Frequently Asked Questions

Search Engine Optimization is the work of making your website rank in Google and other search engines for the terms your customers search. It covers your content, the technical health of your site, how pages are structured, and the links and mentions your brand earns around the web. It is still the foundation everything else is built on.

AEO is about being the source behind the direct answer, not just a link on the page. Featured snippets, voice assistants, People Also Ask boxes, and Google AI Overviews all pull a short answer from a page they trust. AEO structures your content so that your page is the one they pull from. Our AEO checklist covers the exact format.

GEO is about getting your brand cited or recommended when people ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity a question. These tools build answers from pages and brand mentions they can read and trust. GEO makes your site readable to them, fills it with evidence worth quoting, and builds the brand mentions that make AI engines recognize you as a credible name.

SEO wins a ranking and a click in Google. AEO wins the direct answer at the top of the page, with or without a click. GEO wins a mention or recommendation inside an AI assistant's reply. They overlap heavily, since a page that ranks well is also more likely to be cited, but each one rewards slightly different work. Most businesses need all three now.

No. They work together. Rankings still feed AI answers: research found about 76 percent of Google AI Overview citations came from pages already in the top ten. GEO adds structure, evidence, and brand signals on top of solid SEO. If your SEO is weak, GEO alone will not save you.

Make your site readable to AI crawlers, which mostly do not run JavaScript. Write clear, structured answers with real evidence and numbers. Add schema markup. Keep content fresh. And build mentions of your brand on other sites, because research found brand mentions were the strongest single signal linked to AI visibility. Our Technical GEO Playbook walks through the steps, and our guide to auditing your visibility in ChatGPT and Gemini shows how to measure it.

Usually 60 to 90 days to see meaningful movement, and three to six months for competitive terms. Early signs come first: more impressions in Search Console, more pages earning traffic, core terms climbing from page three to page two. Leads and sales follow. Anyone promising page one in two weeks is selling something else.

Local SEO is how a business appears when someone searches for a service near them, especially in the Google Map Pack with the three businesses, map, and reviews. If you serve customers in a physical area, from a showroom, an office, or a service territory, you need it. The Google Business Profile matters more than any other single factor. Our 2026 local SEO playbook explains the whole method.

Not on its own. Google does not penalize content for being made with AI. It penalizes low value content produced at scale to game rankings, whoever made it. Content that is helpful, original, accurate, and reviewed by a person does fine. The risk is publishing unchecked AI drafts in volume. Our hybrid content workflow shows how to use AI for speed while humans own quality.

Yes, but the kind that counts has narrowed. Relevant, editorial links from real sites still help, and in local search links carry around 15 percent of ranking weight. Paid links, link networks, and mass directory submissions do not help and can trigger penalties. Brand mentions, with or without a link, now matter alongside backlinks, especially for AI visibility. Our link building guide covers what works now.

Schema is structured data added to your page that tells search engines and AI systems exactly what the page is about: your business, an article, a product, a set of questions and answers. It lets machines read your page without guessing. It is not strictly required, but pages with schema tend to be cited more often, and it is cheap to add. Start with Organization, Article, and Product schema.

Track a small set of numbers every month: organic sessions, organic leads or sales and their value, impressions and clicks in Search Console, rankings on your core terms, the number of pages earning traffic, and whether your brand appears in AI answers. Compare the value to what SEO costs and you have your return. Our guide on how to measure SEO ROI gives the formula and a simple dashboard.