To start, what do these strings of letters actually mean? 

AIO, GEO, and AEO stand for artificial intelligence optimization, generative engine optimization, and answer engine optimization, respectively. Those address: 

• AIO — artificial intelligence optimization: Google Search’s relatively new feature using an LLM (AKA generative AI) to attempt to provide a summarized answer to your search query, which then appears first above traditional search results. 

• GEO — generative engine optimization: Here is the process of optimizing your website’s contents to enhance its visibility on these new, AI-focused search engines. 

• AEO — answer engine optimization: This is an optimization strategy focused on providing search engine users with direct and concise answers to their queries. 

Why is this important? 

This all comes down to the evolution of search engines, particularly Google. While their foundation has historically been web crawling, now search engines aren’t just crawlers — they’re interpreters of context. Now they rely on structured data, semantic interpretation and clarity, and inferred relevance to try and “figure out” what deserves to be cited, summarized, or recommended. 

Whether talking about GEO, AEO, or AIO, each of these terms are distinct from search engine optimization, or SEO; the latter was focused on how to be as optimized as possible for organic search results — these are totally focused on optimizing for Google’s new generative AI, LLM-based pivot. 

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, in particular focuses on crafting clear, direct answers to give yourself the best chance at being referenced in featured snippets, voice searches, and AI responses. Related, it’s worth acknowledging: As voice assistants and smart speakers become popular, concise answers matter more. 

Basically, by optimizing for AEO, you’re positioning your website prominently by offering accurate, quality answers which Google can reference directly on its search engine results page. Implicitly, this ends up boosting your visibility and a sense of authority, expertise, and trust. 

In the new ecosystem, you’re no longer optimizing for “just” a page view — now you also have to optimize towards visibility in this search engine-based, LLM and AI-generated environment. 

What does this change for us? 

As a small business digital marketer, this changes how we: 

• Research keywords 

• Structure content 

• Measure success 

Let’s look at each. 

Researching keywords 

Now, this is centered around questions, entities, and prompt-based queries. 

Prompt-based queries are essentially questions asked by users, which in turn act as instructions to guide Google’s LLM “AI” in generating the relevant outputs. Basically: User asks a question, the LLM uses its machine learning-interpreted context to provide its best shot at an AI-generated answer. (Hopefully, but not always, an accurate one, which is where your website can come in.) 

This is a fundamental part of interacting with AI systems; now, when it comes to researching keywords, we have to keep these potential queries in mind. 

Structuring content 

Because of how the search engine AI model uses content data points to both contextualize input (user queries) and generate output (LLM-generated answers to said queries), your site and other content should reflect this. 

More than ever, we want to focus on clean, straightforward information that’s specifically answer-focused. Often this should be rather modular, since that helps break down the overall contents of a page (or video, or whatever) and helps organize it into that clean, straightforward information we want. 

This also means you should have, when appropriate, clear H1 headings, H2 headings, and so on to help organize it. 

Basically: Information for humans is data for the LLM and crawler, and structuring this so that it’s outlined clearly in an easy-to-read-and-crawl manner works to that end. 

Measuring success 

We’ve discussed this in a previous blog, but where once traffic and clicks were king, now we have to rethink this. 

Search engines simply aren’t facilitating traffic like they used to because of their shift to AI, so if you’re using traffic as a key metric the same way you used to, you’ll make little headway and distribute resources inefficiently to chase a goal that isn’t coming. Instead, shift your focus to visibility, mentions, and citations — not just traffic. (Although traffic is of course still good!) 

What KPIs are we now putting more weight on? 

• Engagement metrics: For example, average session duration 

• Impressions in Google Search Console: Even while clicks are decreasing, an increase in impressions can indicate your information was used in an AI overview 

• Revenue-driving KPIs: Conversions and purchases 

What else? 

Critically, this also is relatively time sensitive — brands, agencies, and businesses who adapt early to this can disproportionately direct the future of search visibility, with others who get in later fighting for a decreasing amount of real estate left over below the fold. 

The winning strategy right now looks increasingly like combining AIO, AEO, and GEO for full-spectrum visibility that equates to what SEO provided previously.  

What are we at Fujisan doing? 

Currently, our top priority is monitoring this relatively fast-evolving search engine ecosystem and adapting accordingly — we’re now working to encompass not just search engine optimization, but GEO, AIO, and AEO. (Which, since it’s been a minute since we mentioned them by name, stands for: generative engine optimization, artificial intelligence optimization, and answer engine optimization.) 

In our case, we luckily have experience doing some work in this realm in the past. This includes, for example, updating and managing schema markup, working to ensure E-E-A-T — that’s expertise, experience, authority, trust — is covered in new content, and managing third party placements. 

All of these are steps which were important in SEO (and generally keeping your site and content as healthy as possible) are all now foundational building blocks towards these new GEO, AIO, and AEO-focused optimizations. 

Essentially, if you have experience in digital marketing for your business or others, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here — just rotate the tires and keep your eyes on the road.