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What is AI SEO? GEO, AEO, and LLM SEO explained
The acronyms showed up fast and nobody agreed on definitions first. Here's what each term actually means, how they're different, and what any of this has to do with a local business.
The acronym soup
Four terms, one overlapping idea.
SEO is the original: optimizing so your business shows up in Google's traditional results page, the list of blue links.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is optimizing so generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot include or cite your business when they generate an answer. There's no ranked list here — either you get mentioned or you don't.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is structuring content so it directly and concisely answers a specific question. That's what gets content pulled into featured snippets, Google's AI Overviews, and voice or AI answers.
LLM SEO is a looser, newer umbrella term for optimizing for large language models generally. Marketers often use it interchangeably with GEO, but at its core it's about making sure your business is well and accurately represented in what a language model knows or retrieves.
Worth saying plainly: these terms overlap a lot, and the industry hasn't settled on one standard name for any of this. That's not a dodge — it's just where things stand while the technology and the vocabulary are both still moving. For a fuller look at what this work involves, see our AI SEO page.
Side by side
How the four compare.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization
- Optimizes for
- Ranking in Google's traditional results page
- Channels
- Google, Bing organic search results
- "Ranking" means
- Position in a list of blue links
- Core tactic
- Keywords, backlinks, page speed, site structure
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization
- Optimizes for
- Being included or cited in an AI-generated answer
- Channels
- ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity
- "Ranking" means
- No list — either you're mentioned in the answer or you're not
- Core tactic
- Clean entity data, citation coverage, structured content
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization
- Optimizes for
- Getting a specific answer lifted directly into a result
- Channels
- Featured snippets, AI Overviews, voice assistants
- "Ranking" means
- Whether your exact answer gets pulled out and shown
- Core tactic
- Direct, concise, question-shaped content
LLM SEO
Large Language Model SEO
- Optimizes for
- Being accurately represented in what an LLM knows
- Channels
- Any product built on a language model
- "Ranking" means
- Accuracy and presence of your info in model responses
- Core tactic
- Overlaps with GEO — consistent, crawlable, well-sourced info
Why it matters now
The results page isn't the whole game anymore.
People increasingly ask an AI assistant directly for a recommendation instead of searching and clicking through a list of links. And on Google itself, AI Overviews now sit above the organic results on a growing number of queries — absorbing clicks that used to go to a ranked page further down.
Either way, the same thing happens: a business gets recommended, or it doesn't, before the searcher ever sees a traditional list of results. If your information isn't structured in a way these systems can read and trust, you're not in the running.
What the work actually is
Concretely, not conceptually.
Entity & schema markup
Structured data that tells AI engines exactly who you are, what you do, and where you operate — in a format they can parse without guessing.
Citation coverage
Getting your business listed accurately on the directories, review sites, and sources that AI engines actually pull from and trust.
Answer-shaped content
Pages written so a direct, correct answer can be lifted out cleanly — not buried in three paragraphs of throat-clearing.
Review signals
Volume, recency, and content of your reviews feed AI answers the same way they feed Google's local results.
Measurement
Running the real prompts customers ask against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, then tracking whether and how you're mentioned.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of the ChatGPT side of this specifically, see how to rank on ChatGPT.
Who needs it
This isn't just for big brands.
It's easy to assume AI visibility is an enterprise problem. In practice, local businesses have as much at stake — an AI assistant answering "who's a good plumber near me" has to pick a small handful of names from whatever data it can find. A well-known national brand with scattered, inconsistent listings can actually lose that spot to a smaller business whose name, address, hours, and reviews are accurate and consistent everywhere they appear. Clean, structured information tends to beat brand size.
How it fits together
A complement to local SEO, not a replacement.
AI SEO and traditional local SEO pull from the same raw material: accurate business listings, real reviews, a well-structured website. Local SEO gets you ranked on the page. AI SEO gets you recommended when there's no page at all. Doing one well makes the other easier — there's no reason to treat them as competing priorities.
FAQ
Questions we hear a lot.
Do I need to choose between SEO and AI SEO?
No. They reinforce each other. Traditional SEO signals — clean site structure, accurate business info, real reviews — are largely the same raw material AI engines draw from. Neither replaces the other.
How much does AI SEO cost compared to traditional SEO?
It's usually not a separate budget line so much as an extension of the same local SEO work — entity data, citations, and content that already need to be right. Ask us for specifics based on your current setup.
How long before I see results?
Citation and schema fixes can show up in AI answers within a few weeks. Content and review signals build over a few months, similar to traditional SEO timelines.
How do you actually measure AI SEO?
We run a fixed set of real customer prompts against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity on a schedule and record whether your business is mentioned, how it's described, and who else shows up alongside you.
Find out what AI is already saying about your business.
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