What the three labels mean
- SEO: search engine optimisation
- Helping search engines discover, understand and show relevant pages from your website.
- AEO: answer engine optimisation
- Making information easy to understand and useful when a system needs to answer a question.
- GEO: generative engine optimisation
- Work aimed at how a brand and its content appear in generated answers.
Start with the foundations
Make important pages crawlable and indexable. Give each page a clear purpose. Answer the questions a customer actually asks, with accurate information and sources where they help.
Google says its AI features do not have additional technical requirements beyond normal Search eligibility. There is no special schema that buys an AI placement.
Useful beats more
A content programme should follow demand and business priorities. Producing more pages is not a substitute for explaining your offer clearly or improving the pages that already exist.
AI can support research and drafting. Facts, quotations and claims still need checking. Google’s scaled-content policy focuses on large amounts of content created primarily to manipulate rankings, not on whether a particular writing tool was used.
Measure different things separately
Search clicks, referral visits and a brand mention inside an AI answer are different measures. A citation does not prove a visit, and a visit does not prove a customer.
Use named sources and date windows. Where a citation check has not run, say “not measured”. Do not turn missing data into a zero.
What cannot be guaranteed
No SEO provider controls what a search engine or AI platform chooses to show. Treat guaranteed rankings or guaranteed AI citations as a reason to ask more questions.