The AI SEO Blog
Straight guides to ranking in a search landscape that now includes AI answer engines. No hype, no promises of overnight results, and no tactics that get sites penalised.
Start here
New to AI SEO? These three cover the ground in order.
What is AI SEO?
GEO, AEO and LLMO explained, how AI answer engines differ from blue-link results, AI crawler access, and which parts of traditional SEO still carry the weight.
BeginnersAI SEO for Beginners
A practical first-90-days path: crawler setup, AI crawler access, your first content, links, and the realistic timeline for a brand new site.
ChecklistThe AI SEO Checklist
Fifty-plus checks covering technical setup, GPTBot and AI crawler access, structured data, extractable content, and AI visibility tracking.
The vocabulary, sorted out
AI search picked up four names for roughly the same discipline, and the overlap causes real confusion when you are comparing courses or reading guides. There is no consensus definition as of 2026, so treat these as emphases rather than separate fields.
GEO — generative engine optimization
Getting visibility inside AI-generated answers: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini. The broadest of the four terms and currently the most used.
AEO — answer engine optimization
Emphasises structure: writing pages so one specific answer can be lifted from one specific place. A page can rank well and still never get cited if its content is not cleanly extractable.
LLM SEO / LLMO
Focuses on becoming a source that language models quote and attribute, which leans on entity signals and brand mentions rather than page-level tweaks.
AI SEO
The umbrella term, and also used for the separate practice of using AI tools to do SEO work faster. That double meaning is why the phrase causes so much confusion.
Practical takeaway: courses marketing themselves on one acronym are usually teaching the same underlying work. Judge the syllabus, not the label. Our course comparison section lists the questions worth asking of any program, including ours.
Why this matters more than it did last year
Ahrefs analysed 300,000 keywords and found that when an AI Overview appears, the top-ranking page sees a 58% lower average click-through rate — up from 34.5% about eight months earlier (Ahrefs).
Ranking first and getting traffic have come apart. That does not make traditional SEO obsolete — crawlability, useful content, and credible links still decide whether you are eligible for citation at all. It does mean being cited is now a goal in its own right, and that changes how you structure pages.
Coming soon
These guides are on the schedule. They are listed so you know what is planned; they are not published yet and are not linked.
- How to rank in Google AI Overviews
- Generative engine optimization (GEO) explained
- Answer engine optimization (AEO) fundamentals
- Best AI SEO tools, reviewed honestly
- Structured data for AI search
- Optimizing for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini
- llms.txt and AI crawler access
- Entity SEO and brand mentions
- Measuring AI visibility beyond keyword rankings
Frequently asked questions
What does GEO mean in SEO?
GEO stands for generative engine optimization: earning visibility inside AI-generated answers such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and Gemini. It is the broadest and currently most-used of the AI search acronyms.
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
AEO emphasises structure: writing pages so one specific answer can be extracted from one specific place. A page can rank well and never be cited if its content is not cleanly extractable.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO, LLM SEO and AI SEO?
They are largely the same discipline with different emphases, and no consensus definition exists as of 2026. GEO covers visibility in AI answers, AEO focuses on extractable structure, LLM SEO or LLMO focuses on being cited by language models, and AI SEO is the umbrella term that also covers using AI tools to do SEO work.
How much do AI Overviews reduce clicks?
Ahrefs analysed 300,000 keywords and found that the presence of an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page, up from 34.5% roughly eight months earlier.
Want the full framework?
The blog covers pieces. The course covers the whole process, in order, with project work attached.
See the curriculum