Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), classic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and “Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)– are not three separate religions; they’re three layers of the same game. A serious strategy in 2026 starts with GO, is executed through SEO, and only then shows up as AEO in AI and answer engines.
Definitions in plain English
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SEO: The practices that get your pages crawled, indexed, and ranked in Google/Bing – technical health, internal linking, content targeting queries, and links
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AEO: The outcomes where those same pages are chosen as answers or citations in AI overviews, answer boxes, voice search, and tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. It’s not a separate index; it’s how search results are reused by answer engines
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GEO: The mindset: optimize for what Google actually does (query → results → clicks → links → authority), not for buzzwords, “AI checklists,” or mythical AEO hacks. In practice, that means chasing queries and relationships, not chasing acronyms
Why AEO is downstream of SEO
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Answer engines don’t invent their own web; they sit on top of search engines, consuming the same documents that already rank in Google and Bing, then synthesizing them into prose.
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The pages that show up as citations, sources, or “according to…” in AI answers overwhelmingly come from URLs that rank and attract links/mentions; AEO is therefore a by‑product of strong SEO, not a replacement.
What GEO means for how you actually optimize
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GEO forces you to ask: “For this AI or answer-box result I care about, which Google queries are feeding it – and where do those URLs rank?” Instead of building “for AEO,” you build pages that can win those upstream queries
That means prioritizing:
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Query discovery
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Building assets that earn links, mentions and citations across the wider web, so Google can see relationships and PageRank, not just keywords on a page
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Why checklists (AEO, LLMO, etc.) mostly miss the point
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Most “AEO vs SEO vs GEO vs LLMO” content treats each acronym as a new service line: add schema, add FAQs, add LLMS.txt and suddenly you’re an “AI brand.” That confuses formatting with authority
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As we keep pointing out, the hard part is not another three‑letter framework; it’s being the page that Google already wants to rank and that the rest of the web is willing to reference. Everything else is packaging
How Primary Position approaches SEO, AEO, and GEO
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Primary Position starts with GO: understanding how your market’s real queries map to Google SERPs, which URLs feed AI and answer‑engine responses, and where your brand can realistically insert itself.
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Then comes SEO execution – technical foundations, crawl and index control, content that targets those fan‑out queries, and a relationship‑driven approach to links and mentions – so your pages become the training data and citations AI systems actually see
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Only after that do you see AEO wins: being quoted, cited, or summarized in AI overviews and answer engines – not because you “optimized for AEO,” but because you optimized for Google the way it really works.
