Build one discovery strategy, with separate measurements for search results and AI answers.
Start with the customer’s decision
A customer choosing software may search for a category, ask an assistant for a shortlist, visit a comparison page, and return with a follow-up question. Treating each touchpoint as a separate marketing discipline makes the handoffs harder to see. Start with the decision: what must someone understand before choosing you?
SEO usually describes work that improves discovery in search results. AEO focuses on being represented in answers. GEO emphasizes discovery in generative experiences. These labels overlap, and teams use them differently. Agree on a working definition before assigning budgets; the label alone does not specify a deliverable.
Keep the foundations; add an answer audit
Google’s guidance says existing SEO practices remain relevant to its AI search features, with no special optimization requirement. That is a useful boundary: do not replace technical maintenance, useful content, or clear navigation with an untested AI-only checklist.
Add a small answer audit to that existing work. Collect questions from sales calls, support tickets, and customer interviews. Run a consistent set across the experiences your buyers use. Save the answers and cited pages. Check whether your brand appears, whether the description is correct, and whether the answer addresses the actual buying criteria.
Reference: Google’s guidance for AI features ↗
Assign work by evidence
If a useful page cannot be accessed, fix access first. If your pricing is ambiguous, clarify the commercial terms. If independent sources describe you inaccurately, request a factual correction with evidence. If an answer reveals a genuine product limitation, feed that observation to the product team rather than trying to erase it through copy.
Keep the measures separate. Search impressions, assistant mentions, citations, referrals, and qualified opportunities describe different events. Put them next to each other in a report, but do not combine them into a single percentage that obscures the denominator.
Your first two weeks
Choose one product, one market, and one customer segment. Document the current search and answer experience for a manageable question set. Identify three concrete problems, give each an owner, and record the change date. Repeat the observations before extending the program to more categories.
The useful outcome is a clearer customer journey and a repeatable learning process. An acronym is helpful only when it makes that work easier to coordinate.
