Search engine optimization (SEO) improves your site's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) to attract more organic (unpaid) traffic.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) does the same for AI assistants like ChatGPT and AI-generated results like Google's AI Overviews, which answer questions directly and link visitors into your content.
Both pull from the same place: the information you configure in the Circuit CMS.
Why optimize your virtual tour?
Optimizing your tour improves its visibility wherever people are searching - traditional search engines, AI assistants, and AI-powered search results - helping you gain new organic discoveries. It also supports clean previews of your Circuit Scenes and Tours on social media and across campaigns.
Optimizing your virtual tour won't interfere with SEO for your website, as your virtual tour is a subdomain of your institution's website.
How your tour appears in search results
A SERP pulls both the Title Tag and Search or Meta Description from your Circuit CMS. These are short pieces of information that summarize a webpage's content.
The Title Tag appears as the main headline in search results
The Search or Meta Description is the brief description below it
A Tour’s Search Description is the one shown in the Tour Card on your Tour Homepage.
How your tour appears in AI answers
Your Circuit virtual tour is fully crawlable, and AI assistants read the same Title Tags and Search Descriptions as search engines. There's no separate setup - well-written metadata now works twice as hard.
ChatGPT Results
Asking ChatGPT a question about touring Wentworth Institute of Technology will provide a result that links directly to WIT's Circuit virtual tour and pulls the tour's title and description into its answer.
Google AI Overview (embedded in search results)
Searching "Zimpleman College of Business tour" in Google provides an AI Overview panel that cites the matching tour from Drake University's Zimpleman College, with a description, features (360-degree panoramas and interactive audio guide), and a link directly into the tour.
Below it, standard search results show the tour's Title Tags and Search Descriptions indexing exactly as configured in the CMS.
How to optimize your tour content in the CMS
Navigate to the Scene, Tour, or Tour Group.
Select the Promote tab to open up the Promote configuration settings.
Fill in the Title Tag and Search or Meta Description with your optimized name and description. Remember, for your tour’s Search Description, this will pull into the homepage tile card.
Save draft or Publish your new Title Tag and Search Description
SEO and AEO best practices
A few tips that help in both contexts:
Be specific and descriptive. "Teichmann College of Computer Science at Explorer College | Virtual Tour" gives search engines and AI assistants far more to work with than "Computer Science Virtual Tour."
Write descriptions in plain, complete sentences. AI answers quote and paraphrase your descriptions - write them the way you'd want them read aloud.
Optimize every Scene and Tour, not just the homepage. Search results and AI answers frequently link deep into specific tours and scenes, so every page is a potential front door.