Answer engine optimization for ACA and health agencies
ACA and Health Insurance AEO Agency: Get Cited During Open Enrollment
Open Enrollment shoppers ask ChatGPT which plan and which agent before they ever open Google. HealthCare.gov takes the first sentence of the answer. We build the pages, data and tools that earn your agency the second one, in your county, with subsidy figures that are right for the plan year.
From $247/month, published pricing below
A health insurance AEO agency makes your website one of the sources an AI engine names when someone in your market asks about ACA coverage, subsidies, enrollment periods or a specific carrier. That takes county-level answer pages, plan-year-correct subsidy data, structured data the engines parse, open AI crawler access, and HIPAA-safe tracking on every quote form. Strategic AI Architects does all of it, and its founder, Mike Moore, grew his own ACA book past $1 million a year in production before building it.
AEO, GEO (generative engine optimization) and AI SEO describe the same work. We say AEO because the shopper asked a question, and the question is what you have to win.
What the engines say today when someone asks about ACA coverage
We probe ChatGPT and Perplexity every week with the questions real health insurance shoppers ask in two Florida markets, Broward County and Orange County, and record every domain the answers cite. This is who got named between August 22 and October 1, 2026.
HealthCare.gov, 33 citations in Broward and 25 in Orange County. It owns the rules, the dates and the application. The slot beside it is the one an agency can win.
A Florida carrier's own site, 25 citations in Orange County, and a plan finder, 23. When the shopper names a carrier, the carrier gets the citation unless a local page compares it.
LinkedIn profiles, 21 citations in Broward, and Better Business Bureau listings, 20. The engines reach for a person when no agency page answers. A LinkedIn profile is not a conversion path.
A handful of Broward agencies appeared with 11 to 18 citations each. Every one of them had a page that answered a county-specific question. Agencies without a county-level answer page: zero citations in our set.
Source: Strategic AI Architects AI Visibility tracker, ACA and health insurance question sets for Broward County and Orange County FL, probed in ChatGPT and Perplexity, August 22 to October 1, 2026.
Why ACA is its own problem
The answer has to be subsidy-correct, state-aware and dated
CMS counted 23.0 million Marketplace plan selections for 2026, 15.8 million of them through HealthCare.gov across 30 states and 7.2 million through state-based marketplaces. Three things make health insurance different from every other line an AEO agency might work in.
Subsidy math changes every plan year and most pages do not
A subsidy is calculated from the benchmark plan, the second-lowest-cost silver plan in the shopper's rating area (the geographic zone insurers price by), plus household size and income, and all three move every year. KFF's tracking of 2026 Marketplace activity found the average monthly premium payment for subsidized enrollees rose 58 percent, from $113 to $178. A page or calculator still quoting last year's benchmark is wrong, and in our tracking the source with the current figure is the one that gets cited. Our subsidy pages and calculators pull straight from the HealthCare.gov plan and rate files through our own data engine, so they roll over when the new plan-year files publish.
What goes wrong: why most agency subsidy calculators are wrong.Thirty states use HealthCare.gov. The rest do not.
A shopper in a state-based marketplace state gets a different answer, different dates and a different application than one on the federal platform, and the engines know it. A page that says "go to HealthCare.gov" to a resident of a state that runs its own exchange is wrong. We build state-aware answer pages, and we do not inject federal plan data into a state that does not publish it.
Example: Texas ACA premiums rise 14 to 31 percent for 2027, state-specific and sourced.Enrollment is a calendar, and SEPs run all year
Open Enrollment is the peak, but a FEMA disaster declaration, a lost job, a move or a birth opens a Special Enrollment Period (SEP, a window to enroll outside Open Enrollment) any week of the year, and each one is a question a shopper asks an AI the day it happens. Dated answer pages for each SEP trigger are how an agency gets named in March, not just November.
Example: the disaster SEP most agents never check for.What we build
The ACA and health insurance AEO build, component by component
This is the same stack we run on our own insurance sites. Every component is checked by the free audit before and after.
County answer pages for the questions shoppers actually ask
"How do I sign up for Obamacare in Broward County," "ACA subsidy help in Kissimmee," "health insurance for self-employed in Tamarac." One question per page, the answer in the first two sentences, carriers and figures for that county, a named and dated source for every number.
Four pieces of structured data an engine can verify
Four pieces of structured data on every page. Article or Service schema with organization-level authorship (who published this). FAQPage schema for every question block (what questions it answers). Dataset schema, a machine-readable label naming the CMS or HealthCare.gov dataset a figure came from with its exact URL (where the number is from). And llms.txt plus WebMCP, covered below (how a machine reads and uses the site).
Open the door to AI crawlers, then tell them where to look
We check robots.txt and the firewall for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and Bingbot, fix the managed rules that block them silently, and publish an llms.txt, a plain-text index at your site's root that tells AI crawlers which pages answer which questions. A blocked crawler zeroes out everything else, which is why the free audit checks it first.
Which AI crawlers to allow · What llms.txt isWebMCP: a subsidy estimator an AI agent can call
WebMCP is a published list of tools on your site that an AI agent can run, not just read: a manifest at /.well-known/mcp.json and an /mcp endpoint that expose your subsidy estimator and quote request as callable functions. We run this in production on our own sites, including this one. We have not yet found another insurance agency site that exposes one; if you know of one, we would like to see it.
What WebMCP isPlan-year freshness, straight from the HealthCare.gov files
Plan counts, carriers, benchmark premiums and rating areas for your counties come from the HealthCare.gov plan and rate files and update when CMS publishes. Your 2027 figures appear when the 2027 files drop.
HIPAA-safe tracking on every quote form
Health quote forms collect health-adjacent data, and HHS's online tracking guidance, the FTC's health data enforcement and state laws such as Washington's My Health My Data Act all reach it. Meta and Google tracking are wired server-side and consent-gated, so you can measure what AI traffic does without a pixel firing on a quote form. Our audit scans any site for pre-consent tracker firing.
Consent banners and pixels on health sitesBilingual answer pages
Spanish-language shoppers get Spanish-language sources, and in most counties no local agency has one. Same schema, same sources, each language, listed in llms.txt.
Spanish content and AI citationsThe speed floor and the monthly report
Our 1,080-site study found a median mobile PageSpeed of 61 across insurance agency sites. Our builds measure 99 to 100. And every month you get the citation report: which questions name you, which engines, which domains got cited instead.
The 1,080-site studyHealth insurance AEO vs health insurance SEO
Most vendors sell one and call it the other. Here is what each actually does.
| What matters | Health insurance SEO | Health insurance AEO |
|---|---|---|
| What you compete for | A position among ten blue links | The sentence after HealthCare.gov in the AI answer, plus the citation |
| Unit of content | A keyword-targeted page | A county question answered completely in the first two sentences |
| Subsidy figures | Whatever was true when the page was written | Current plan year, from the HealthCare.gov files, dated on the page |
| Structured data | Optional, often skipped | Required: Article or Service, FAQPage, Dataset, organization authorship |
| Crawler access | Googlebot only | GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Bingbot |
| Tracking | Pixel on every page | Server-side, consent-gated, nothing fires on a quote form |
| Machine access | None | llms.txt and a callable WebMCP subsidy estimator |
| How you measure it | Rank tracking | Citation tracking across engines, Search Console AI Overview data, Bing conversational queries |
The foundation is shared: fast pages, clean HTML, real content. SEO still matters, and our builds rank. AEO is what makes the same page citable.
Pricing
Every tier includes the health insurance AEO build. Here is what each adds.
Month to month, cancel any month by email, no cancellation fee, 14-day free trial, and the $997 setup fee is currently waived. The pages, schema, crawler access, llms.txt, WebMCP and freshness described above are in every tier. Pro and Scale add the weekly content that compounds it.
Website
The AI-ready health insurance website on its own. Or $840 a year billed annually.
- ✓ Complete, compliant site with every ACA and health educational and offer page
- ✓ Full schema set, llms.txt, AI crawler access
- ✓ 10 county and city location pages, subsidy calculator, CRM webhook
- ✓ Website MCP, figures kept current from the CMS and HealthCare.gov files
- ✓ 14-day free trial, cancel anytime
Starter
The foundation. Upgrade to Pro anytime.
- ✓ Everything in Website
- ✓ Google Business Profile management and review harvesting
- ✓ AI chat widget
- ✓ Monthly AI citation report
- ✓ Setup free (limited), 14-day free trial
Pro
The complete done-for-you system.
- ✓ Everything in Starter
- ✓ 1 new ACA answer post and 1 new location page every week
- ✓ 24/7 AI receptionist that books enrollment appointments
- ✓ Setup free (limited), 14-day free trial
Scale
The same system, publishing more. One bill.
- ✓ Everything in Pro
- ✓ 1 new post every business day (20 to 22 a month)
- ✓ 2 new location pages every week
- ✓ Setup free (limited), 14-day free trial
Open Enrollment starts November 1. Book a 30-minute call with Mike and bring your current site. We will look at it together in the engines.
How the first 30 days go
Audit of your current site in all four engines, crawler access fixed, your counties, carriers and state platform confirmed. Site live.
County answer pages, subsidy calculator, full schema set and llms.txt published. Google Business Profile and reviews connected.
WebMCP subsidy estimator live. First weekly post and location page out (Pro and Scale). Trial ends, billing only if you want to continue.
First citation report: which questions name you, which do not yet, and what we build next because of it.
Your build is led by Mike Moore, founder of Strategic AI Architects. He got licensed in 2017 and grew his own ACA book past $1 million a year as a personal producer before building the technology agencies use to get found by Google, cited by AI and called by clients.
Questions ACA and health agencies ask about AEO
What is a health insurance AEO agency?
How do ACA agents get cited when HealthCare.gov takes the answer?
Does a subsidy calculator help a health insurance website get cited?
Is AI search traffic real during Open Enrollment?
What does health insurance AEO cost?
Can a health insurance site use Google Analytics and the Meta pixel legally?
Do Spanish-language ACA pages get cited by AI engines?
Talk it through
Book a call with Mike
Free 30 minutes. Bring your current site. We will ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI about ACA coverage in your county together and see who they name, then decide what to fix before Open Enrollment.
Open Enrollment questions are being answered in ChatGPT right now. Make sure the answer names you.
Every component on this page, running on your site, from $247 a month. Start with the free audit if you want to see where you stand first.
Sources on this page: CMS, "Marketplace 2026 Open Enrollment Period Report: National Snapshot" (23.0 million plan selections; 15.8 million HealthCare.gov across 30 states; 7.2 million state-based marketplaces). KFF, "What we know so far about 2026 ACA Marketplace enrollment, premiums and deductibles" (average subsidized premium payment up 58 percent, $113 to $178). Strategic AI Architects, "We Ran PageSpeed on 1,080 Insurance Agency Websites," August 2026. Strategic AI Architects AI Visibility tracker, window as stated. Related: the long-form Medicare and health AEO guide, Medicare AEO, all AI search services.