What is the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO?
SEO helps your pages rank in Google's list of links. GEO helps AI assistants like ChatGPT recommend your business, and AEO shapes your content into answers they can quote. SEO Joe checks and fixes all three.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the foundation: titles, descriptions, page structure and speed decide which pages Google finds. AI assistants search the web too, so the pages that rank are the pages they read.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is about being one of the few names in an AI answer. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is about your text being the part that gets quoted. Each one stands on the one before it, which is why it pays to work on all three together.
More questions
Is your website recommended by AI?
Test your website for free: Joe asks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini your customers' questions and shows you who they name instead of you — and what to fix first.