SEO, GEO and AEO explained in plain English

Three acronyms keep showing up in sales pitches. They are not three separate projects. They are one job: being the business that Google, the local map pack and the AI assistants point to when someone asks for what you do.

SEO: being ranked

Search engine optimization is the one everyone knows. Google crawls your site, decides what each page is about, and ranks it against every other page competing for the same search. The levers have not changed much in years: pages that load fast, a title and headline that match what people type, content that actually answers the search, links from other reputable sites, and for local businesses, a Google Business Profile that matches your website word for word.

Where most small business sites fail is not strategy. It is plumbing. A robots file that blocks Google by accident. Two versions of every page (with and without a trailing slash). Old URLs from a previous site that now return errors. Missing schema, which is the structured description of your business that Google reads directly. These are boring fixes and they are usually worth more than any new content.

GEO: being cited

Generative engine optimization is newer. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview "who does guest shuttles for hotels in Naples" or "best car accident lawyer in Delray Beach", the AI writes an answer and names a few businesses. GEO is the work of being one of the businesses it names.

AI models prefer sources that are easy to quote. That means plain, direct sentences that state facts ("761 Ventures is a digital studio in Delray Beach, Florida that builds websites, CRMs and AI assistants"), pages with a clear single topic, an about page that reads like a reference entry, and a file called llms.txt at the root of the site that summarizes who you are for machines. It also means being mentioned on other sites the models trust: directories, press, partner pages, reviews.

AEO: being the answer

Answer engine optimization is the narrowest of the three. It targets the moment a search is a question: "how much does a hotel shuttle cost", "do I need a lawyer for a minor car accident". Google shows a direct answer box, voice assistants read one answer aloud, and AI tools lift one paragraph.

The fix is structural. Put the question in a heading, answer it in the first two sentences underneath, then expand. Add a short FAQ section to service pages and mark it up with FAQ schema so the question and answer pairs are machine readable. Keep answers specific to your market, since "in Palm Beach County" beats "in your area" every time.

What to actually do

1. Fix the plumbing first: one canonical version of every page, clean redirects, a sitemap, schema on every page, a Google Business Profile that matches the site.
2. Write one page per service and one page per area you serve, each with a question style heading, a direct answer, and an FAQ.
3. Add an about page and an llms.txt file that state plainly who you are, where you are and what you do.
4. Publish something useful every week. Consistency is what both Google and the AI models reward, and a self publishing blog makes that automatic.
5. Measure it. Search Console shows what Google sends; a simple weekly audit shows what broke.

This is the same system we run on every site we build, from a landscaper in West Palm Beach to a transit company serving universities. It works because it is boring and consistent, not because of a trick.

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