SEO vs AEO: What’s the Difference and Do You Need Both?
SEO vs AEO is a question more business owners are asking. Your customers still use Google. Increasingly, they also ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews and get a single answer back instead of a list of links. That shift has produced a new term, AEO, and a fair amount of confusion.
The short answer is that you need both, and they have more in common than most people think.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the work of helping your pages appear higher in search results for the phrases your customers type. It covers the words on your pages, how your site is built, how quickly it loads and how many trusted websites point to you.
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the work of making your content easy for AI tools to find, understand and quote. You may also see it called AIO or AI search optimisation.
The goal is different. With SEO you are trying to rank in a list. With AEO you are trying to be the business the AI names when it answers a question.
Where SEO and AEO overlap
Good news first. Most of what helps one helps the other:
- Clear, helpful content written for real customers
- A fast, secure, mobile-friendly website
- Sensible page structure, with proper headings
- Signs that you can be trusted, such as reviews, case studies and a named expert behind the content
Google describes this as E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. AI tools tend to favour the same signals.
What AEO adds
Once your SEO foundations are sound, AEO adds a layer on top:
- Direct answers near the top of the page. Say what you do and who it is for in the first couple of sentences.
- Real questions with real answers. An FAQ section written the way your customers actually ask makes your content easy to quote.
- Schema markup. This is code behind the scenes that tells search engines and AI tools what a page is about.
- Consistent business information. Your name, services and location should match across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and any directories.
- Proof. Reviews, testimonials and named authors give AI tools a reason to trust you.
Do you need both SEO vs AEO?
Yes, but in the right order. SEO is the foundation, because AI tools often draw on the same pages that search engines already trust. AEO is how you make those pages easier to understand and recommend.
If your site is missing the basics, start there. If the basics are in place, a few structural changes can make a real difference without a rebuild.
Where to start this week
- Choose your most important service page and add a plain two-sentence summary of what you do and who you do it for at the top.
- Add four to six genuine customer questions, with short, direct answers.
- Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google a question your ideal customer might ask, and see whether your business appears. Repeat it monthly to track progress.
These three steps cost very little and show you quickly where the gaps are.
Want help with this?
At The Web Crew, we restructure websites so they work for both search engines and AI tools. If you would like to talk about where your site stands, get in touch.
