Three Letters Used to Be Enough: SEO, AEO, and GEO Explained

SEO used to be simple. Rank higher, get more clicks. Now there is AEO and GEO to worry about, and if you are confused about what any of this means, you are not alone. Here is what these acronyms actually mean and why they all matter for getting found online.

The Search Landscape Has Fractured

For two decades, search optimization meant one thing: ranking on Google. You optimized for keywords, built backlinks, and watched your position in search results. Higher rankings meant more traffic. Simple.

That model is breaking down. By October 2025, McKinsey reported that 50% of consumers were using AI powered search as their primary way to find information and make buying decisions. Not as an experiment. As their default.

Google itself is changing. AI Overviews now appear for 13% of all queries and growing. When they do, organic click through rates drop by 61%. Zero click searches have risen from 56% to 69% of all queries. Gartner predicts organic search traffic will decline 25% by the end of 2026.

The old playbook still matters, but it is no longer enough. You now need to optimize for three different ways people find information: traditional search results, direct answers, and AI generated responses.

SEO: The Foundation

Search Engine Optimization is what you probably already know. It is the practice of improving your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. Keywords, backlinks, technical structure, page speed, user experience. The goal is driving clicks and website traffic from Google, Bing, and other traditional search engines.

SEO is not going away. Traditional search still drives the majority of organic traffic. Industry benchmarks show SEO delivers an 8x return on investment. For transactional queries where people are ready to buy, traditional search results remain dominant.

But SEO alone is increasingly insufficient. If your content only appears in traditional search results, you are invisible to the growing number of users who never scroll past the AI generated answer at the top of the page.

AEO: Becoming the Answer

Answer Engine Optimization focuses on getting your content selected as the direct answer to a query. Think featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, voice assistant responses, and Google's AI Overviews.

The difference between SEO and AEO is subtle but important. SEO optimizes for rankings. AEO optimizes for selection. You are not just trying to appear in results. You are trying to be the source that gets quoted when someone asks a question.

AEO targets featured snippets (the boxes that appear above regular search results with a direct answer), People Also Ask (expandable questions that pull answers from websites), voice search responses (what Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant read aloud), and AI Overviews (Google's AI generated summaries at the top of search results).

AEO favors different content formats. While SEO rewards comprehensive long form content, AEO favors short, scannable formats like FAQs, bullet points, and direct question and answer structures. The content needs to be easily extractable.

GEO: Getting Cited by AI

Generative Engine Optimization is the newest discipline. It focuses on getting your content cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google Gemini when they generate responses.

Researchers from Princeton University, IIT Delhi, Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute for AI introduced the concept in late 2023. Unlike traditional SEO, which aims to rank webpages in search results, GEO targets the AI systems that generate answers directly.

When someone asks ChatGPT a question, it generates an answer by synthesizing information from its training data and, increasingly, from real time web searches. If your content is authoritative on a topic, it might get cited. If it is not structured for AI consumption, it probably will not.

Research shows that certain content characteristics dramatically increase citation probability. Pages with original data tables earn 4.1x more AI citations. Pages with clear heading and bullet point structures are 40% more likely to be cited. Content updated within the last 30 days earns 3.2x more citations. Content with quotes shows 30 to 40% higher visibility in AI responses.

What Most People Get Wrong

In my experience, the biggest mistake is treating these as three separate strategies that compete for attention. They are not. They are layers that build on each other.

The relationship is simple: SEO helps you show up. AEO helps you stand out. GEO helps you get quoted.

Traditional SEO remains the foundation. It gets your content indexed, ranked, and discoverable. Without solid SEO fundamentals, the other strategies have nothing to build on.

AEO builds on SEO by structuring your content to be selected for featured snippets and direct answers. Good SEO gets you ranked. Good AEO gets you featured.

GEO extends both by ensuring your content can be understood, cited, and incorporated into AI generated responses. The same signals that help with AEO often help with GEO, but GEO requires additional attention to structured data, original research, and content freshness.

The other common mistake is abandoning SEO basics while chasing AI optimization. I have seen people so focused on llms.txt files and schema markup that they forget about page speed and mobile experience. Do not do that. Quality content, solid technical structure, and fast loading times still matter.

The Technical Requirements

Schema markup is increasingly mandatory. Research shows that proper Article and FAQ schema increases AI citations by 28%. Structured data helps AI systems understand what your content is, who created it, and how each element connects. Without it, you are harder to cite.

AI platforms use specialized crawlers to access content. ChatGPT uses GPTBot. Perplexity uses PerplexityBot. Claude uses ClaudeBot. If your robots.txt blocks these crawlers, you cannot be cited.

A newer standard called llms.txt provides a structured overview of your site specifically for AI consumption. Think of it like a sitemap optimized for language models rather than search crawlers. While no major AI provider has officially confirmed using llms.txt, tracking data shows that crawlers from Microsoft, OpenAI, and others are actively indexing these files.

What Actually Matters

Start with SEO fundamentals. Good SEO remains the foundation. Quality content, solid technical structure, fast loading times, and relevant backlinks still matter.

Structure content for extraction. Both AEO and GEO reward content that is easy to extract and cite. Use clear headings, bullet points, FAQ formats, and direct answers to common questions. If an AI cannot easily pull a useful snippet from your content, it will pull from somewhere else.

Include original data. Original research, statistics, and data dramatically increase your chances of being cited. If you have unique data, surface it prominently. Tables, charts, and specific numbers perform better than general claims.

Keep content fresh. Content freshness matters more than ever. Pages updated within 30 days earn significantly more AI citations. Build update schedules into your content strategy rather than treating articles as done after publication.

Implement structured data. Schema markup is no longer optional. FAQ schema, Article schema, and other structured data types help both traditional search and AI systems understand and cite your content.

Allow AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt. If you are blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot, you are invisible to the AI systems that could be citing you.

The Reality

Search has fragmented. Users now find information through traditional search results, featured snippets, voice assistants, and AI generated responses. Optimizing for just one channel means missing the others.

SEO gets you ranked. AEO gets you featured. GEO gets you cited. The best strategy uses all three, building AEO and GEO on a solid SEO foundation.

The good news is that many optimizations help across all three. Structured content, clear answers, original data, and proper schema markup benefit SEO, AEO, and GEO simultaneously. You do not need three separate strategies. You need one comprehensive approach that addresses how people actually find information today. That is why we built our plugin to handle the technical side of AI optimization. One less thing to manage.