Three acronyms, one underlying shift
Search traffic no longer comes from one place. People still search Google, but they also ask ChatGPT, get answers inside Google's AI Overviews, and increasingly get cited (or not) inside AI-generated summaries. SEO, AEO and GEO are three overlapping ways of describing how to stay visible across all of that.
SEO: optimising for the ranked blue links
Traditional SEO is still about ranking a page for a query — keyword targeting, backlinks, page speed, structured content. It hasn't gone away; it's the foundation everything else builds on.
AEO: optimising to be *the* answer
Answer Engine Optimisation is about being the direct answer to a question — the featured snippet, the voice-assistant response, the box at the top of the results. AEO content tends to lead with a clear, direct answer in the first sentence or two, then supports it with detail — the inverse of a traditional narrative introduction.
GEO: optimising to be cited by generative AI
Generative Engine Optimisation is the newest of the three: making sure tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews actually cite your page when answering a related question. GEO rewards clear structure, specific facts and numbers, original data, and content that's easy for a model to extract and attribute — not content stuffed with keywords.
What actually works across all three
1. Answer the question in the first 40–60 words. Both AEO and GEO systems favour content that states the answer plainly before elaborating.
2. Use real structure — H2s that are actual questions, short paragraphs, and lists the model can lift cleanly.
3. Add original facts or data where you can. AI systems are more likely to cite content that adds something beyond a rehash of what's already in the top 10 results.
4. Keep FAQ sections genuinely useful, not stuffed with keyword variants — and mark them up with FAQ schema so both search engines and AI crawlers can parse them cleanly.
5. Don't abandon SEO fundamentals. Site speed, mobile usability and backlinks still matter — GEO and AEO build on top of solid SEO, they don't replace it.
The bottom line
You're not choosing between SEO, AEO and GEO — you're writing for all three readers at once: a search engine's ranking algorithm, an answer box, and a generative AI model deciding what to cite.