The one-line version
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the old game: rank your pages high in a list of blue links so a human clicks through. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are the new one: get your business named, and your page cited, inside the answer an AI writes — so there’s no list to scroll and no click required for you to be the recommendation. The terms AEO and GEO are used almost interchangeably; the difference that matters is the one between all three and plain SEO.
| SEO | AEO / GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in a list of links | Be named and cited in the answer |
| The result | A position (#3 of 10) | A mention in a paragraph |
| Who “sees” it | A human scrolling results | An engine composing an answer |
| What wins | Authority, keywords, links | Retrieval + a quotable, extractable answer |
| Measured by | Rank position | Citation rate across repeated runs, per engine |
Why the old playbook only gets you halfway
Traditional SEO still helps: a well-ranked page is more likely to be retrieved by an engine that searches the web. But retrieval is only half the job. We’ve repeatedly watched an engine pull a business’s page as a source and then never name the business, because the page had nothing quotable to lift. Being retrieved is not being quoted. That’s the gap AEO fills — a standalone answer, near the top of the section, that survives being extracted whole.
What actually earns an AI citation
Four levers, roughly in order of how often we see them decide an answer:
- Concrete facts on the page. Real prices, timelines, and process steps. The business that publishes numbers wins the “how much does it cost” questions.
- Answer-first structure. The question as a heading, the direct answer in the first lines, evidence below. Structure alone measurably raises citation rates.
- The right off-site sources. Directories, review profiles, and your Google Business Profile — because that’s where several engines build their shortlists.
- Freshness that’s real. Genuinely updated content, dated honestly. AI-cited content skews newer than what ranks organically; re-dating unchanged pages backfires.
So which one do you need?
All of it, in the right order — but pointed at the engines, not just Google’s blue links, and measured the way the engines actually behave. The tactics aren’t exotic. The hard part is knowing which lever moves which engine for your business, which is a measurement question before it’s a content question. Start with the full playbook.