SEO, GEO and AEO explained for B2B businesses

Buyers now research in two places: traditional search results and AI assistants that answer questions directly. Three terms describe the work of being visible in both. They overlap more than the jargon suggests.

SEO: search engine optimisation

SEO is the work of making your website easy for search engines to crawl, understand and rank. It covers three layers:

• Technical foundations: the site loads fast, works on mobile, can be crawled and indexed, and has a sitemap.
• Relevance: each important page clearly targets what a buyer searches for, with a descriptive title, heading and content.
• Authority: other credible sites and profiles refer to you, and your content is useful enough to be referenced.

AEO: answer engine optimisation

AEO focuses on questions. Search engines and assistants increasingly show a direct answer rather than a list of links. Pages that clearly answer the questions buyers ask are more likely to be used. Examples are "How long does a pump overhaul take?" and "What does ISO 9001 certification involve for a small manufacturer?"

In practice, AEO means:

1. Collecting the questions your sales team hears every week.
2. Answering each one clearly and specifically on the most relevant page.
3. Structuring those answers with headings (and FAQ structured data where the page genuinely is a list of questions).

GEO: generative engine optimisation

GEO is about how AI systems understand your business as an entity: who you are, what you do, where you operate and why you are credible. Nobody controls what an AI assistant says. You can, however, make accurate information about your business easy to find and hard to misunderstand:

• consistent company facts across your website, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile and directories
• structured data describing your organisation, services and locations
• an About page that makes expertise and accountability clear
• genuinely useful content that other sources reference

Where to start

For most B2B companies the order is simple. Fix the technical basics, make your service pages clearly describe what you do and for whom, then build a steady habit of answering real buyer questions. That work serves SEO, AEO and GEO at the same time.

A free visibility snapshot is a quick way to see which of these foundations are already in place.