If you’ve started reading about AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation – you might be wondering where it fits alongside the SEO work you’re already (hopefully) doing. Are they competitors? Does one replace the other? Do you have to choose?

The short answer: you don’t have to choose. In fact, the businesses that will win in search over the next few years are the ones doing both well. But they’re not the same thing, and understanding the difference matters.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving your website’s visibility in traditional search engine results – primarily Google. It involves:

  • Targeting keywords that your customers search for
  • Building backlinks from other websites
  • Technical improvements to site speed, structure, and crawlability
  • Creating content that ranks for relevant queries
  • Local SEO tactics like Google Business Profile and local citations

The goal is to appear on page one of Google when someone searches for something relevant to your business.

What is AEO?

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of making your business recommendable by AI tools and answer engines – things like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants. It involves:

  • Structuring content so AI can extract clear, direct answers
  • Implementing Schema markup (structured data) so machines understand your business
  • Building consistent authority signals across the web
  • Writing FAQ content that mirrors natural language queries
  • making sure your business information is consistent everywhere online

The goal is to be the business that AI recommends when someone asks it a relevant question.

The Key Differences

Who You’re Optimising For

SEO is fundamentally about algorithms – ranking signals, crawl budgets, domain authority. AEO is about AI understanding – can a language model extract useful, trustworthy information from your site and your broader web presence?

How the User Gets the Answer

With SEO, the user gets a list of results and clicks through to your site. With AEO, the AI summarises an answer and may or may not include a link. This changes what “success” looks like – an AEO win might mean your business name gets mentioned in an AI response even without a click.

The Type of Content That Works

SEO rewards long-form content that fully covers a topic. AEO rewards direct, clearly structured content that answers a specific question concisely. The two aren’t mutually exclusive – you can write content that does both – but the emphasis differs.

Trust Signals

SEO is heavily weighted towards backlinks and domain authority. AEO is more about overall trustworthiness – reviews, citations, consistency, and the quality of your information across multiple platforms.

Where They Overlap

Here’s the good news: the fundamentals of good SEO and good AEO are closely aligned.

  • Technical SEO helps AEO – a fast, well-structured site is easier for both Google and AI to parse
  • Quality content serves both – genuinely useful content that answers real questions performs well in both traditional search and AI recommendations
  • Local SEO feeds AEO – Google Business Profile, local citations, and reviews are signals that both systems rely on
  • Authority matters everywhere – the credibility signals that earn backlinks also signal trustworthiness to AI

Think of AEO as an extension of what good SEO already encourages. If you’ve been doing SEO properly, you have a solid foundation. AEO adds a layer on top of it.

Why You Need Both in 2026 and Beyond

Google still processes billions of searches a day. Traditional SEO isn’t going anywhere. But AI-powered search is growing fast, and the businesses that ignore it now will be playing catch-up later.

For businesses in Greater Manchester – whether you’re in Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside, or Manchester itself – local search is changing. Someone asking their phone “find me a web designer in Oldham” might get an AI answer rather than a map pack. Someone asking ChatGPT for recommendations might get a list that does or doesn’t include your business depending entirely on whether you’ve done any AEO work.

The cost of getting started with AEO is relatively modest compared to traditional SEO, especially while competition is low. That makes now the ideal time.

Getting Both Right with Codevall

We handle both SEO and AEO for businesses across Greater Manchester – as an integrated approach, not two separate siloed services. Everything we do in SEO is designed to support AEO, and vice versa.

Explore our SEO services, learn about AEO, or get in touch for a free audit of where your business currently stands.