SEO, GEO, and AEO: How Customers Find You Now, and What to Do About It

When we started working with a small accounting and tax practice in Delaware, their website had been down for a while. They weren't even sure which of several old GoDaddy accounts owned the domain. Anyone looking for them online came up empty.

Getting the site back up was the obvious fix. But it also made us think about how people look for a business now. Some still type a search into Google and click a link. Some read the box at the top of the results and never scroll. And more and more people skip Google and just ask ChatGPT. That's where the three acronyms come in.

SEO is the one you've heard of

Search engine optimization means ranking in Google's regular list of results. Page speed matters, so does how the site works on a phone, whether the pages are built cleanly, and whether other websites link to yours. If search engines can't read your site properly, nothing else in this post will help much, so this comes first.

AEO: when Google answers the question for you

Answer engine optimization is about the answer box. You've seen it: you search "how long should I keep tax records" and Google shows a short answer pulled from someone's website, above all the links. Voice assistants do the same thing out loud.

Google tends to pick pages that ask the question in a heading and answer it in the next sentence or two, without a long lead-in. It's the reason many of our posts end with an FAQ section.

GEO is about ChatGPT and the other AI tools

Generative engine optimization is the newest of the three, and the one most small businesses haven't looked at yet. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Copilot for a recommendation, the tool draws on what it has read about businesses online. Sometimes it links to you. More often it just mentions you by name, or leaves you out.

Consistency matters more than most people expect. If your website says you close at 6 and your Google Business Profile says 5, or your LinkedIn still lists a service you dropped two years ago, these tools get less sure about you. It also helps when other websites mention you: local directories, partners, clients who link to you. And plain writing works better than marketing copy. "We do bookkeeping for restaurants in Austin" is much easier for an AI tool to repeat than "empowering your financial journey."

You don't need three separate projects

Most of the work overlaps. A site that loads fast, answers real questions in plain words, and keeps its details consistent tends to do well with Google, with answer boxes, and with AI tools. You'll also see other acronyms like LLMO and AIO. For a small business, we'd ignore them. They mostly describe the same things under a different name.

Being found doesn't help if nobody answers

Back to the Delaware firm. The new site was only part of the fix. Before, the people who did find them called, texted, or emailed, and none of it ended up in one place. So we connected the site's contact form to a dashboard. Every inquiry now lands in one list with its status, and the owner gets an email as soon as a new one arrives. We also added a booking calendar, so someone who's ready can schedule a meeting with the owner right there instead of waiting for a callback. (The full case study is here.)

We bring this up because it's easy to spend months on visibility and then let new inquiries sit in an inbox until Thursday. If you're working on one, look at the other too. Our post on what to automate from day one starts with exactly that.

What to do this week

Start by searching for yourself. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini the kind of question a customer would ask, and see who comes up. Then check that your name, address, phone number, hours, and services match on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, and any directories you're listed in. That part is tedious, but it's free.

After that, pick the page on your site that matters most, usually the homepage or your main service page. Make sure it answers the questions customers actually ask you on the phone. If you've got a few of those written down already, add them as a short FAQ at the bottom.

If you'd like help making sure every inquiry gets a fast reply once people do find you, book a free 30-minute call. No pitch, just a clear map of what's automatable in your business.