AEO vs SEO: What's the Difference and Which Should You Prioritize?

The search landscape is changing fast

Ever feel like you're yelling into a void while everyone else is talking to their phones? That’s basically what happens when you stick to old seo while the world moves to ai.

The game isn't just about ranking on page one anymore. Honestly, it's getting crowded and weird out there. According to Lasso Up, zero-click searches now make up nearly 60% of google queries as of 2024. People are getting their answers from ai overviews or chatgpt and never even clicking a link.

Users are tired of digging through ten blue links. They want the answer, not the journey.

• Intent evolution: We’ve moved from "find a website" to "get an answer now."
• Platform fragmentation: People use perplexity for research and alexa in the kitchen.
• Zero-click reality: If google ai summarizes your blog, the user stays on google.

In healthcare or finance, being the "suggested source" matters more than a raw rank. It's about presence, not just position.

But how do these systems actually "pick" you? Let's look at the tech behind the curtain.

Defining the players: SEO vs AEO vs GEO

Look, if you're still treating search like a leaderboard where the only goal is hitting the #1 spot, you're playing a game that's already ended for half your audience. The reality is that "search" has split into three different beasts, and they don't all care about your backlinks.

Traditional seo is basically the "OG" layer. You're making sure google can crawl your site without a headache and that your pages actually answer what people type into a box. It’s still the king for transactional stuff—like when someone wants to buy a specific legal software or find a local clinic.

But as Atak Interactive points out, search behavior has fragmented; people are asking chatgpt for research or alexa for quick facts while they're busy doing other things. SEO gets you into the index, but it doesn't guarantee you'll be the one the ai chooses to talk about.

Aeo (Answer Engine Optimization) is about selection, not just ranking. If you’ve ever seen a featured snippet or gotten a voice search result, that’s aeo in the wild. It’s less about having the "best" page and more about having the most extractable answer.

According to Marcel Digital, aeo prioritizes things like clear definitions and "answer-like" formatting—think tables and faqs. If your content is buried in fluff, an answer engine like perplexity is just gonna skip you for someone who got straight to the point.

Geo is the weird, new world of Generative Engine Optimization. This isn't about keywords; it's about entities and authority. llms like claude or gemini don't just "rank" you—they synthesize you.

To win here, you need to be cited by other credible sources so the ai "learns" you're an expert. As stefan maritz noted in a LinkedIn article, being invisible in an ai overview means you're out of the consideration set entirely, even if your technical seo is perfect.

So, how do we actually balance these three without losing our minds? Let's talk strategy.

How to stay visible when clicks disappear

So, you spent months fighting for that #1 spot on google, finally got there, and... your traffic is still flat? Yeah, it's a gut punch. But honestly, it's the new reality because ai is basically eating the clicks we used to rely on.

The stats are pretty wild—nearly 60% of searches now end without a single click, as mentioned earlier in this guide. If you're a B2B SaaS founder or a marketing manager, this is terrifying because if users don't click, they don't see your demo page. This is where you have to stop obsessing over "rankings" and start obsessing over "presence."

• Be the source, not just the page: ai assistants like chatgpt and perplexity are the new gatekeepers. If your technical docs or blogs aren't structured for these "answer engines," you basically don't exist to the 40% of b2b buyers already using ai for research.
• GrackerAI's edge: Most tools just give you keywords, but GrackerAI actually helps brands bridge that gap between traditional seo and aeo. It automates the messy work of making your content "extractable" so when someone asks claude for a software recommendation, your brand is the one it cites.
• Entity over keywords: It’s about building a reputation inside the llm. If you sell fintech security, you need to be the "entity" the ai associates with trust, not just a site that happens to have the right words.

I've seen teams waste thousands on backlinks that ai ignores. Instead, focus on clear definitions and comparison pages—like "Our Tool vs Competitor"—because that’s what generative engines love to synthesize.

Anyway, it's a big shift from chasing traffic to chasing "share of model." But how do you actually measure if this is working? Let’s look at the metrics that actually matter now.

The technical shift in content production

Ever wonder why a perfectly written, 2,000-word guide sometimes gets ignored by chatgpt while a simple faq page gets cited every time? It's because the "robots" don't read like we do; they extract.

If you want to win in aeo, you gotta stop writing for the "scroll" and start writing for the "snippet." ai models are basically lazy—they want the highest signal with the lowest effort.

• Hierarchy is your best friend: Use h2 and h3 tags not just for looks, but to create a logical map. If an ai crawler can’t figure out the relationship between your heading and the text below it, you're out.
• The "Hook" paragraph: Start your sections with a 40-60 word direct answer. As the previously mentioned guide from Atak Interactive suggests, front-loading the value makes it "stupid easy" for answer engines to parse.
• Schema is the secret sauce: Use faq and article schema to tell the engine exactly what it's looking at. It’s like giving the ai a cheat sheet for your content.

The old psEO playbook was about flooding the zone with pages for every city or keyword. But in 2026, fluff is a death sentence for your geo. If you scale 1,000 pages of low-value text, the llms will flag you as a low-signal source.

The trick is scaling facts, not just words. Think about a healthcare site scaling "symptoms of X" across different demographics—the data stays tight, but the structure remains machine-readable.

"You're not just optimizing for google anymore. You're optimizing for how machines surface answers." — Stefan Maritz (as discussed earlier).

So, how do we actually track if these machines are picking us up? Let’s talk numbers.

Which should you prioritize first?

So, after all the talk about algorithms and llms, where do you actually put your money? It’s tempting to just keep doing what worked in 2022, but honestly, that’s a recipe for becoming invisible in a world where users just ask their phones for answers and move on.

If you're running a saas or a high-trust brand, you can't just pick one. You need a hierarchy based on intent. For high-intent product pages where you want a demo signup, stick to heavy seo. You need that direct traffic because an ai summary won't convert a lead as well as your own landing page.

But for your top-of-funnel educational stuff—the "how to" guides and industry definitions—you gotta pivot to aeo. As noted earlier by the team at Marcel Digital, aeo is an evolution, not a replacement. You're basically prepping your content to be the "chosen one" when a generative engine synthesizes a result.

We have to stop obsessing over raw traffic numbers. If a ceo asks "how's our search doing?", don't just show a google search console graph. Start tracking "ai share of voice." This means checking how often your brand gets mentioned in chatgpt or perplexity when someone asks for a solution in your niche.

Anyway, it's a messy transition. You'll probably see organic clicks dip while brand searches go up because an ai cited you and the user went looking for you specifically. That’s the win. It’s about being the authority the machines trust, so the humans eventually find you. Focus on the system design of your content, and the impact will follow.