Answers · Updated
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) competes to rank a clickable link on a results page. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) competes to be named and quoted inside an AI's written answer, before the user clicks anything. A business can rank #1 on Google and still be invisible in the AI answer, because the two are won differently.
SEO optimizes for a ranking position: title tags, backlinks, page speed, domain authority. The payoff is a link the user still has to click. AEO optimizes for extraction and citation: machine-readable facts, plain-text pricing, structured Q&A, and consistent, corroborated information the model can confidently lift into its answer.
The two overlap but are not the same. Strong SEO can help (an indexed, crawlable page is a prerequisite), but the clinics getting cited in AI answers for cost and “best of” questions are routinely ones with modest SEO; they simply made their key facts readable in the exact way answer engines extract them.
Practically, a business should keep doing SEO and add AEO on top: a dedicated, plain-text answer page for each high-intent question, machine-readable pricing, an inline FAQ, and a second corroborating source. That combination is what moves a business from “ranked somewhere” to “named in the answer.”
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