SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what is the difference?

If someone has tried to sell you “AEO” or “GEO” services recently, you're not alone. The terms are new, the explanations are often vague, and the prices are often high. Here is what each one actually means, how they fit together, and what a small business website needs to cover all three.

The short answer#

SEO: search engine optimisation#

SEO is the work of getting a page to appear, and rank well, when someone searches. The goal is a click to your site from the list of results.

It rests on three things:

• Technical: Google can crawl and index the page. Fast loading, mobile-friendly, one clean address per page, a sitemap, and no errors in Search Console.
• Content:the page matches what people search, in their words. “Packers and movers in Kharghar” needs a page about exactly that, not a line on a general services page.
• Trust: links and mentions from other sites, reviews, and a Google Business Profile, which tell Google that real people know and use your business.

AEO: answer engine optimisation#

An “answer engine” answers a question directly instead of only listing links: Google's featured snippets and AI Overviews, Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa. AEO means making your content easy to quote.

In practice:

• Use the question as the heading.“How much does a website cost in India?” rather than “Our pricing philosophy”.
• Answer in the first two or three sentences under it, completely, so the answer makes sense if it is the only thing quoted. Then give the detail.
• Use lists, steps and tables for anything that is naturally a list, steps or a comparison.
• Add an FAQ section with real questions customers ask, and mark it up with FAQPage structured data.

GEO: generative engine optimisation#

“Generative engines” are AI tools that write an answer: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. When someone asks “best e-commerce developer in Mumbai”, these tools search the web, read a handful of pages and write a recommendation. GEO is about being one of the businesses they find, trust and mention.

What helps:

• Clear, factual sentences about your business. What you do, where, for whom, since when and at what price. AI tools quote facts; they skip marketing fluff.
• Consistency everywhere. The same business name, address, phone and description on your website, Google Business Profile, Justdial, IndiaMART, LinkedIn and anywhere else you are listed.
• Mentions and reviews on other trusted sites. AI tools lean on what others say about you, not just what you say.
• Being indexed by Bing as well as Google. ChatGPT search and Copilot draw heavily on Bing, so submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools too.
• Letting AI search crawlers in.Check robots.txt doesn't block crawlers like OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) or PerplexityBot.
• Structured data that states facts in a machine-readable way: LocalBusiness or Organization, Service, prices and areas served.

The step-by-step version is in how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.

SEO vs AEO vs GEO, side by side#

One checklist that covers all three#

For a small business website, these steps do the job for SEO, AEO and GEO at once:

1. Research the exact phrases your customers search, by service and by area.
2. Make one page per main service and per important area, with those phrases in the title and heading.
3. Open every page with a two or three sentence answer: what, where, for whom, and starting price.
4. Add an FAQ section of real customer questions to each service page.
5. Add structured data: LocalBusiness or Person, Service, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, and Article for posts.
6. Get mobile PageSpeed to 90+ and pass Core Web Vitals.
7. Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools; fix every indexing error.
8. Complete your Google Business Profile and keep name, address and phone identical everywhere.
9. Collect reviews and get listed on the directories your customers trust.
10. Write blog posts that answer the questions people ask before buying, linking to your service pages.
11. Check robots.txt allows search and AI search crawlers.
12. Track calls, WhatsApp clicks and forms, so you know which pages bring enquiries.

What not to waste money on#

• “Guaranteed #1 on ChatGPT.”Nobody can guarantee what an AI tool will say, and you can't buy placement in ChatGPT's answers.
• Separate AEO and GEO packagesthat don't touch your website's basics. If your pages aren't indexed or are slow, nothing on top will work.
• Hundreds of AI-written blog posts. Thin, repetitive pages can hurt a site. A dozen genuinely useful answers beat a hundred generic ones.
• Just an llms.txt file.It's a proposed standard that is cheap to add (this site has one), but the big AI search tools haven't said they rely on it.

Every website I build includes this checklist from the start, and this blog is written the same way. If you want to see why that matters more than the design, read why a free AI website usually isn't enough. If you'd like it done for your business, see my freelance web development page; business websites start at ₹4,999.