AEO, GEO, AI SEO — It’s Still Pretty Much Just SEO With Some Extra Groundwork

If you’ve been anywhere near the SEO industry in the last year, you’ve been hit with a wall of new acronyms. AEO. GEO. LLMO. AI SEO. Every one of them presented as a brand-new discipline that requires brand-new expertise and, conveniently, a brand-new budget.

 

We’ve heard from several business owners who’ve been told by their current agency that they need to pay extra for “AI search optimisation” on top of their existing SEO retainer. A separate line item for getting their brand visible in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google’s AI Overviews. As if that’s somehow a completely different job.

 

It isn’t. The foundation of AI visibility is the same thing it’s always been: good SEO. There are a few extra steps worth taking, and we’ll cover those here. But the idea that you need to buy a whole new service to show up in AI search is, to put it politely, a stretch. We’ve written before about how GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) works and how LLM traffic compares to Google search. This post is about why they’re all part of the same picture.

 

If Your SEO Is Working, Your AI Visibility Is Already Happening

 

Here’s the thing nobody selling AEO packages wants you to hear: if you rank well on Google and Bing, you’re already improving your visibility on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.

 

These AI systems don’t have a secret index. They pull from the same pool of well-ranked, well-structured, authoritative content that search engines use. Google’s AI Overviews are generated directly from its own search index. ChatGPT’s search feature browses the live web using Bing. Perplexity crawls and cites web pages in real time. When your site ranks well, produces clear and useful content, and carries genuine authority in your niche, the AI models pick up on it.

 

Good SEO begets good AI visibility. It’s not a separate discipline. It’s the same discipline with a bigger stage.

 

That doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The way AI models select and cite sources has some nuances worth understanding, and there are practical steps you can take to make your content more likely to be referenced. But those steps sit on top of a solid SEO foundation. They don’t replace it, and they certainly don’t justify a second retainer.

 

The Upsell Nobody Needed

 

We’ve now heard on quite a few occasions of SEO agencies adding AEO or GEO as separate paid services. A bolt-on to the existing SEO package. Extra monthly cost. New deliverables report. The works.

 

What exactly are they doing for that money? In most cases, the same things that should already be part of any decent SEO retainer in 2026: structuring content clearly, using schema markup, building brand mentions, optimising Google Business Profiles, and making sure the site is technically sound. If your agency isn’t already doing those things, the problem isn’t that you need an AEO add-on. It’s that your SEO isn’t up to scratch.

 

Google themselves settled this in May 2026. Their official AI search optimisation guidance includes a mythbusting section that explicitly tells site owners to ignore tactics being packaged and sold as GEO services. The message is clear: for Google Search, including its AI features, the work that matters is the same work that’s always mattered. Quality content. Technical health. Authority. Trust.

 

If someone’s charging you thousands a year for a service built on acronyms Google says you don’t need, it’s worth asking some pointed questions about what you’re actually getting.

 

Brand Signals Matter More Than Ever (and LLMs Are Easy to Impress)

 

One thing that has genuinely shifted is how much brand signals matter. Google was always interested in brand trust. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) has been a core part of its quality guidelines for years. But the rise of AI search has amplified it.

 

Here’s the interesting part. A bit of self-promotion, both on your own site and across the wider web, seems to be taken more or less at face value by large language models. You can talk about your brand, your expertise, your track record, and the LLMs tend to accept it. They cross-reference to a degree, checking whether your claims are consistent across multiple sources, but they’re not nearly as sophisticated as Google’s spam filters at distinguishing genuine authority from confident self-promotion.

 

In some ways, it feels like we’ve gone back to how SEO worked before 2012, before Google’s Penguin and Panda updates started cracking down on manipulative tactics. Back then, you could influence rankings through sheer volume of mentions and self-promotional content. The AI layer has a bit of that same naivety. The difference is that Google itself is still there, still sophisticated, and still the primary driver of the content these AI models reference. So the play isn’t to game the LLMs directly. It’s to build genuine brand presence that works for both Google and AI search at the same time.

 

What does that look like in practice? Consistent messaging across your website, your Google Business Profile, industry directories, and any platforms where your brand is mentioned. Original content that demonstrates real expertise. Reviews and testimonials that reinforce trust. Press coverage and citations on relevant third-party sites. None of this is new. It’s brand building, and it’s always been part of good SEO. The AI layer just makes it count for more.

 

Reddit, forums, and review sites also play a significant role in how LLMs validate brands. Recent citation studies show Reddit is one of the most heavily referenced sources across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. If your business is being discussed positively in genuine forum threads or has strong review profiles, that feeds directly into how AI models perceive and recommend you. The catch is that there’s no ethical way to promote yourself on Reddit. Posting about your own business on a platform built around community trust can easily be construed as false or biased advertising, and Reddit’s users are very good at sniffing it out. The only honest approach is to be good enough at what you do that other people talk about you. That’s not a shortcut — it’s just the reality of how brand presence works on these platforms.

 

The llms.txt File — Free, Fast, and Worth Doing

 

One practical addition worth mentioning is the llms.txt file. It’s a simple markdown file that sits in your website’s root directory (like robots.txt or sitemap.xml) and tells AI systems which pages on your site are most important and what your business is about. A growing number of websites are adopting them, including companies like Stripe, Cloudflare, and Anthropic.

 

Google’s position on llms.txt is, characteristically, a bit contradictory. In May 2026, Google’s Search team published guidance explicitly saying you don’t need llms.txt or any other AI-specific files to appear in Google Search or its AI features. John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, called the file speculative and compared it to the old meta keywords tag.

 

Then, days later, Google’s Chrome team shipped an llms.txt check inside Chrome Lighthouse, their own developer audit tool. The documentation states that without the file, AI agents “may spend more time crawling the site to understand its high-level structure.” When SEO consultant Lily Ray asked Mueller about the contradiction, he explained that the file is “not done for search” but is useful as a convenience for AI coding tools parsing documentation.

 

So one arm of Google says ignore it, and another arm audits for it. Make of that what you will.

 

Our approach is simple: we create llms.txt files for all our client sites. It takes minutes. It costs nothing. The worst case is that it does absolutely no harm. The best case is that it helps AI agents understand your site more efficiently, which could improve how they reference your content. When the downside is zero and the effort is trivial, there’s no reason not to do it. An Ahrefs study of 137,000 sites found that 97% of llms.txt files never get read by AI bots, which tells you something about where we are with adoption. But that’ll change, and being ahead of it costs you nothing.

 

What’s Actually Changed (and What Hasn’t)

 

To be fair, the SEO approach in 2026 is slightly different compared to a year ago. There’s more emphasis on brand signals and entity-level authority. Structuring content so AI can extract clean answers matters more than it used to. Making sure your business is consistently represented across the platforms that LLMs reference (Google, LinkedIn, industry directories, review sites) is increasingly important. And yes, things like llms.txt files and schema markup carry a bit more weight in an AI context.

 

But the fundamentals haven’t changed. Technical SEO, quality content, genuine authority, local optimisation — these are the same things that have driven rankings for years. Google was interested in brand trust long before ChatGPT launched. The AI layer hasn’t invented a new game. It’s just raised the stakes on the existing one.

 

The “extra groundwork” in the title of this post is real, but it’s exactly that — extra groundwork on top of a solid SEO foundation. It’s a few additional tasks folded into an existing strategy, not a whole new service that requires its own budget line.

 

There are a few specific things we do as part of our standard SEO service to help promote our clients’ visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, and the other AI platforms. But our focus is always Google-first. Get the SEO right and the AI visibility follows. That’s the order it works in, not the other way around.

 

The Bottom Line

 

If your agency is trying to sell you AI search optimisation as a separate service, get a second opinion. Ask them specifically what they’re doing for that money that isn’t already covered by your SEO retainer. If the answer involves a lot of acronyms and not much substance, you have your answer.

 

And if your current SEO isn’t working well enough to show up in AI search, the problem isn’t that you need a new service. It’s that your existing SEO needs fixing. Our SEO packages include everything your site needs to perform across Google, AI Overviews, and the major AI platforms — because it’s all part of the same job.

 

If you’d like to see where your site stands right now, request a free SEO report or get in touch with our team.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

What is the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of improving your website’s visibility in search engines like Google and Bing. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) describe the same core work applied to AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews. In practice, the techniques overlap almost entirely. Good SEO drives good AI visibility because the AI systems draw from the same well-ranked, authoritative content that search engines reward.

 

Do I need to pay extra for AI search optimisation?

In most cases, no. The work that drives AI visibility — quality content, structured data, brand authority, and technical SEO — should already be part of any competent SEO retainer in 2026. If your agency is charging separately for AEO or GEO, ask what specifically they’re delivering that isn’t already covered by your existing package.

 

What is an llms.txt file and does my website need one?

An llms.txt file is a simple markdown file placed in your website’s root directory that tells AI systems which pages are most important and what your business does. Google’s Search team says it’s not needed for Google Search or AI Overviews, but their Chrome Lighthouse tool audits for it. It takes minutes to create, costs nothing, and carries no downside, so it’s worth having.

 

How do I check if my business appears in AI search results?

The simplest way is to ask directly. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity and type queries your customers would use, like “best [your service] in [your area].” See whether your business is mentioned, and if so, whether the information is accurate. For more systematic tracking, tools like Wellows and Peec AI monitor AI citations over time, but manual spot-checks are a good starting point.