It’s hard to believe that AI Overview has only been a part of Google for less than a year, yet it has already changed consumer behavior and search intent as we know it.
AI Overview and other AI search platforms are the reason why your content hasn't been performing as it once did.
With organic click-through rates decreasing by over 60%, many marketers are questioning whether traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) holds the same value, and if Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies should become a fundamental approach for maintaining visibility within search engine results pages.
Table of Contents
- What is SEO?
- What is AEO?
- SEO vs. AEO: Key differences marketers need to understand
- Getting ahead of the technological shift
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing web and blog content so that it can be easily discovered and ranked by search engine crawlers. At its core, SEO focuses on increasing your site's visibility to improve performance within organic search, which in turn helps drive traffic to your website.
SEO falls into two distinct categories: Technical SEO and on-page SEO.
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing the foundation of your website. Elements of technical SEO include site speed, crawability, indexing, mobile friendliness, and site architecture.
On-page SEO refers to optimizing content and elements on your website. This can include maintaining a clear heading hierarchy, adding relevant keywords to your pages, earning high-quality backlinks, and creating content that aligns with your buyer personas' search intent.
Together, these practices help establish a foundation for strong organic search visibility and long-term search performance.
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing webpage content so that search engines can easily identify, understand, and use your responses in AI queries and results. This is also sometimes referred to as Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO.
AEO can be viewed as an extension of SEO, relying on the same foundation: improving your site for both search engines and users.
A key part of AEO is structured data and schema markup, which adds code to your website to help web crawlers interpret and present information in their own language. As AI search becomes more popular, implementing structured data will become an integral part of website and content strategy planning.
Another key element of an AEO strategy includes adding supplementary content to your web pages, such as images, videos, FAQs, etc. This bolsters the type of content on your page, giving both AI and human readers a multitude of sources to pull information from. Supplementary content also increases and diversifies the different schema types on your pages, a technical signal of authoritativeness.
Another important focus is machine readability. This means using a proper heading hierarchy, clear formatting, and easy-to-understand language, and avoiding unnecessary industry jargon, so that both AI and humans can quickly grasp your content.
SEO vs. AEO: Key differences marketers need to understand
Although SEO and AEO are two separate concepts, they both deserve equal attention. The two strategies should work in concert, complementing each other rather than substituting for one another.
To sum it up, the key difference between these two strategies is how your content is discovered: SEO drives discovery, and AEO drives selection.
To help illustrate the key differences between AEO and SEO, we’ve created the following chart:
|
SEO |
AEO |
|
|
Goal |
Rank web pages in search results. |
Be selected as the direct answer. |
|
Optimization |
Keywords, backlinks, and on-page elements. |
Questions, context, entities, and structured data. |
|
Success Metrics |
Traffic, click-through rate, and rankings. |
AI inclusion, rich results, and zero-click visibility. |
|
Content Strategy |
Longer, detailed content to drive clicks. |
Concise, extractable answers for AI and voice search. |
|
Technical Focus |
Site speed, crawlability, and indexing. |
Structured data, schema markup, and machine readability. |
Getting ahead of the technological shift
As AI-driven search continues to reshape how users find information, considering its implications for 2026 is crucial for your business. Creating content that is easily crawlable and structured can be the difference between being discovered and getting lost in the shuffle.
To help marketers navigate this transition, we have developed a solution specifically for HubSpot users. Implementing schema markup is becoming increasingly imperative for AI search, but it can feel overwhelming if you don’t have a technical background.
That’s why we’re excited to share that we’ve been building a HubSpot integration behind the scenes, designed to streamline and simplify your schema markup generation.
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