GEO vs AEO vs SEO: do you actually have to choose?
Is GEO replacing SEO, and where do AEO and LLM SEO fit in? A plain answer, and why the work that makes you findable is mostly the same.
Search is changing, and the question we hear most is some version of this: is GEO replacing SEO, and do I have to choose? Short answer: no. The longer answer is good news, because the work that makes you findable is mostly the same either way.
GEO and SEO, in plain terms
SEO is making your site easy for search engines to find, read, and rank, so you show up when someone types a query. GEO, generative engine optimisation, is the newer cousin: making your site easy for AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google’s AI overviews) to find, trust, and quote when someone asks a question and gets an answer instead of a list of links.
The other names you will see
You will also run into AEO, LLM SEO and AI SEO, and it is reasonable to wonder whether these are four separate things you are now expected to buy.
They are not. AEO stands for answer engine optimisation, and means what GEO means: being the source an AI builds its answer from. LLM SEO is the same idea again, named after the large language models doing the answering. AI SEO is the loosest of the three, and sometimes means something different entirely, which is using AI tools to do ordinary SEO faster.
The disagreement is real, but it is about vocabulary rather than practice. The category is new enough that nobody has settled on a word yet. If a provider insists their particular acronym is the one that matters, that tells you more about their marketing than about the work.
Why one doesn’t replace the other
The fear behind “is GEO replacing SEO” is that the rules got rewritten and your old work is wasted. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. A search engine and an AI answer engine are trying to do the same thing: understand what a page is about and decide whether it’s worth showing. They reward the same fundamentals. A clearly written, well-structured, fast page that is plainly about one thing is easy for Google to rank and easy for an AI to quote. A vague, slow, padded page is hard for both.
What actually matters, for both
- Clear writing in your customers’ words, so the page answers the question someone actually asked.
- Real structure: proper headings, sensible sections, clean markup.
- Speed and light code, so the page loads fast on any device.
- Credibility signals: who you are and why you can be trusted.
Two doors, one house
What’s genuinely new with GEO is the destination. Instead of earning a click, you are trying to be the source an AI pulls its answer from. That shifts some tactics, but it doesn’t throw out the foundation. The honest way to think about it: SEO and GEO are two doors into the same well-built house. You don’t choose between the doors. You build the house well, then make sure both open. That is how we build: message first, fast, and structured so people and AI can both find it.