SEO, GEO & AEO: How your business gets found

Three terms. One customer trying to find an answer.

A potential customer rarely starts by looking for your website. They start with a need: a service nearby, a product comparison, a cost question or a problem they need help solving. Your opportunity is to be useful at that point, then make the path to your offering clear.

SEO means search engine optimisation: helping your pages become discoverable and relevant in search. GEO means generative engine optimisation and AEO means answer engine optimisation. People commonly use GEO and AEO interchangeably for the same idea: visibility in AI-generated answers. Terminology varies, and AEO can also include direct answers outside generative AI. We treat them as a connected area supported by strong SEO, rather than separate packages or sets of tricks.

The original GEO paper studies ways to improve source visibility in generative responses. Its experimental results belong to the tested systems and benchmark; they are not a forecast for your website or a promise of AI citations.

Further reading: Aggarwal et al. — GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (2024 revision) ↗

Start with the decision, then choose the page.

Before writing an article, decide whose question it answers and what decision it helps them make. A customer comparing booking platforms needs different information from someone ready to book a service. Publishing both under a vague page called ‘Solutions’ makes the reader do unnecessary work.

Our starting point is a small question map. List questions from sales conversations, enquiries and customer support. Group them by the decision behind them. Use service pages for what you offer, comparison or explainer articles for investigation, and clear contact or booking routes for the next step.

Give useful content a foundation that can be found.

Google says the same SEO foundations apply to its AI search features. There is no special AI schema or machine-readable AI file required for inclusion. Important content should be available as text, reachable through internal links and accessible to crawling. Structured data should describe what the page actually shows.

For a small business site, we prioritise a practical inspection before expanding the article library. Can each service be reached through an ordinary link? Does its title explain the page? Is a booking button usable on a phone? Does the production site accidentally block indexing? A beautiful homepage cannot compensate for an inaccessible service page.

• Give every important service a clear, descriptive page.
• Use ordinary links between related guides and services.
• Check mobile readability, loading and the actual next action.
• Keep titles, canonical URLs and structured data accurate.

Further reading: Google Search Central — AI features and your website ↗

Write the answer you would give a real customer.

Google’s people-first guidance asks whether content helps its intended audience and demonstrates a clear purpose, useful knowledge and reliable sourcing. Rewording the same generic advice across dozens of pages gives readers little reason to choose your business.

Our editorial approach is to give the short answer early, explain the conditions that change it, and show a practical example. If the answer depends on budget, location or an existing system, say so. Separate what you have observed from what you recommend. A specific explanation of a trade-off is more useful than a claim that your service is ‘the best’.

Include real authorship or organisation attribution, dates that reflect actual publication and sources for research claims. Keep examples labelled when they are illustrative. Never invent customers, qualifications or results to make an article look authoritative.

Further reading: Google Search Central — Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content ↗

Connect the answer to a useful next step.

An article should stand on its own. Once it has answered the question, offer a relevant next action: explore the service, compare package scope or book a conversation. The link should make sense in context. An article about search visibility should lead naturally to a search service, rather than forcing every reader through the homepage.

This is where discovery and conversion meet. Look at the whole journey: the question, the article, the linked service and the booking experience. If the promise changes between those steps, fix the mismatch before trying to acquire more traffic.

Measure search progress, then improve the next page.

Google Search Console reports search queries, impressions and clicks. Google includes traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode within its overall Web performance reporting. These figures do not separately measure all AI citations, other AI platforms, onsite bookings or sales.

Review which relevant questions produce impressions, which pages earn clicks and which useful topics remain uncovered. Use that evidence to refine titles, strengthen an explanation or choose a follow-up article. Treat an early increase cautiously: a small number of clicks is a signal to investigate, not proof of a reliable growth engine.

Our recommended first cycle is deliberately focused: inspect the foundations, improve one important service page, publish one answer customers need, connect the two, then review the evidence. Search engines decide whether and when to index or show a page. Good work builds opportunity; it does not guarantee a ranking.

Further reading: Google Search Central — AI features and your website ↗