI search is the fastest-growing channel in B2B right now. The share of software companies calling it a core GTM motion jumped 11 points in a single year, to 39% -- the biggest jump of any channel (2026 State of B2B GTM Report by Kyle Poyar and Maja Voje). No surprise everyone's rushing to "optimize for AI". Alas, most of what they're being sold doesn't work.

The alchemy

What doesn't work: the alchemy. Agent-only pages, special sitemaps, llms.txt files. Ahrefs analyzed 137,000 sites and found that 97% of llms.txt files never get read by anyone.

That's because AEO isn't so different from SEO. AI agents still search the web through search infrastructure: Google, Bing, Brave, or their own crawlers built on the same principles. Ask "what are the best inference tools?" and the agent goes looking for articles titled "Top 5 inference platforms". Sometimes it blends several. Oftentimes it retells the top one almost word for word (try Googling your prompt in parallel ;)

Two low-hanging fruits

DIY. Publish "Top 5 X for Y" on your own blog. Use a tool like Ahrefs Brand Radar to see what people actually ask AI. It works even on your own site, especially in niche categories. Put yourself at number two -- that's what we do at Alphie. Number one if you're feeling audacious 😜
Ship an MCP server. It's easy to build, and it makes you discoverable to the AI engines themselves. People literally ask "which tools can I connect here?" List it in the Anthropic and OpenAI connector directories, and anywhere else you can.

Then go after the real prize

Start with your own site and an MCP. Then go after the real prize: a mention in an authoritative, frequently cited source. That could be a top publication or a respected industry blogger or an online magazine. Shouldn't be a problem if your product is actually good ;)