Half of marketing Twitter is yelling that SEO is dead. The other half is yelling that AEO is a fad. Both are wrong. AEO is what SEO becomes when the search interface changes from a list of blue links to a generated answer. The fundamentals carry over; the surface area shifts.
What stays the same
Crawlability, internal linking, page speed, useful content, real backlinks, and clear topic clusters. None of that goes away. If anything, AEO makes them more important because LLMs lean on the same signals to assess source trust.
What changes
The output. SEO competes for a click; AEO competes for a sentence. That changes the writing: lead with the answer, write in extractable chunks, use definitive language, and structure every page around a question the buyer is asking.
The measurement also changes. Rank-tracking still matters, but you now also track AI share-of-voice — how often your brand shows up by name across a fixed panel of buyer-intent prompts.
- Format: lists, tables, FAQ blocks, and TL;DRs get cited more than long prose.
- Schema: Article, FAQPage, HowTo, and Organization JSON-LD become table stakes.
- Entities: a strong, internally-linked About page now matters as much as backlinks.
How to run both as one program
Pick the questions your buyers actually ask. Write the answer in a way that ranks on Google and gets lifted by ChatGPT. Add schema. Track ranks and AI mentions in the same dashboard. The work is the same; the scorecard widens.
Frequently asked questions
Will AEO replace SEO?
No. Even with AI Overviews, classic search still drives most B2B service traffic. AEO sits on top, capturing the zero-click queries where buyers used to bounce.
Do I need different content for AEO?
Same content, structured differently. Lead with the answer, add H2s as questions, include a FAQ block, and ship schema.
What's the fastest AEO win?
Add FAQPage schema and a structured FAQ block to your top five pages. Citation rates in Perplexity and ChatGPT usually move within weeks.