SEO vs AEO vs GEO: the difference, and what to do about each

Short answer: SEO (search engine optimisation) is making pages rank in search results. AEO (answer engine optimisation) is making your content the direct answer shown in featured snippets, voice assistants and AI answers. GEO (generative engine optimisation) is making AI systems cite or mention you when they generate a response. The work overlaps heavily: clear, accurate, well-structured pages on a technically sound site help with all three.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation is the older and broader practice. It covers three areas:

• Technical: pages that can be crawled and indexed, fast, mobile-friendly, secure, with sensible URLs and a sitemap.
• Content: pages that match what people search for and answer it better than the alternatives.
• Authority: links and mentions from other trustworthy sites.

What is AEO?

Answer engine optimisation focuses on being the answer to a question. That includes featured snippets and "People also ask" boxes in Google, voice assistants, and AI answer panels. The tactics are practical:

• Use the question as a heading and answer it in the first one or two sentences below it.
• Follow with detail, steps or a table.
• Keep answers factual and self-contained, so they still make sense when quoted without the rest of the page.
• Use lists for steps and tables for comparisons.

What is GEO?

Generative engine optimisation is about how large language model products such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI features pick sources and mention brands. Their behaviour is not fully documented, and it changes. What is reasonably clear is that they rely on pages they can retrieve and understand, and on what other sources say about you. Practical steps:

• Be crawlable by their bots, and decide on purpose whether you allow them in robots.txt.
• Publish original, specific information others cannot copy easily: your own data, tests, case studies and clear explanations.
• State who you are, what you do and where, plainly and consistently across your site and profiles.
• Earn mentions on reputable third-party sites, forums and directories.
• Keep facts current, with dates.

How do they compare?

• Goal: SEO, rank and get clicks. AEO, be the answer. GEO, be cited in generated text.
• Surface: SEO, the list of results. AEO, snippets and answer boxes. GEO, chat answers and AI summaries.
• Success measure: SEO, rankings and organic traffic. AEO, snippet ownership and impressions. GEO, citations, brand mentions and referral visits from AI products.
• Overlap: high. The same page can do all three.

Does structured data help?

Structured data (schema.org markup in JSON-LD) describes what a page is: an article, a product, an organisation, a person. It helps search engines understand your content and can enable rich results where Google supports them. Google reduced the FAQ rich result to a small set of sites in 2023, so do not add FAQ markup expecting a visual boost. Accurate markup is still harmless and useful for clarity. Never mark up content that is not visible on the page.

What should you do first?

• Make sure your pages are indexable and fast. Check Search Console for errors.
• Pick the real questions your customers ask and write one good page for each. Answer in the first lines.
• Add specifics only you have: prices, process, examples, photographs, numbers you measured.
• Name the author and the business. Link to profiles.
• Keep a sitemap and, if you wish, an llms.txt file that summarises your site. Note that no major search engine has promised to use it, so treat it as a courtesy and not a ranking factor.
• Get listed where your customers look: Google Business Profile, relevant directories, industry sites.
• Update pages when facts change.

What does not work?

• Mass-produced pages with thin or copied text. Search engines work to demote it.
• Keyword stuffing.
• Buying links.
• Promising rankings or citations. Nobody can guarantee them.

A deeper look at the AI side is in how to get cited by AI assistants.