Are AEO / GEO new strategies, or just an evolution of SEO?

This week, Sam and Roop dive back into a hot topic, AI and SEO, to answer the question, “Is SEO for AI engines really something new?”Spoiler alert: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) aren’t entirely new strategies, they’re really evolutions of SEO. Google has confirmed that traditional SEO principles are still the foundation for gaining visibility in AI-driven answer engines. When users ask questions, AI systems don’t just find one article with a matching title. Instead, they break the query into smaller, related questions and then pulls the best, most credible snippets from across the web to form a complete answer. It's like twenty searches in one!That means content today needs to be modular, well-organized, and clearly written so each section can stand alone as an authoritative answer. There are some new metrics, like share of voice and sentiment are emerging, but the key to showing up in answer engines and large language models (LLMs) remains solid SEO fundamentals: structure, clarity, and credibility. AEO and GEO represent the next step in SEO’s evolution, not a replacement for it.But there are some tweaks to what you might be doing with your current content and its mechanical markup that are also vital in the age of AI. You'll have to listen to the episode to hear what those things are!Next week the gang will be reviewing the ever expanding world of OpenAI and ChatGPT, this time in the form of a new browser (Atlas) that could change how we consume content on the internet in a massive way.— Roop, Sam and ClaudiaTell us what you think!