Is AEO the new SEO?

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Until a few days ago I had never heard of AEO and still have doubts that it really does exist.

I was approached by a company that offered AI Engine Optimisation!

Apparently, AI is also a search engine and your website needs to be tuned to get the best results, like SEO.

I had assumed that AI was getting data from traditional search engines, but it had me wondering if this is a real thing or just vapour.......?

Have I got it all wrong?

 

[Kay Mankoo]

Hi Paul,

SEO is optimising your website or content to get ranked on search engines, usually by optimising keywords, content and related themes etc.

GEO is how your website or content is used or cited inside AI-generated answers. You're not just ranking pages, you're training the model what to say.

AIO is how AI systems represent, recommend and explain who you are - everywhere. Essentially, AIO is getting AI to believe your product or brand, and explaining it.

You can look at them in this way:

SEO - "How do I rank?"
GEO - "How do I get quoted?"
AIO - "How do I shape what AI believes?"

Hope this helps.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Thanks for that explanation.

So, how do you 'do' GEO and AIO?

 

[Kay Mankoo]

This is the not so easy bit..

But you can look at this way:

Core signals for SEO

• Keywords and on-page content
• Backlinks
• Technical performance (Speed, mobile, schema)
• User engagement

Core signals for GEO

• Clear structured explanations
• Factual consistency across the web
• Clarity about who and what you are
• Quotable content

Core signals for AIO

• Machine-readable clarity
• Strong brand presence
• Trust, authority and consistency
• Content that answers why and how, not just the what

We recently managed to get a dental practice mentioned on some AI language models for their local area. We didn't do anything drastic, but we did make their website a reference for everything dentist and dental treatment related.

- regular social posts
- genuine google reviews (they get at least 6 to 8 a month)
- FAQs added to certain service pages (answering real questions)
- Brand FAQ introduced
- consistently posting fresh content via their blog (again answering questions)

We're using Ubersuggest to track and monitor AI mentions for all of our clients, one thing we noticed was that any website with a lack of SEO, had no mentions on AI at all, whereas the websites that were heavily optimised, did come up, but not on all LLM's. (Something we're working on).

One of the key things to do for any website is to ensure it's been added to Bing Webmaster Tools. This one used to get ignored alot, and even now, nobody really bothers with it, but this will help to get the technical side of things done, especially for ChatGPT.

 

[YasmeenLondon]

SEO is showing your links in google search results, AEO is being cited in AI replies, both very important, having a website that's correctly optimised for SEO is a great start but it isn't everything.

When people search on google, they're brief, they use as little words as possible the search phrases do not follow natural/conversational flow, so the focus is on keywords, search intent, relevant keywords and you optimise your website's content based on that.

But with AI, it's different, people are not brief, they interact with the AI agent using conversational, natural language and this is what you target.

Also how the content is structured is very important, SEO relies on headings (h1, h2, h3) to understand priority, meta tags, alt text etc, while AEO relies on a Q&A format, the question is the heading and the answer should be in the first sentence.

I can go on and on but essentially yes they are different, their difference is easily understandable once you reflect on how you interact with google vs how you interact with chatgpt for example.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

ensure it's been added to Bing Webmaster Tools

I am surprised how many people miss this totally. Not the force it once was, but still a lot of eyes on content/searches!

 

[Kay Mankoo]

I am surprised how many people miss this totally. Not the force it once was, but still a lot of eyes on content/searches!

100%!

 

[antropy]

Core signals for SEO

• Keywords and on-page content
• Backlinks
• Technical performance (Speed, mobile, schema)
• User engagement

Core signals for GEO

• Clear structured explanations
• Factual consistency across the web
• Clarity about who and what you are
• Quotable content

Core signals for AIO

• Machine-readable clarity
• Strong brand presence
• Trust, authority and consistency
• Content that answers why and how, not just the what

So basically just writing good content for humans, the same as it's always been.

Paul.

 

[Kay Mankoo]

So basically just writing good content for humans, the same as it's always been.

Paul.

Exactly.

 

[fisicx]

And AEO uses structured content a lot more. Which means getting your schema properly formatted for each page.

 

[Kay Mankoo]

And AEO uses structured content a lot more. Which means getting your schema properly formatted for each page.

Yes, even more so now. So having the correct product schema, review schema, and FAQ schema even more prominent across all pages that need it.

Generic FAQ's don't cut it anymore, AI is looking for more specific questions and answers, and even more transparency around pricing, turnaround times, what's included, what isn't etc.

 

[Ozzy]

Sounds very much like this topic I raised just over a year ago.

AI Optimisation (AIO)

Not sure if I've just invented a term or acronym, but I've been doing some work over the Christmas break on AI optimisation. Although we are a long way off people turning to AI first, my opinion is we're in the 'early adopter' phase, expecting the trend will continue as more generations come up...

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

@Ozzy, so you created this new craze?

What have your learned or are there any pointers you can let us have?

 

[Ozzy]

What have your learned or are there any pointers you can let us have?

The short answer is that it is all based on structured data, which has always been important when doing SEO for Google and the likes. AI follows those same rules.

Also don't block AI bots if you want your service to show up in the AI output, which more and more people are using. Also, write pages and pages of content on your site. Lots of 'how to' stuff based on how you work, how you do your stuff, how people can use your product to answer.

It really is very much the same you would do for typical SEO, aimed at answering the question your customers will be asking. The only difference is that on Google people ask short hand, so you are looking to appear for shorthand brief statements. With AI you are looking to be the answer to a conversation.

An example for our service is;

Google = 'company formation software'
AI = 'How can I setup a company formation website just like abc.com and def.com?'

Same product and answer underneath, but the route (question) is different. So for us we need to answr both of these terms.

 

[Data Swami]

One thing i have found for AEO/SEO is that if you are answering the questions people are asking it starts getting scored better in LLMs and the Search engine optimisation.

Mind you there is a bit of a kerfuffle around Google AI summaries at the moment and how their reference who actually gave the answer.

Also checkout indexnowplease github for a solution that can help keep your site uptodate on search console and bing so you dont have to manually reindex stuff all the time