By Krista Barnes, Founder of We Do SEO, LLC.
SEO, AEO, and GEO often show up as three line items on a proposal. The terms can help organize work, but they are not three unrelated websites to optimize. SEO helps a site be found and understood; AEO focuses on clear answers; GEO is commonly used for representation in generative responses. At We Do SEO, the shared foundation is accurate, useful information about a real business.
Key takeaways
- SEO is the technical and content foundation.
- AEO and GEO describe useful areas of focus, not guaranteed placements.
- Measure discovery, mentions, visits and leads separately.
Build the findable foundation
Confirm important pages can be crawled and indexed, have a useful title, describe a distinct service, and connect through ordinary HTML links. Make business details consistent across the site and relevant public profiles. Without a usable source page, a clever AI strategy has very little to work with.
Publish answerable expertise
Document the questions that prospects ask before they contact you. Answer each with a direct explanation, then add the circumstances, examples, and limits that make it trustworthy. Explain who wrote or reviewed sensitive advice and keep dates current where they affect the answer.
Put this into practice
One practical example
If the business has two locations, first give each real location an accurate landing page and business profile. Then answer the service questions that apply to both. Do not create dozens of weak city pages to fill a calendar.
Measure each surface honestly
Organic rankings, Maps visibility, citations in AI responses, referral visits, and booked leads are related but different. Build one dashboard with separate columns rather than turning every movement into an “AI visibility score.”
Related guidance from We Do SEO
Explore
AI Overviews analysis, AEO optimization services, GEO and AI optimization, and AI optimization services.
See the Bad Bunny SEO and search-intent example for a simple distinction between brand demand and discovery.
For platform-specific details, see Google’s guide to generative AI features.
Frequently asked questions
What does GEO mean here?
Here GEO means generative engine optimization. Some older marketing articles use GEO to mean geographic targeting; define the term for your audience.
Will llms.txt make a business appear in Google AI features?
Google says it does not require special AI text files or markup for its AI features. Prioritize accessible, useful pages.
Where should a small business begin?
Start with its most valuable service page, accurate location information, and the questions people ask before buying.
Next step
If you want to apply this to your own website, contact We Do SEO for a review of your pages, local presence, and measurement. We will identify what to improve first and explain why it matters for your business.