Someone looking for a particular skill might reach me after opening ten tabs or after a conversation with AI. I want my public presence to account for both paths.
Francesco found me by talking to QWEN
Francesco Giambuzzi, who later asked me to consult on RADA, told me he found me while discussing with QWEN who would be the most suitable professional in Brescia for consultancy on blockchain and on-chain supply-chain traceability. He was looking for someone to help address a concrete problem, and my name entered that conversation.
I am interested in how a need described to AI led him to contact me. Since then, when working on my public presence, I have asked whether someone encountering my name can understand why I might be able to help.
How I use SEO, GEO and AEO
SEO, Search Engine Optimization, helps me make a website findable in search engines. I use AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, to think about the quality of answers to specific questions. GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, extends that attention to how content might be used and attributed within a generated answer.
These perspectives overlap, and I now consider them indispensable when designing a public presence. I bring them alongside technical SEO because the content must also explain what I can contribute to someone deciding whether to contact me.
Where I start on a website
I begin by checking that public pages are accessible to the intended crawlers. I organise text with semantic HTML and internal links, making sure important information is available without depending on an image. Google’s AI features guidance confirms the relevance of SEO good practices, with no additional requirements or special schema for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Permissions require attention to each service. OpenAI’s crawler documentation distinguishes OAI-SearchBot, used for search, from GPTBot, related to potential training. Configuring one does not determine the choice for the other.
Describing the work precisely
When organising a case study, I think about someone trying to understand whether I have addressed a problem like theirs. The heading should help them find the relevant passage, where I put a short answer before the detail. My role should be clear without reconstructing it from a technology list.
For RADA, an idea by Francesco, my contribution with ASTRAL3D concerns field nodes, LoRa gateways and communication protocols, alongside part of the storage and React visualisation.
I support the account with material I can share, such as an authentic screenshot accompanied by an explanation of a decision. I make authorship clear and indicate whether work is ongoing, updating the page as it changes. Structured data must match the visible content too, so anyone drawing on a passage finds accurate information.
An approach adapted to each project
I adapt these checks to the project. A services website should make an enquiry easy, while a portfolio needs room to assess the cases. A private application keeps its data protected. The public account of the work respects that boundary.
Across Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, I check that the project retains the same meaning. A translation cannot make ongoing work sound complete. I use separate URLs and hreflang, following Google’s multilingual site guidance, and reread the main answers with the reader of each language in mind.
I want to understand how people reach me
Search data helps me see which pages people find. When someone contacts me, I also try to learn how they reached me, because their account can suggest what needs explaining better. An isolated mention does not prove a strategy, and no intervention guarantees rankings or AI recommendations.
Francesco’s experience made me take that route to discovery more seriously. I want someone arriving from a conversation to find work described precisely enough to decide whether to contact me.