The language
What each term is trying to describe.
The boundaries are not standards, and different agencies use the terms differently. These working definitions are useful because they separate the emphasis without pretending the work is unrelated.
| Label | Primary emphasis | Typical work |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Visibility in organic search and a useful experience after the click | Crawlability, information architecture, intent-led pages, internal links, authority, local signals and measurement |
| AEO | Making a useful answer easy to extract and understand | Direct explanations, definitions, comparisons, steps, FAQs where genuinely needed and attributable evidence |
| GEO | Making a brand or source understandable in generative discovery | Distinct expertise, consistent entity information, current facts, citations, reputation and content that adds more than a generic summary |
Google's current position
Google describes AEO and GEO as terms used for AI-search work, but says optimising for its generative search experience is still SEO. It does not require special AI markup or an llms.txt file for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
A practical brief
Turn a real customer question into source-worthy content.
Use this brief before commissioning a page, guide or comparison. If the team cannot fill the evidence fields, the topic may not be ready to publish.
Working checklist
- Decision: What is the reader actually trying to decide or do?
- Direct answer: Can the page give a qualified answer near the top without a long preamble?
- First-hand value: What does this business know from its process, product or customer conversations?
- Boundaries: When is the advice wrong, incomplete or dependent on context?
- Evidence: Which primary sources, data or named experts support time-sensitive claims?
- Structure: Would headings, steps, a table or definitions make the answer easier to use?
- Entity detail: Is the author, organisation, date and subject explicit and consistent?
- Next action: What useful step should a satisfied reader take?
- Maintenance owner: Who will review the page and what event should trigger an update?
Technical reality
Use structured data as a description, not a shortcut.
Schema can clarify eligible page information, but it should match what a person can see. It does not create expertise, force an AI citation or guarantee an enhanced search result.
Choose the correct type
Use Article for a genuine article, Service for a service and Organization for the business. Do not label promotional copy as independent review content.
Match visible facts
Names, dates, ratings, prices and availability in markup must agree with the page. Remove properties the business cannot support.
Validate and monitor
Test the markup, monitor Search Console and fix errors, but do not confuse technical validity with ranking or citation eligibility.
Keep the canonical page strong
Avoid publishing near-identical pages for every phrasing an AI system might query. One complete resource is usually more useful than a cluster of shallow variants.
Measurement
Track visibility without pretending attribution is perfect.
AI discovery is evolving and reporting differs by platform. Build a baseline that can survive incomplete referrer data and changing interfaces.
| Layer | Useful signals | What it cannot prove alone |
|---|---|---|
| Search performance | Queries, pages, impressions, clicks, positions and AI-feature reporting where available | That a visit became a good customer |
| On-site behaviour | Landing page, engaged sessions, form starts, calls and key journeys | Which unseen answer or assistant influenced the person |
| Lead records | Source question, service need, fit, sales outcome and revenue | Perfect multi-touch attribution |
| Citation checks | A documented sample of important prompts and referenced sources | Stable rankings across every user, model or time |
No guaranteed citations
Even technically eligible, well-written pages may not be crawled, indexed, ranked or selected as a supporting source. Treat inclusion as an outcome to measure, not a deliverable anyone controls.
Where to start
A sensible order of work for a small business.
Start with the pages closest to a customer decision, then build deeper evidence around the questions sales and delivery teams hear repeatedly.
Working checklist
- Fix indexing, duplicate URLs, broken internal links and mobile usability.
- Clarify the homepage and one strong page for each genuinely different service.
- Align Business Profile and organisation information with the website.
- Add a named author and first-hand detail to important decision content.
- Answer comparison, cost, process, risk and suitability questions with clear boundaries.
- Add primary sources for claims that can change.
- Connect conversions to enquiry quality, not only traffic.
- Review what is earning impressions and expand only where the business has something useful to add.