What is AI SEO?

Why "AI SEO" is the term most people use

Specialists tend to say AEO or GEO. Business owners usually say "AI SEO", because it describes what they want in words they already know: SEO, but for AI. The name matters less than the goal, which is being the business AI recommends when a customer asks. See how the terms compare.

What AI SEO involves

• An AI visibility baseline: which customer questions matter, and whether AI names you, your competitors or nobody.
• Technical AEO and schema: structured data, crawlability and clean page structure so AI systems can read and trust your site.
• Existing page optimisation: rewriting key pages so they answer questions directly, in paragraphs an AI can quote.
• Entity clarity: a consistent name, category and description across your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
• Citations and authority: credible mentions on other sites, which AI tools use to confirm you are who you say you are.
• Measurement: tracking your share of answer across engines over time, not just rankings.

AI SEO vs traditional SEO

They share a foundation. AI tools that search the web still rely on pages being crawlable, fast, well-structured and trustworthy, so good SEO helps. The difference is the goal and the scoreboard. SEO aims to rank a page in a list and measures positions and clicks. AI SEO aims to be named inside the answer and measures how often, how accurately and how prominently you are mentioned. More in AEO vs SEO.

Does AI SEO replace SEO?

No. Google is still a major source of customers, and Google's own AI answers draw on pages that rank in Google Search. For most businesses the right approach is to keep SEO fundamentals in place and add the AI-specific work on top: answer-ready content, entity signals and citations.

How to choose an AI SEO agency

• Ask how they measure results. "You'll rank in ChatGPT" is not a measurement; a tracked set of real customer questions across multiple engines is.
• Ask which questions they will track, and whether you can see them.
• Be wary of guarantees. No one controls what an AI model says.
• Check that they fix your own site and entity, not only publish new content.

See what AEO and AI SEO cost in Australia, or check your AI visibility for free.

Frequently asked questions

What is AI SEO?

AI SEO is optimising a business so AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot and Claude name and recommend it in their answers. It is also called AEO, GEO, AIO or LLM SEO.

Is AI SEO different from SEO?

They overlap. SEO aims to rank pages in search results; AI SEO aims to have a business named and cited inside AI-generated answers. Good SEO foundations help AI SEO, but AI SEO adds answer-ready content, entity clarity, citations and share-of-answer measurement.

How long does AI SEO take to work?

Technical and content fixes can be picked up as soon as search engines and AI tools recrawl a site. Authority and citations usually take longer to build. Results vary by engine, industry and competition, which is why progress should be measured over months, not days.