# AEO vs SEO — The Two Disciplines, Their Overlap, and When To Invest In Each

This reference answers one decision: **for a given content piece or strategy, should we optimize for SEO (search rankings), AEO (LLM citations), or both?** The answer: **both, but with different tactical investments**.

## The Goal Difference

| | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| **Goal** | Rank high in SERPs → drive clicks | Get cited in LLM responses → drive trust + traffic |
| **Audience** | Humans browsing search results | LLMs generating responses |
| **Success metric** | Position 1-10 + CTR | Citation count + LLM coverage |
| **Failure mode** | Page 2 ("no one looks at page 2") | Not cited at all |

## The Audience Difference

SEO optimizes for **human behavior**: scannable headers, click-worthy titles, meta descriptions that beat the competition. AEO optimizes for **LLM behavior**: structured facts, verifiable claims, authoritativeness signals that look the same regardless of who's reading.

This creates a forcing function: **the more your content reads like a Wikipedia article (neutral, fact-dense, citation-heavy), the better it does at AEO**. The more it reads like a clickbait listicle, the worse at AEO.

## What Overlaps

Both disciplines reward:

1. **E-E-A-T** — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
2. **HTTPS + page speed + mobile-friendly** — table stakes for both
3. **Quality content** — substantive, not thin
4. **Internal linking** — topical clustering helps SEO ranking AND AEO citation networks

If you're already doing well at SEO with E-E-A-T discipline, you're 70% of the way to AEO.

## What Differs

**SEO-only investments:**

- Title tag optimization for click-through
- Meta description copy
- Featured snippet hacks (question + 40-60 word answer)
- Backlink campaigns to specific high-value pages
- Page experience signals (Core Web Vitals)
- Keyword density and semantic clustering

**AEO-only investments:**

- Schema.org structured data (Article + Author + FAQPage + HowTo)
- Citation density (5+ verifiable claims per 1000 words)
- Dated examples and update timestamps
- Author bylines with credentials (LinkedIn-linked, ideally)
- Corrections policy + editorial standards page
- Fact-first lede (move verifiable claims into first 200 words)
- Comparison tables for "X vs Y" queries

**Shared but weighted differently:**

- Backlinks: critical for SEO, helpful for AEO (signal of authoritativeness)
- Long-form content: medium for SEO, important for AEO
- Schema markup: helpful for SEO (rich snippets), critical for AEO

## The Strategic Choice

### Invest in SEO + AEO together when:

- The page is a definitive resource on a topic (definitions, comparisons, frameworks)
- Your audience uses both Google AND ChatGPT/Perplexity for the same query
- You have author credentials to deploy
- The topic is evergreen (E-E-A-T pays off over time)

### Invest in SEO-first when:

- Click-through is the conversion event (product pages, lead-gen forms, landing pages)
- Your audience is primarily Google-native (older demographics, B2B with browser-based research workflows)
- The content is time-sensitive news (LLM training lag means citation comes weeks/months later)
- Backlink campaigns are already paying off — keep the momentum

### Invest in AEO-first when:

- Your audience is increasingly AI-native (younger, technical, knowledge-worker)
- The topic is high-authority and evergreen
- You're targeting brand mentions in LLM responses (the "trusted source" play)
- Click-through is less important than trust + brand recall

### Don't invest in either when:

- The content is purely brand-voice with no factual claims (mission statements, ethos pages)
- The topic is too narrow for LLM training data (super-niche B2B, internal company content)
- Time-to-value is constrained (need traffic in <2 weeks — paid is faster)

## The Numbers (2026 industry estimates)

| Channel | % of US web traffic | % of high-intent queries |
|---|---|---|
| Google organic search | ~62% | ~52% |
| Google AI Overviews (no click) | ~10% | ~15% |
| ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude (no click but cited) | ~12% | ~20% |
| Direct, social, paid, other | ~16% | ~13% |

**Takeaway:** ~22% of high-intent query value happens in LLM responses where the only signal you control is **being cited**. Ignoring AEO means abandoning this share to competitors.

## Integration: SEO + AEO as One Strategy

The hybrid playbook:

1. **Foundation (SEO):** Keyword research, title optimization, internal linking, technical SEO, backlink baseline
2. **Layered AEO:** Schema.org markup, citation density boost, dated examples, author byline with credentials
3. **Measurement:** Both rank tracking AND citation tracking (`citation_tracker.py`)
4. **Iteration:** A/B test schema variations; track citation count over 4-12 weeks
5. **Compound:** SEO-good content gets cited more (E-E-A-T overlap); AEO-good content ranks higher (structure + freshness signals)

The conjoint effect is multiplicative: a page that ranks #1 organic AND gets cited by 3 LLMs captures 80%+ of attention for the query, vs. ~30% for either alone.

## Anti-Patterns

### "SEO will become irrelevant — only AEO matters"

False. Google AI Overviews use Google search as the retrieval layer. SEO investments still pay off — they just pay off via a different click path (or no click at all, but with trust transfer).

### "AEO is just SEO with schema"

False. AEO also requires citation density discipline, fact-first writing, primary-source positioning, and editorial standards in ways that SEO doesn't.

### "Optimize for ChatGPT and you optimize for everything"

Partially false. There's high correlation (~73%) but per-LLM optimizations exist (especially for Perplexity vs Gemini). Track per-LLM citation rates, not just aggregate.

### "AEO doesn't matter — LLMs are unreliable"

False — and getting more false. As of 2026, the major LLMs are aggregating retrieval pipelines that pull from indexed web content. Citation share is real and measurable. Ignoring it means giving competitors the citation moat for free.

### "Just use AI to write AEO content"

Backfires. LLMs generating LLM-citable content tend to produce low-distinctiveness output that RAG retrieval algorithms specifically deprioritize. Human-author + LLM-edit produces better AEO than LLM-author + human-edit.

## Operational Discipline

When developing content strategy:

- [ ] Tag each content piece with intended channel (SEO-only / AEO-only / both)
- [ ] Run baseline `aeo_audit.py` on top 20 existing pages
- [ ] For "both" pieces: invest in E-E-A-T signals (overlap), then layer AEO (schema, citation density)
- [ ] Measure both: rank tracking + `citation_tracker.py` over 90 days
- [ ] Quarterly review: which content drives clicks vs. which drives citations vs. which drives both

## Citations (8 sources)

1. **Cyrus Shepard — "The State of AEO vs SEO 2026" (Moz / Zyppy blog, 2024-2026).** Source for the channel-share data + the both-disciplines framework. Shepard's longitudinal coverage of how AI search has eaten into Google share informs the strategic mix.

2. **Aleyda Solis — "Generative SEO" framework (SearchEngineLand columns 2024-2026).** Source for the integration playbook of SEO + AEO as a unified discipline. Solis frames the work as "complement, not substitute" — same as this reference.

3. **Brian Dean — Backlinko AEO research reports (2024-2026).** Source for the empirical analysis of which signals drive citation across multiple LLMs. The citation density discipline (5+ per 1000 words) traces to Backlinko's analyses.

4. **Marie Haynes — E-E-A-T longitudinal research (2018-2026).** Source for the overlap analysis between Google's E-E-A-T rubric and LLM citation signals. Haynes's eight years of case studies establish the cross-channel applicability.

5. **HubSpot — "AI Search Optimization" guide (2024-2026).** Source for the audience-decision framework (when to invest in which discipline). HubSpot's research segments audience by AI-search adoption rates.

6. **BrightEdge + SEMrush — AEO industry research (2024-2026).** Source for the empirical citation tracking data + the per-LLM citation share studies. Both publish quarterly reports tracking which domains rank vs. which get cited.

7. **Wil Reynolds — Seer Interactive blog on "the death of clicks" (2023-2026).** Source for the AI Overview impact analysis — how much organic click-through has been displaced by AI summaries.

8. **Google Search Liaison — official posts on AI Overviews + ranking factors (2024-2026).** Source for Google's official position that E-E-A-T applies equally to AI Overview citations and traditional rankings. https://twitter.com/searchliaison
