I used to think AEO and SEO were separate things. I was wrong. Here's what two years of AEO experimentation taught me about how they actually relate.
The Short Answer
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be cited by AI systems. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of ranking in traditional search results.
They sound similar, but the strategies, metrics, and tactics are fundamentally different.
Key Differences
1. The Goal
SEO: Rank #1 in Google, Bing, or Yahoo results.
AEO: Be the source that AI cites when generating answers.
Here's the kicker: you can rank #1 in Google and never get cited by AI. And you can get cited by AI without ranking at all.
2. How AI Finds Content
SEO: crawls your site, follows links, indexes pages.
AEO: reads your llms.txt, parses schema, evaluates authority signals.
AI systems have their own discovery and evaluation methods. You need both.
3. Content Structure
SEO: Keywords in titles, meta descriptions, headers, throughout content.
AEO: Direct answers to questions, structured data, short paragraphs, bulleted lists.
AI doesn't want to "find keywords"—it wants to extract answers.
4. The Metrics
SEO: Rankings, organic traffic, click-through rate, bounce rate.
AEO: Citations, mentions, referral traffic from AI sources, brand visibility in AI responses.
Traditional SEO metrics don't capture AEO success.
What This Means for You
Here's the truth most "AEO experts" won't tell you: you need both.
Traditional SEO drives foundational traffic. AEO captures the growing segment of users going directly to AI assistants.
The smartest marketers optimize for both simultaneously. The framework I teach does exactly that.
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Check Your AEO Score →When to Focus on Each
| Focus Area | When to Prioritize SEO | When to Prioritize AEO |
|---|---|---|
| New Site | Always—foundation first | After technical setup |
| E-commerce | Product pages | Category & guide pages |
| B2B/SaaS | Always | Decision-maker content |
| Local Business | Always | After local SEO established |
The Bottom Line
AEO and SEO aren't competitors—they're partners. The future belongs to marketers who master both.
Start with strong SEO fundamentals, then layer in AEO strategies. That's exactly what the AEO Mastery Complete Guide teaches.
For a deeper dive into what is AEO, check out our comprehensive Answer Engine Optimization Master Guide.
To learn specifically how to optimize for ChatGPT, read our ChatGPT Optimization Guide.
And if you want to appear in Google AI Overviews, see our Google AI Overview Optimization Guide.