If three acronyms have done the rounds on LinkedIn this year, it's SEO, AEO, and GEO. They sound interchangeable. They aren't. Each describes a different layer of the same buyer journey, and treating them as one budget is how B2B teams end up paying twice for half the result. Here's the actual distinction, where they overlap, and the order I'd spend in if I were starting from scratch today.

What each acronym actually means

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation. The original job. Make a web page rank higher in Google (or Bing, Baidu, etc.). Signals: backlinks, page speed, on-page targeting, internal linking, structured data, content depth, freshness. Goal: a human clicks your link.

AEO - Answer Engine Optimisation. The 2024+ job. Make AI engines cite your content when generating an answer. Signals: schema markup, llms.txt, direct question-led content structure, entity consistency, original data, expert mentions. Goal: the AI repeats your brand as the source.

GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation. Coined in late 2023 by an academic paper out of Princeton. Often used as a synonym for AEO. Some practitioners use GEO specifically for generative AI products (Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot) and reserve AEO for conversational engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). In practice the work is 90% the same.

The one-liner

"SEO ranks. AEO and GEO get quoted. They're not competing budgets, they're stacked layers."

Where the boundaries actually blur

The strict definitions matter less than the actual buyer behaviour. A real B2B buyer in 2026 does this:

  1. Asks ChatGPT or Perplexity: "What's the best [category] for a mid-market SaaS?" → AEO/GEO territory.
  2. Sees three brands named. Googles two of them. → SEO territory.
  3. Lands on a brand's site, expects to find direct answers on the page. → SEO + AEO overlap.
  4. Sees a Google AI Overview summarising the brand's positioning. → GEO territory.
  5. Books a demo. → Pipeline.

Every step touches at least one of the three. If you're only doing one, you're losing buyers somewhere in the journey. The teams that win do all three, but they sequence them properly.

The overlap, and where each acronym has unique work

About 60% of the work overlaps. Quality content, technical hygiene, structured data, internal linking, page speed - these matter for all three. But each has unique work that doesn't carry over:

WorkSEOAEOGEO
Technical hygiene (speed, crawlability)✓✓✓
Schema markup (FAQ, Article, Organisation)✓✓✓
Keyword-targeted long-form content✓--
Backlink building / digital PR✓partialpartial
llms.txt file-✓✓
Conversational query targeting-✓✓
Entity consistency across the webpartial✓✓
Citable assets (Q&A, original data)-✓✓

The big takeaway: SEO foundations carry over to AEO and GEO. The reverse isn't true. You can't do AEO well on a site with broken technical SEO.

Which to spend on first if you're starting from zero

If a B2B operator asked me where to put the first $5,000, this is the order I'd give them:

  1. Technical SEO foundations (weeks 1–2). Fix the basics: clean URL structure, fast load times, crawlable pages, no broken links, working sitemap. Without this, nothing else compounds.
  2. Schema markup + llms.txt (week 2). Add FAQPage, Organisation, Article, and Service schema. Write a real llms.txt. Full walkthrough here.
  3. Content restructure (weeks 3–6). Rewrite top 10 pages so they directly answer the questions buyers actually ask. Lead with the answer, not the brand story.
  4. Entity consistency pass (week 6). Same company description across your site, LinkedIn, G2, Crunchbase, partner directories. AI engines triangulate.
  5. Citable asset build (weeks 6–12). Original data, comparison pages, Q&A formats. The stuff AI prefers to quote.

That sequence covers SEO, AEO and GEO foundations together. After that, ongoing content and brand mention work compounds across all three.

The order of operations rule

SEO foundations first. AEO/GEO layered on top. Anyone selling them as separate, parallel programs is doubling your invoice without doubling the result.

Common mistakes I see B2B teams make

  • Buying AEO as a standalone service when their site doesn't even have valid schema. The AEO budget gets eaten by foundational SEO work that should have been done first.
  • Treating GEO as a 2026 buzzword and ignoring it because "it's just SEO". The work is largely SEO + extras, but the extras matter - they're the difference between being cited and being invisible.
  • Hiring two agencies - one for SEO, one for AEO. 60% of the work is shared. You're paying twice for the overlap and getting inconsistent strategy.
  • Measuring AEO with SEO tools. Ahrefs doesn't tell you how often you're cited in ChatGPT. You need a separate citation-tracking method (manual prompt testing + dedicated tools like Profound).
  • Waiting for AEO to be "proven". By the time it's universally accepted, the cheap citations will be gone. Brands that started in 2024–25 own the category now.

The takeaway

SEO, AEO and GEO aren't three competing budgets. They're one stacked program with overlapping work and small, surgical differences at each layer. The teams winning in 2026 do all three under one strategy, in the right order, measured the right way.

If you're trying to pick one to start with, you can't - SEO foundations support everything else. But if you've got the basics covered and you're wondering what to spend the next dollar on, it's almost always AEO/GEO foundations: llms.txt, schema, citable assets, entity consistency.

That's where the next 12 months of pipeline lives.

Where to start. Pick the acronym that matches your gap, not the one with the best marketing. If you do not know which one that is, a website audit will tell you in a day - technical SEO, AI visibility and content gaps, with a prioritised fix list.

AEO GEO SEO AI Search
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