When ChatGPT first emerged, most people didn’t expect it to have a significant impact on SEO. However, with the increasing popularity of AI services, this topic has garnered considerable attention, especially now that these AI tools are becoming more advanced and can even access the internet. Many believed traditional SEO would soon disappear, but things didn’t exactly turn out that way. Instead, AI tools are now doing the searching for users, utilizing familiar search engines (for example, Gemini relies on Google, and ChatGPT uses Bing), analyzing the results, and summarizing them for users.
So, on one hand, not much has changed: your website still needs to rank high on Google or Bing to get noticed. However, that’s not enough; you also need to ensure your content is clear and understandable for these AI tools. A new type of optimization is emerging, specifically targeting AI. However, at the moment, there’s still no widely accepted term for it: LLMSEO, LEO (LLM engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization), you name it!
A Quick Refresher on Classic SEO
Classic Search Engine Optimization is all about carefully crafting your website: creating content and organizing it, adding extra layers for bots (robots.txt and sitemaps), and ensuring search engines can access, understand, and rank it as high as possible. This typically involves picking the right keywords, optimizing titles and descriptions, and then establishing high-quality backlinks from trusted and authoritative websites. Additionally, it ensures the site loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.
Traditional SEO signals to search engines why your content is the most relevant result for a user’s search.
What Are AEO and GEO, Anyway?
Recently, you may have noticed that when you search online, you get direct answers instead of a list of links. This new trend, driven by tools like Google Assistant, Alexa, and ChatGPT, is where AEO and GEO come into play.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about creating content that directly answers user questions clearly and concisely. Instead of fighting for clicks on a search result page, you aim to become the actual source of the answer provided to users.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) goes even further, ensuring your content is easily understood and picked up accurately by tools that summarize information. GEO ensures that your brand’s information is accurately represented whenever it’s included in summaries or conversations.
How Does This Change Content Creation?
With traditional SEO, you’d typically focus on matching specific keywords. Now, with AEO and GEO, the content strategy shifts towards answering user questions naturally, clearly, and comprehensively. It’s mostly about conversational content rather than keyword-stuffed articles.
In classic SEO, success typically means achieving high rankings, increased clicks, and increased web traffic. With AEO and GEO, success looks a bit different: it’s measured by how often your content appears in answers, gets cited as a reliable source, and accurately represents your brand.
Technical Considerations: What’s Changing?
While the core of classic SEO, such as site speed and mobile optimization, remains essential, you’ll want to pay extra attention to clearly structuring your content. Using structured data (schema markup) helps these new tools easily pick up and present your information accurately.
Measuring Your Success
Your old metrics, like organic traffic and keyword rankings, remain relevant. But now, also look at new indicators: How often is your content chosen as a direct answer? Is your brand regularly cited positively?
It’s no longer just about clicks. It is about becoming a trusted source users and tools alike rely on.
So, What’s the Takeaway?
Classic SEO isn’t going anywhere. It still forms the essential backbone of your online presence. But blending in strategies like LEO, AEO and GEO will re-position your website to meet the evolving ways people and tools find information. Ultimately, the goal is clear: become not just searchable but genuinely helpful and turn your brand into a trusted answer people rely on every day.