Core Differences & How to Win Visibility in Both

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your content appear on Google and other traditional search engines. 

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is a relatively new concept that helps your content appear in AI-generated responses, like those from ChatGPT.

In this guide, you’ll learn what AEO and SEO are, how they differ, where they overlap, and how to succeed with both.

What is AEO?

AEO (answer engine optimization) is a digital marketing strategy that helps make your web content easily discoverable by AI search engines like ChatGPT and voice assistants like Alexa.

The goal of AEO strategy is to have your content appear or be cited when someone asks AI a question related to your business, product, service, or industry.

With 77% of ChatGPT users in the USA treating it like a search engine, and nearly 60% of consumers using AI tools to shop, AEO can drive discovery, trust, and conversions.

For example, if you sell a project management tool for finance teams, you want your brand to appear when someone asks ChatGPT, “What’s the best project management software for finance teams?”

What is SEO?

SEO (search engine optimization) is a digital marketing strategy that helps your website rank higher in traditional search engine results like Google and Bing. 

SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, content depth, and site structure to drive organic traffic and improve your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).

At the same time, SEO strategies continually evolve to include SERP features like AI Overviews, carousels, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, knowledge panels, and more.

SEO vs AEO: What Are the Core Differences?

At the simplest level, SEO is about ranking in traditional search engines, while AEO is about being included in AI-generated answers. 

But the two overlap. 

Many of the same signals that help you rank in Google also increase your chances of being cited by AI tools. 

And AI features, like Google AI Mode, live in both worlds.

Here’s how AEO and SEO differ—and the similarities they share:

	SEO	AEO
Goal	Rank high in traditional search engines—including SERPs and AI-powered features like AI Overviews—to drive traffic to your site	Get your content cited or mentioned in AI-generated answers (and in voice search) to grow brand awareness and drive traffic to your site
User behavior	Users browse SERPs and decide which link to click. They also explore AI-generated answers to satisfy their search intent and potentially click to learn more.	Users ask questions and read the AI-generated answer. They might also explore the sources used to create the AI response (citations).
User intent	Navigate to a site for detailed information or get an instant response via a SERP feature	Get detailed information directly from the AI search engine
Discovery surface	Direct links, featured snippets, People Also Ask, local packs, knowledge panels, AI Overviews, and AI mode	AI answers, citations, embedded URLs, brand mentions, and Google’s AI features
Success metric	Higher rankings and visibility across both search results and AI-powered features, leading to more organic traffic	Increase in AI brand mentions, citations, or placements in AI-generated responses

How AEO and SEO Work Together

While SEO builds your domain authority and ensures your content is trustworthy, AEO makes that content easier for AI systems to parse, understand, and cite.

Strong SEO fuels AEO, and together they boost your chances of being cited in AI results. Based on our recent research:

• AI favors trusted domains: Strong organic rankings and authority make a domain more likely to be cited
• AI doesn’t necessarily cite high-ranking pages: AI often pulls deeper subpages, blog posts, or documentation within trusted domains instead of the exact ranking URLs
• Overlap depends on the platform: Google AI Mode’s sidebar shows lower overlap with Google’s top 10, while its additional links have much higher overlap. Perplexity has the strongest alignment with Google, and ChatGPT the weakest, though it still leans on authoritative domains.
• Authority drives inclusion: AI consistently prioritizes domains with strong backlinks, authority, and visibility—even when it pulls different pages than Google’s top results

How to Succeed in Both AEO and SEO

There are many strategies to help you succeed in both AEO and SEO—from creating original content to building external signals and structuring your content for retrieval. 

Let’s break those down in detail.

1. Create Unique, Research-Backed Content

When planning your digital content, make sure you bring something original to the table—like personal experience, fresh data, or expert insights.

This sends positive signals to traditional search engines and LLMs as they aim to give people the best answers grounded in real experience that AI alone can’t generate. 

For example, we performed original data research and interviewed multiple experts to publish our piece, “Can AI Content Rank on Google?” 

That post now ranks on the first page of Google:

The post also appears at the top in Google’s AI Overviews:

And is cited by LLMs like ChatGPT:

To create content that boosts both SEO and AEO:

• Write from first-hand experience: Share what you’ve actually done, tested, or figured out through real work. Even small insights can help your content stand out.
• Use original data: Run surveys, document experiments, or pull insights from your own product. Unique stats and internal findings add credibility and increase the chances of being cited.
• Add author bios: Make it clear who’s behind the content and why they’re worth listening to. Mention each author’s role, area of expertise, or hands-on experience. 
• Quote experts: If you don’t have direct experience, speak to someone who does. Bring in their insights, ideas, or frameworks. It adds depth and signals trust to both AI and human readers.

2. Build Authority Through Brand Mentions and Backlinks

When your brand is consistently mentioned across the web, it builds awareness and signals authority—essential for both traditional and AI search engines.

In practice, this translates into attracting:

As Alex Birkett noted in our recent webinar, both signals are critical if you want to succeed in SEO and AEO:

Do backlinks still matter? Yeah, a hundred percent. They’re still an input vector for your website’s authority and page authority, and they’re important in both classic and LLM optimization. But brand mentions also play a big role—even unlinked ones—because with LLMs it’s more text-based: the model looks at the text around the prompt and whether your brand is mentioned there. What matters is being referenced across multiple trusted sources.

Alex Birkett, Co-Founder of Omniscient Digital

Here are a few tips that can help you earn more mentions and backlinks:

• Create content backed by original research and expert insights that others want to reference and link to
• Contribute expert commentary to blogs or media outlets in your niche
• Pitch guest posts to sites with high authority and strong reputation in your industry
• Work with writers who regularly contribute to credible publications and already have relationships with editors
• Collaborate with trusted brands or creators on co-branded content, original studies, or interviews that naturally lead to mentions and links

For example, HubSpot frequently publishes original, expertise-driven content, like its annual State of Marketing Report, which features original research and essential industry data. 

The report’s page has generated thousands of backlinks over the years:

It also gets mentioned by various bloggers, outlets, and other relevant industry players:

Creating such content at scale has led to HubSpot earning an extremely high AI visibility score. Besides, HubSpot is frequently cited by LLMs and draws millions of organic visits each month.

3. Use Entities to Strengthen Topic Relevance

Adding entities—clearly named concepts like people, companies, products, or places—helps both search engines and AI match your page to relevant topics and queries.

Google uses these entities as part of its Knowledge Graph—a database of facts about people, companies, products, and places. And LLM models like ChatGPT rely on entities to make connections between prompts, topics, and brands.

For example, writing about Amazon could mean the company orthe rainforest. 

Adding terms like “Amazon Prime,” “Jeff Bezos,” or “ecommerce” makes it clear you’re talking about the business.

To effectively use entities in your content:

• Use consistent terminology for tools, frameworks, and products (e.g., use “Google AI Overviews” everywhere instead of alternating with “AIOs” or “Google AIOs”)
• Include your own brand name and product name clearly, especially near key points of value
• Add related concepts and subtopics, e.g., if you’re writing about Tesla, include “electric vehicles,” “Model 3,” or “EV charging stations,” and talk about pricing, safety, and related themes
• Include relevant examples and analogies that support the topical salience, e.g., comparing website architecture to the blueprint of a house—both determine how easily people can navigate the space

For example:

Could be better (inconsistent and generic)	Good (entities, consistency, and clarity)
“Our tool tracks rankings in Google SERPs and AIOs, plus AI mode and chatbots. You can also see which sources mention your site so you know where you’re cited.”	“Our platform tracks rankings in Google SERPs and Google AI Overviews, plus visibility in Google AI Mode and ChatGPT. You can also see the citation sources used for your pages (e.g., Reddit, YouTube, G2), so you know where you’re being referenced.”

4. Structure Your Content to Translate Meaning

Well-structured content further helps traditional search engines and LLMs understand relationships between concepts and determine what’s most important on your page.

In practice, this means organizing information in a logical, hierarchical way with clear sections and formatting.

To optimize your content structure for SEO and AEO (and users):

• Use clear hierarchical heading structure (H1, H2, H3) that creates logical topic relationships
• Place key information in strategic locations like the beginnings of paragraphs, sections, and documents
• Use ordered lists for processes/rankings and bulleted lists for related items
• Add structured data markup (schema.org) when possible to explicitly label content types like FAQs, products, or reviews
• Maintain consistent formatting throughout your content to reinforce structure

For example, this Semrush article uses clear H2s and answers each heading’s question in the first sentence of the section.

It also breaks related items into bullet points, making the page easier for readers to scan and easier for bots to parse.

It also uses numbered lists to outline steps and keeps formatting consistent, making complex information easier to follow.

5. Keep Your Content Fresh

Regular content audits are non-negotiable. Keeping your content updated increases your chances of being surfaced in both search engine results and AI responses. 

Fresh content is an important SEO ranking factor and is key to content quality, especially for pages where relevance changes quickly (e.g., news). 

Research also shows that LLMs have a clear preference for pages that are recent and trustworthy.

Here’s what you can do to keep your content fresh and relevant:

• Update factual information, statistics, and examples with the most current data
• Refresh screenshots and visuals to reflect current interfaces and designs
• Add new sections covering recent developments in your topic area
• Remove or update references to outdated tools, methods, or practices
• Optimize for emerging keywords and changing search intent

How to Monitor AEO and SEO

You can track your performance in SEO and AEO using Semrush’s SEO Toolkit and AI SEO Toolkit.

Using these tools regularly helps you understand what works (and what doesn’t) so you can make strategic improvements.

Key metrics to analyze include:

• Keyword rankings in traditional search results
• Visibility in Google’s AI features like AI Overviews and AI Mode
• AI brand mentions and rankings in LLMs
• Citation sources linking to your content
• Competitor performance across both channels

For example, you can use the Keyword Magic Tool to find keywords to rank on Google—whether on SERPs or in AI features.

You can then track these keywords in Position Tracking for Google SERPs, and use AI Visibility to monitor how you show up in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT.

Finally, use the AI SEO Toolkit’s Visibility report to see the specific AI prompts where you appear (or don’t) versus competitors across AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other platforms.

By tracking both SEO and AEO side by side, you’ll see where traffic is slipping and where AI is picking it up—so you can double down on the channels that drive results.

Frequently Asked Questions about AEO vs SEO

1. Will AEO Replace SEO?

AEO will not replace SEO, but they will increasingly work together as complementary strategies. While SEO focuses on traditional search rankings to drive organic website traffic, AEO optimizes for AI-generated answers that may not always lead to clicks. The relationship is symbiotic—strong SEO fuels AEO success since AI systems favor content from trusted domains with strong organic rankings and authority.

2. What Is the Difference Between SEO, AEO, and GEO?

SEO, AEO, and GEO target different search platforms, each with its own user behaviors and optimization requirements. In practice, they overlap: all three aim to optimize your digital presence so people can find you, whether through traditional search engines or AI chatbots.

Here’s a quick comparison:

• SEO (search engine optimization) focuses on ranking in traditional search engines like Google and Bing to drive traffic through organic search results

• AEO (answer engine optimization) targets the AI layer within traditional search engines, as well as AI search engines, focusing on optimizing content to appear in direct AI-generated answers and featured snippets

• GEO (generative engine optimization) also targets the AI ecosystem, including standalone generative AI tools, and focuses on getting content cited and used in AI-generated responses

3. Can You Optimize One Page for Both SEO and AEO?

Yes, you can—and should—optimize one page for both SEO and AEO, by:

• Structuring content logically with proper headings
• Enriching it with original research and expert insights
• Using clear entities for topic relevance
• Keeping information current and comprehensive

4. What Tools Can You Use for SEO and AEO?

Semrush offers dedicated toolkits for both SEO and AEO: 

• The SEO Toolkit helps with keyword research, link building, site audits, and position tracking
• The AI SEO Toolkit shows where and how your brand and content appear in AI-generated answers compared to your competitors 

You can also use Semrush’s Content Toolkit to generate new content and optimize your existing drafts to rank in traditional and AI search.