Search is evolving. We’ve moved past keywords to direct answers to AI-generated responses. People don’t want to browse endlessly for an answer to their questions anymore. They want instant responses. That shift in behavior paved the way for the rise of AEO and GEO. Think of them as SEO’s little sisters that borrow her clothes to go out partying. Same foundation, trendier approach. These two tactics are built on los resultados SEO’s ground rules, but finely tuned to today’s search habits. So, what is really the difference between SEO vs AEO vs GEO?
Understanding these 3 optimization methods will enhance your effort to boost your site’s visibility and discoverability. Let’s review the basics of each one and see how you can integrate them into your strategy.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the oldie but goldie series of techniques used to optimize your content to appear in the search engine result pages. SEO is the OG tactic that to this day sets the standards for ranking. A solid SEO strategy will be one of your website’s performance pilars, making it easier to discover and therefore, grow.
How does SEO work?
SEO can be divided into 3 areas of optimization that’ll improve your website’s performance on the search engine result pages (SERPs) rankings:
- On-Page SEO: A set of methods used to optimize the individual pages and content of your website for search engines.
- Off-Page SEO: Strategies implemented outside your website to boost its ranking in the SERPs such as getting links from websites with a high domain authority score.
- Technical SEO: The practice of improving your website’s technical aspects to help search engines crawl, index, and discover your site more effectively.
You can learn more about SEO in our last article “How to increase organic traffic with SEO”
What is AEO?
Hey Siri! What’s AEO? AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It is the practice of structuring your content so it can be displayed as direct answers in search engines rankings. That includes featured snippets, knowledge panels, FAQs, and voice assistants like Siri or Alexa.
How does AEO work?
AEO is about structuring your content so that search engines and voice assistants can easily extract it to deliver instant answers. With AEO, you’re not only competing to appear as the first link on a results page. You’re aiming to become the answer. The main goal is to position your content as the perfect match for featured snippets, answer boxes, or voice assistant responses, ensuring users get your content directly when they ask a question.
What is GEO?
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is an emerging approach where the main goal is to make your content more discoverable and usable by AI-powered search tools and large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. Unlike traditional search engines, LLMs don’t just rank pages where users have to browse through them for an answer. They generate responses by pulling content from trusted sources.
How does GEO work?
GEO is also about how you structure your content. Optimizing for GEO means writing clear, well-structured, credible content that can be easily understood, retrieved, and displayed in AI-generated answers. Content that demonstrates credibility, is written in a conversational tone, and is relevant to actual human searches is more likely to be featured in AI-generated responses.
Key difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO
The main difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO is where your content will appear when a user makes a search. See it like this:
- los resultados SEO is for optimizing your site to rank at the top of the search engine results pages when a user does a traditional search.
- AEO is for ensuring your content is featured in a zero-click answer such as a snippet or FAQ in the SERP or used as an answer by a voice search assistant.
- GEO is for making sure your content meets the highest quality standards so it can be referenced by LLMs in AI-generated responses, such as Google’s AI Overviews.
How to optimize your content for SEO, AEO, and GEO?
The key for maximum visibility and traffic these days is integrating all three of these methods into your website strategy. Here’s what you need to optimize for each of this practices:
Improving SEO performance
- Use relevant keywords
- Optimize your title tags, headings, URLs, meta descriptions, and alt texts.
- Obtain backlinks from high domain authority sites (and disavow any toxic backlinks)
- Improve site speed and make sure your content is mobile friendly.
- Keep your Core Web Vitals in check to delivering a great user experience
Making content AEO-friendly
- Structure content in Q&A format, bullet points, or numbered lists. Kind of like when you made notes in high school to understand things more easily!
- Use clear, straight-to-the-point, and factual answers to questions a normal person would ask.
- Include schema markup (structured data) to help search engines understand your content better. This is a type of code that will improve your chances of being featured as a rich result on the SERPs.
Getting ahead with GEO
- Follow E-E-A-T principles, a framework introduced by Google to evaluate a content’s credibility based on four factors: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
- Write in a conversational tone that matches the way LLMs would generate a response.
- Focus on topics relevant to search queries actual humans have and make sure the content is well-structured for AI to understand it.
Add SEO, AEO, and GEO into your life!
As search engines like Google continue pushing traditional search results further down the page by adding features such as answer boxes and AI Overviews and as users increasingly adopt AI tools like ChatGPT for information, relying on SEO alone may no longer be enough to generate organic traffic. To stay visible where people are actually looking, you need to expand your focus to include AEO and GEO.
AEO and GEO are growing trends that are taking the industry by storm, even though they are still built on SEO best practices. Combining these three techniques by ensuring you deliver high-quality, structured and human-friendly content will power up your online visibility. It wouldn’t hurt to run an audit of your website to check for improvements!
