Fundamental SEO principles, like those in Eli Schwartz's 2016 book "Product-Led SEO," are still highly relevant. The core goal of any search engine—whether Google or an LLM like ChatGPT—is to surface the best, most truthful answer to a user's query, making user-centric content timeless.
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Marketing leaders find the same principles driving successful SEO—creating high-quality, structured, and user-centric content—are also effective for AEO. The focus should be on adapting existing strategies rather than inventing new ones from scratch.
As users shift from keywords to conversational prompts in AI browsers, SEO strategy must also evolve. The focus should be on creating 'answer-ready' content that directly and comprehensively addresses likely user questions, positioning your brand as a primary source for the AI to cite.
LLMs can actually benefit sites with deep, authoritative content, even if it's not ranked #1 on Google. AI models prioritize surfacing the best answer, regardless of traditional rank, potentially increasing traffic for subject matter experts.
Don't abandon SEO for GEO. LLMs rely on the same crawling and indexing systems as traditional search engines. To be cited by AI, you must first have strong SEO fundamentals like fast load times and structured data. GEO then builds on this by focusing on answering specific user questions.
Following SEO, App Store Optimization, and social virality, the next major distribution channel is AI answer engines. Product teams must now strategize how to get their brand, features, and knowledge base indexed and surfaced in AI responses, making AEO a critical growth lever for the modern era.
Google's Robbie Stein explains that because AI models, including Google's own, use web searches to gather real-time information, creating trusted, authoritative content remains the most effective strategy for being featured in AI-generated answers.
With AI-powered search, user behavior has shifted to asking direct questions. Effective SEO now requires structuring content to directly answer the specific questions buyers are asking search engines and AI tools, rather than just ranking for keywords.
As users increasingly turn to AI for answers, clicks to websites are dropping. Brands must now focus on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), structuring their site's data and content to be easily scraped and presented by AI, not just ranking for keywords in traditional search.
The future of search isn't just about Google; it's about being found in AI tools like ChatGPT. This shift to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) requires creating helpful, Q&A-formatted content that AI models can easily parse and present as answers, ensuring your visibility in the new search landscape.
As users increasingly get answers from AI assistants, marketing strategy must evolve from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This means creating diverse, authoritative content across multiple platforms (podcasts, PR, articles) with the goal of being cited as a trusted source by AI models themselves.
