SEO vs AEO vs GEO: where should your marketing budget go?

You want your business to appear when someone is looking for what you sell. Now you’re being told you need SEO, AEO and GEO to make that happen.

Three acronyms. Potentially three proposals. One marketing budget.

Before you invest, you need to understand which work could improve your chances of being discovered—and whether you’re being offered something new or familiar work under a different name.

Our recommendation is to build a connected search strategy around your customers’ buying decisions. Get the SEO foundations right, make your expertise clear and useful, then measure visibility across the search and AI experiences relevant to your business.

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

The terms overlap, and agencies do not always use them consistently. This is how we distinguish them.

SEO: search engine optimisation

SEO helps people discover relevant pages through search engines. Improving a solution page so it can appear when someone searches for the problem your software solves is one example.

AEO: answer engine optimisation

AEO focuses on making information useful for experiences that answer questions directly. That could mean clearly explaining how a service works, who it suits and what customers should consider before buying.

GEO: generative engine optimisation

GEO focuses on discoverability and representation within AI-generated responses. For example, strengthening the information available when someone asks an assistant to explain a topic or compare suppliers.

A single page can contribute to all three. A detailed comparison of two approaches to managing IT costs could attract a search visit, answer a question and provide information an AI search experience references.

Does GEO mean starting your SEO strategy again?

We would begin by reviewing what you already have. Your service pages, original research, useful articles and technical improvements may provide a valuable foundation.

Google states that established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional technical requirements or special optimisations required for inclusion. Eligibility does not guarantee appearance. That guidance is specific to Google’s experiences; other platforms have their own systems. Read Google’s AI search guidance.

Ask what needs changing before accepting that everything needs replacing.

How we decide what deserves your budget

We start with four questions: can important information be discovered, does it answer buying questions, does it provide credible reasons to choose you, and can you assess what the work contributes?

• Important pages missing from search: investigate technical accessibility, indexing and internal links.
• Visits from irrelevant searches: review search intent and which pages target which needs.
• Visitors cannot understand the offer: improve messaging, answers and supporting evidence.
• Gaps in relevant AI answers: establish a monitored question set and investigate cited sources and information gaps.
• Visibility without business context: improve measurement before expanding production.

We would not recommend a fixed budget split before investigating those gaps. Our approach to using search data starts with identifying commercially useful opportunities.

A worked example: what would we prioritise first?

This is an illustrative scenario, not a client result.

A B2B software company has a small marketing team. Its blog attracts visits, but the solution page barely explains implementation, integrations or who the product suits. Older articles overlap. Reporting tracks traffic but not relevant enquiries.

Before recommending another monthly content package, we would:

1. Improve the solution page. Interview the product team and answer the questions a buyer needs resolved.
2. Assess overlapping articles. Decide which pages have distinct purposes and which should be updated or consolidated.
3. Establish an AI visibility baseline. Agree relevant questions and record the conditions used to monitor them.
4. Improve enquiry measurement. Make it possible to assess the commercial value of relevant visits.

The business may benefit from new articles later. The investigation tells us what those articles should do. Our content audit for AI search explains that decision in more detail.

What building Sighted has taught us about content quality

Developing Sighted, our enrichment and visibility technology, has made the importance of underlying information particularly tangible.

Take a product description without material or fit details. A writing tool can produce a polished paragraph, but attractive wording does not resolve missing facts. Unsupported additions could make the description less reliable.

The same applies to service content. If a page does not explain implementation, repeating benefits in more fluent language will not answer the buyer’s question. Someone who delivers the service needs to contribute their knowledge.

AI can help organise that input and support production. Expertise still guides the brief, checks the claims and approves the result.

Evidence from our Serviceware programme

For Serviceware, we built an SEO content programme around IT Financial Management, connecting commercially relevant searches through defined topic clusters.

• 127% increase in organic clicks across the ITFM cluster between April and August 2026, rounded from 126.5%.
• Eight of 11 topic clusters holding a number-one ranking in the reported tracking.
• 78% appearance within the Google AI Overviews monitored in the UK.
• 5,806 Microsoft Copilot citations to ITFM content in the accompanying dataset.

The measures answer different questions. The monitored percentage does not cover every possible AI search, and citations are not sales. The reporting does not isolate the effect of each individual change.

Source: Re-Imagine’s Serviceware programme reporting. The organic growth comparison covers April–August 2026; AI figures refer to their accompanying monitored datasets. Explore the full Serviceware case study.

What should you ask an SEO, AEO or GEO agency?

1. Which customer decisions will the work support?
2. What will you actually change, create or implement?
3. How does it build on the work we already have?
4. What evidence and subject expertise do you need from us?
5. How will we assess progress, and what can the reporting not tell us?

Also ask who reviews the work and what relevant experience they bring. Google’s content guidance encourages original information and clear expertise; an author biography cannot compensate for unsupported content. E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor. Read Google’s helpful-content guidance.

Invest in the next useful improvement

Your budget should make your business easier to discover, understand and choose. A useful strategy explains what needs attention first and how you will judge the results.

Our AI SEO services connect search expertise, content enrichment and visibility monitoring around your goals. Talk to us about your next search opportunity.

Put the strategy into practice

For a platform-specific starting point, read our guides to investigating competitor recommendations in ChatGPT and assessing your visibility in Claude. Both explain how to turn observed answers into a useful investigation.

About the author

Molly Sishton, Founder of Re-Imagine Marketing. Molly combines marketing strategy, SEO and content expertise with hands-on experience of developing AI technology. Re-Imagine has worked with AI since 2021 and developed Sighted, its own enrichment and visibility technology. Meet the Re-Imagine team.

Recognition across our founding team and ventures: Connie Sishton featured among Wales Business Insider’s 25 Rising Stars of Welsh Business in 2025. Molly and Connie’s venture SO-ME won Best Female-Led Startup at Pitch Black Malta. Sighted was selected for Tech Nation’s Breakout 50.