AEO, GEO, SEO, WTH?
A glossary of terms, of sorts
If your LinkedIn feed looks even 5% like mine, you’ll no doubt see a lot of chatter at the moment about AEO, GEO, and possibly even around the ongoing relevance of SEO. And about how Black Friday is now just Black November, as though this hasn’t been the case for the last 5 years.
But anyway - Search and discovery aren’t a single discipline anymore. They’re a three-way mix of algorithms, AI summaries, and “how did that even rank?” results. To keep things tidy - or at least tidier - here’s a comms-friendly guide to the three flavours of “EO” shaping how your audience actually finds you.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is the classic: you know it, and you probably already know it’s a long game.
Fundamentally, you are optimising your site and content so humans and crawlers can find it easily. Keywords matter, structure matters, links matter. All of this was true 20 years ago, 5 years ago, and is still true now.
Why it (still) matters:
Because Google still handles billions of searches a day, and those organic clicks are the cheapest brand awareness you’ll get. Even if AI summaries eat some of the real estate, the fundamentals still dictate whether you appear at all.
AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation
AEO is about optimising for the places that don’t include links anymore - Google’s AI Overviews, Bing’s Copilot answers, Perplexity; all the tools that summarise your content for the user. Or perhaps if you’re reading this and were a junior 10-15 years ago, the job you were doing then? (I know I was)
Why it matters:
Because audiences increasingly prefer the answer right now, not the journey. We live in a TL;dr culture. If the answers engines skip your organisation’s perspective, your share of voice quietly evaporates.
Key ingredients:
Structured content
Clear, authoritative explanations
Consistent use of entities
Content that reads like something a model would quote. Or in other words, that looks like the answer to the questions your customers are asking
GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation
GEO is newer: we’re now trying to think about how generative models fetch, recalibrate, and then present information - and ensuring your brand or service appears in those responses more often, and in a flattering light.
It’s part content, part reputation management, part prompt engineering, and part saying something worth quoting.
Why it matters:
Because for a growing chunk of people, “search” is asking an AI to summarise the internet. I can feel it myself; anything beyond a transactional exchange (e.g. what time is it in New York, or what time is the sunrise?) and I’m turning to ChatGPT
If your brand never appears as an example, answer, or recommendation… you simply don’t exist in that world.
Why should you be thinking about all 3?
The modern customer journey is getting messier and messier. Once upon a time you used something above the line to get awareness out there, they’d google you, you’d retarget them, and eventually you’d get the lead or the sale. Now your users will do one or more of:
Search Google
Skim AI summaries
Follow social links
Ask ChatGPT
Ask TikTok
Ask colleagues
Ask YouTube (still the world’s second biggest search engine)
If you only optimise for one ‘EO’, you’re only visible in one part of the journey.
If you re-read the above sections, and look at SEO articles from the last few years, you’ll still note a few key overlapping themes; that of having a clear hierarchy, user-friendly content, and having something to say.
Comms teams don’t need to become technical wizards - but they do need to understand the difference between writing for humans, writing for search engines, and writing for LLMs. Although, the funny thing is, by doing the first, you’ll more or less be satisfying the second and the third (just remember to use clear metadata, clear headings, and clear markup).
The cheat sheet
SEO = “Help humans find us on Google.”
AEO = “Help AI summary tools quote us correctly.”
GEO = “Help generative models recommend us.”
The trick isn’t choosing one - it’s blending all three so your organisation stays visible whether the user types, taps, or prompts.
That’s it for this week! If you found this interesting, I would hugely appreciate it if you shared with your friends and colleagues.
If you’re feeling particularly generous and enjoyed this edition, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time 🫶