The Alphabet Soup Problem If you hang around marketers long enough, sooner or later someone starts throwing letters at you: SEO, AEO, GEO, AI SEO, LLMO, whatever the acronym of the month is. The risk is you either: This post strips it back. We are going to talk about: No hype, just a practical way […]
If you hang around marketers long enough, sooner or later someone starts throwing letters at you:
SEO, AEO, GEO, AI SEO, LLMO, whatever the acronym of the month is.
The risk is you either:
This post strips it back. We are going to talk about:
No hype, just a practical way to prioritize.
We will keep the definitions short and then move into how to use them.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the long running practice of helping search engines index and rank your pages. It focuses on technical health, content relevance, and authority signals like links and mentions. (Profound)
If Google cannot crawl your site or does not think your page is relevant for a keyword, SEO work tries to fix that.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about structuring content so answer engines can turn it into a direct response.
Guides from CXL and others describe AEO as the practice of optimizing your content so search platforms can directly provide answers to user questions instead of just listing links. (CXL)
SEO targets rankings.
AEO targets answer boxes, AI panels, voice replies, and chat responses.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the newest kid on the block.
Search Engine Land defines GEO as the process of optimizing your content for AI driven search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews so your brand appears inside generative results. (Search Engine Land)
Researchers who coined the term describe it as improving visibility in generative engine responses through tactics like AI specific metadata and llms.txt files. (Wikipedia)
Where AEO leans into short, answer oriented content, GEO is more about the full generative experience and how often you get cited or summarized in long form AI responses.
All three rest on the same base:
If your content is thin, outdated, or confusing, none of these acronyms will save you.
Thought leadership shops and revenue agencies are all saying the same thing: the brands that win in AI search are the ones that already take content and authority seriously. (CXL)
You cannot skip SEO basics and expect AEO or GEO to work.
SEO is the thing that:
Even in AI heavy search results, Google still needs a clean underlying index to draw from. Studies on AI Overviews show that pages cited in those panels usually already had decent SEO and authority. (Seer Interactive)
So if your site is a technical mess, start there.
Once the basics are in place, AEO steps in where users are clearly asking questions.
Think:
AEO focuses on:
Pathfinder SEO and others stress that clean HTML and question driven structure are what allow answer engines to interpret your content and use it in snippets or AI panels. (Backlinko)
If you want your content inside the answer, not just in the list, this is your playground.
GEO is about full generative responses, not just short snippets.
When a user asks ChatGPT or Gemini something like:
The model composes a multi paragraph response and weaves in sources.
GEO asks:
Industry explainers point out that GEO relies heavily on:
If AEO is about a crisp answer, GEO is about being the go-to explainer when the model needs to talk for a few paragraphs.
If your site is a bit of a wreck, start here:
If rankings are decent but traffic feels like it is leaking away, you are probably getting hit by AI Overviews and zero-click behavior. Studies show that queries which trigger AI summaries can have much lower click through rates, even if the underlying ranking stays intact. (Search Engine Land)
Here is what to do:
You are not throwing out your SEO work. You are adding an AEO conversion layer on top of it so you can compete for the answer box, not just the line item.
For PR and communications teams, the foundation is already in place:
AEO and GEO are about making sure AI systems can recognize and reuse that authority.
That means:
Firms that are starting to plug AEO and GEO into their PR retainers are using that combo to prove not just “we got you hits” but “you now show up in AI search when people ask about this topic.” (CXL)
Here is a simple way to bring it all together without spinning in circles.
None of this needs to be perfect out of the gate. The brands that win here are not the ones with the fanciest acronym deck. They are the ones who consistently ship useful content and adjust as AI behavior shifts.
Quick recap:
You probably need all three over time, but not all at once and not with equal intensity.
If you want help figuring out how this should look for your specific brand, start with the Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): The Playbook for B2B & PR-Driven Brands and our Answer Engine Optimization service page, then reach out.
We can look at your current footprint and tell you if this is worth pushing now or if you have to shore up other parts of your stack first.
