SEO, AEO and GEO explained: getting found by Google and by AI assistants

For years, getting found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. That's still important. But the way people look for things has changed. Some type a question into ChatGPT. Some read the AI summary at the top of Google and never click a link. Some ask their phone out loud.

That's where the new acronyms come from. They sound like jargon, and they partly are, but the ideas behind them are simple.

The three terms

SEO: search engine optimisation

The classic. You make your site easy for search engines to crawl, understand and rank, so it shows up in the list of links when someone searches. Think page titles, descriptions, fast pages, sensible addresses, links between your pages, and content that matches what people search for.

AEO: answer engine optimisation

Search engines increasingly answer the question directly: a featured snippet, a "People also ask" box, a voice assistant reading out one answer. AEO is about being the source of that answer. It rewards pages that answer a specific question clearly and early, in plain words, instead of burying it under three paragraphs of introduction.

GEO: generative engine optimisation

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity write their own answers, drawing on what they've read and what they find when they search. GEO is about making your business easy for them to understand, trust and mention. If an AI is asked "who does good wedding catering near Bristol?", you want enough clear, consistent information out there that you're a reasonable answer.

The good news: they mostly want the same thing

You don't need three separate strategies. Search engines and AI models are all trying to work out the same things: who you are, what you do, where, for whom, and whether you're trustworthy. A site that answers those questions clearly does well with all of them.

Where they differ is mostly emphasis:

• SEO cares a lot about technical health and about matching search terms.
• AEO cares about short, direct answers to specific questions.
• GEO cares about clear facts that are easy to pick up and repeat correctly, and about those facts being consistent everywhere you appear.

A practical checklist

You don't need an agency to get the basics right. Work through this list and you'll be ahead of most small business sites.

Say the basics, in words

• Your business name, what you do and where you do it, on the home page, in plain sentences.
• Opening hours, contact details and service area written as text, not only in an image or a map.
• Prices, or at least "from" prices, if you can share them. People and AI both look for them.

Answer real questions

• Write down the ten questions customers ask you most. Answer each one on your site in two or three sentences.
• Put the answer first. "Yes, we deliver to all of Greater Manchester. Delivery is free over £50." Then add detail if needed.
• Use the customer's words in your headings. "Do you deliver?" beats "Logistics information".

Give every page a clear job

• One topic per page, with a title and description that say exactly what's on it.
• A short, readable address: /services/boiler-repair, not /page?id=482.
• Link related pages to each other, so both people and crawlers can find their way around.

Help machines read it

• A sitemap lists your pages so search engines don't miss any.
• Structured data (schema.org markup) states facts like your business type, address and opening hours in a format machines read directly.
• An llms.txt file is a newer convention: a plain text summary of your site, written for AI models. It's cheap to add and becomes more useful as more tools read it.
• Redirects for pages you've moved or renamed, so old links and old rankings aren't lost.

Be consistent everywhere

Your name, address, phone number and opening hours should match on your website, Google Business Profile, social pages and directories. Conflicting details are a common reason AI answers get a business wrong.

Keep it current

An out-of-date price or closed location is worse than no information. Set a reminder to review your key pages every few months, and update them whenever something changes.

What not to bother with

• Stuffing keywords. Writing "best plumber London" six times in a paragraph helps nobody and reads badly.
• Pages written for robots. If a page would bore a customer, it won't do much for an AI either.
• Chasing every new trick. The specifics shift every few months. Clear, accurate, well-organised information doesn't go out of date.

Where to start

If you only do one thing this week, write proper answers to your ten most common questions and put them on your site. It's the single change that helps SEO, AEO and GEO at once, and it gives a chat assistant better material to answer from too (more on that in What to give your AI assistant so it answers well).

Every Pixexl plan includes a website readiness check that goes through your site section by section and shows the gaps that hold it back in search and AI answers. The sitemap, structured data, llms.txt, page SEO settings and redirects are built in. See what's included on the services page.