AI SEO is the practice of making a business findable across both traditional search and AI-powered search. It covers four disciplines: GEO for being cited in generated answers, AEO for winning the direct answer, AIO for using AI inside your own content operation, and SXO for what happens after the click.
It is also the term most buyers actually search for, which is why this page uses it. The practitioners argue about the vocabulary. The people with budgets type “AI SEO”.
The Four Disciplines
AI SEO is not one technique. It is four interlocking ones, each addressing a different way AI changed search.
| Discipline | Full name | What it does | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| GEO | Generative Engine Optimisation | Gets your brand cited in AI-generated answers | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot |
| AEO | Answer Engine Optimisation | Wins the direct answer | Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, voice |
| AIO | AI Implementation Optimisation | Uses AI to scale your own content operation | Internal workflows |
| SXO | Search Experience Optimisation | Optimises the post-click experience | Your own site |
GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation
The newest and the one driving most of the demand. GEO is about being named when somebody asks an assistant a question rather than typing a query into a search box.
The signals that matter are different from classic ranking factors. Entity clarity comes first: whether a model can confidently identify your business at all. Then extractability, meaning whether a clean answer can be lifted from your page. Then corroboration, meaning whether independent sources support what you claim. Backlinks matter, but as one input to authority rather than as the dominant lever they are in traditional search.
Full detail: what is GEO and the complete GEO guide.
AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation
AEO predates GEO and covers the answer formats search engines already had: featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice answers, and now AI Overviews.
It remains important for a reason that is easy to miss. A page that consistently wins direct answers is demonstrating exactly the property generative engines reward: a clean, self-contained answer can be extracted from it. AEO work compounds into GEO performance rather than competing with it.
Full detail: what is AEO and AI Overviews explained.
AIO: AI Implementation Optimisation
The odd one out, and frequently confused with the others. AIO is not about being found by AI. It is about using AI to do your own work better. Research, drafting, analysis, workflow automation.
It belongs in the framework because it determines how much good content you can actually produce. A team that uses these tools well publishes more, researches more thoroughly and updates more often, all of which feed GEO and AEO. A team that uses them badly publishes more generic content faster, which actively harms citation because generic content contains nothing quotable.
Full detail: what is AIO.
SXO: Search Experience Optimisation
What happens after somebody arrives. Speed, mobile usability, clear structure, conversion paths.
Its role in AI SEO is easy to overstate and dangerous to ignore. A slow, broken or JavaScript- dependent page is harder to crawl and harder to extract from, so it loses citations for mechanical reasons before quality enters into it.
Full detail: what is SXO.
AI SEO vs Traditional SEO
| Dimension | Traditional SEO | AI SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in the top 10 | Be cited in the answer, and rank |
| Primary signals | Backlinks, keywords, technical health | Entity clarity, extractability, corroboration, plus the above |
| Content approach | Keyword-targeted long-form | Answer-first, specific, structured |
| Measurement | Rankings, traffic, CTR | Citation share by platform, plus traditional metrics |
| Platforms | Google, Bing | Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot |
| Schema | Helpful | Close to essential |
| Competition basis | Domain authority and links | Source credibility and entity signals |
| Failure mode | Ranking on page three | Being absent entirely, with no position to improve |
That last row is the one worth sitting with. In a ranked list, being twelfth is worth something and is a starting point. In a generated answer there is no twelfth. You are named or you are not.
What Has Actually Changed in Buyer Behaviour
The figures below were compiled in early 2026 and each names its source. Treat them as a snapshot rather than a constant, because this is a fast-moving field and every one of these numbers will have moved by the time you read it.
- 47% of UK search queries trigger an AI-generated response (Gartner, Q1 2026)
- 62% of informational queries in the UK show a Google AI Overview (Authoritas)
- 71% of B2B buyers use AI tools during purchase research (Forrester)
- Zero-click searches have risen to 65% of all Google searches (SparkToro/Datos)
- ChatGPT search processes over a billion queries a week (OpenAI)
- Perplexity has passed 150 million monthly active users
The direction matters more than any individual figure: a growing share of research now happens inside a conversation rather than a results page, and that conversation names two or three businesses rather than listing ten.
Our own UK AI search statistics and AI search adoption statistics go deeper.
The Eighty Per Cent Nobody Admits To
Here is the part most agencies leave out, and the part that should make you trust the rest of this page more rather than less.
Roughly eighty per cent of AI SEO work would be recognised by any competent SEO practitioner. Making an entity unambiguous. Marking content up properly. Writing so the answer comes first. Earning credible third-party mentions. Keeping the site technically accessible. None of that was invented in the last two years.
What genuinely changed is the target and the measurement:
- The target. A generated answer instead of a ranked list, which changes what “good enough” means.
- The measurement. Position and click-through rate describe a list. They do not tell you whether you were named, how you were described, or which competitor was named instead.
That eighty per cent figure is why you should be sceptical of anyone selling AI SEO as entirely separate from SEO with its own separate budget line. It is also why MarGen sells it as one engagement rather than three invoices. If an agency tells you these are unrelated disciplines requiring unrelated retainers, they are describing a pricing model rather than a practice.
The honest counterpoint: the twenty per cent that is different is where outcomes are decided, and it is not optional. A site with perfect classic SEO and an unresolvable entity will rank and never be cited.
Which Parts Do You Actually Need?
Not every business needs all four. The useful question is which gap is dominant.
If a model cannot describe your business accurately (ask one, right now: “tell me about [your company]”) your gap is entity, and that is GEO foundation work. Start there and nothing else matters until it is fixed.
If you rank well but are absent from AI Overviews and featured snippets, your gap is extractability, and that is AEO. Your content is good and buried.
If you rank poorly for the queries that matter, your gap is conventional and the AI framing is a distraction. Fix ranking first. AI Overviews draw on the ordinary index, so this is a precondition rather than an alternative.
If you cannot produce content at a sustainable rate, your gap is operational, and that is AIO. No amount of optimisation compensates for publishing nothing.
If people arrive and leave, your gap is post-click, and that is SXO. Citation without conversion is a vanity metric.
Most businesses have one dominant gap and assume they have all five. Diagnosing it is the entire value of a first audit, and it is why ours is free.
What It Costs
MarGen publishes its pricing. Across the UK market that is unusual: of the seven agencies we track, only two publish any figures at all.
| Step | Investment | Term |
|---|---|---|
| Free AI Visibility Audit | Free | None |
| Synaptic Audit | £2,950 one-off, credited against your first retainer month | None |
| Foundation | £2,950 a month | 3 months |
| Authority | £5,950 a month (£6,500 regulated) | 12 months |
| Dominance | From £12,950 a month | 12 months |
Wider market context is in the GEO pricing guide, and if you are weighing this against paid search, how GEO compares to PPC spend makes the honest case both ways.
Where to Start
In this order, because the order is what makes it efficient:
- Measure the baseline. Ask the assistants your buyers’ questions and record who gets named. Without this you cannot tell later whether anything worked.
- Fix the entity. Consistent naming,
Organizationschema, a canonical statement of the facts. Cheap, fast, and everything else compounds on it. Our own is at /entity-map/. - Make the important pages extractable. Answer in the first 60 words, specific claims, question-shaped headings.
- Add schema that matches visible content. The free schema generator will build it.
- Confirm the crawlers can reach you. See the AI crawler guide.
- Then build corroboration. The slow, expensive half, and the half that decides competitive queries.
Steps one to five you can do yourself. Step six is where most firms need help, and it is where the money goes.
Common Misconceptions
“AI SEO replaces SEO.” It does not. Ranking is close to a precondition for AI Overview inclusion. See is SEO dead because of AI.
“Publishing an llms.txt file fixes AI visibility.” It is cheap, sensible housekeeping and it is not a fix. Entity clarity and corroboration decide citations. Our llms.txt generator is free, and the page says the same thing.
“More content means more citations.” Depth on one topic beats breadth across many. Volume past the point where your experts can keep it specific is actively counterproductive.
“You can pay to be cited.” No major assistant sells the citation itself. See can I pay to appear in AI answers.
“Flat clicks mean it is not working.” Frequently the opposite: an Overview answered in place using your content and named you. See why is my unassigned traffic growing in GA4.
AI SEO: Common Questions
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the umbrella term for optimising a business to be found across both traditional search and AI-powered search. It covers four disciplines: GEO for being cited in generated answers, AEO for winning the direct answer, AIO for using AI tools in your own content operation, and SXO for what happens after the click. Most buyers search the umbrella term rather than any of the four.
Is AI SEO just a rebranding of traditional SEO?
Partly, and being honest about that is the fastest way to tell a real practitioner from a rebrand. Roughly eighty per cent of the underlying work is shared: entity clarity, structured data, technical accessibility, credible third-party corroboration. What is genuinely new is the target. A ranked list has a position ten. A generated answer names two or three sources and everything else is simply absent, which changes what you optimise for and what you measure.
Do I need a specialist, or can my existing SEO agency handle it?
It depends on what they measure. Ask to see your AI citation report for last month. If they can produce one, they are doing the work. If the answer is rankings and traffic with no citation measurement, the label changed and the practice did not. Many capable SEO agencies can learn this, and some partner with a specialist rather than hiring, which is a reasonable answer too.
How much does AI SEO cost in the UK?
MarGen publishes its figures rather than quoting case by case. A free AI Visibility Audit, then a £2,950 Synaptic Audit credited against your first retainer month, then retainers from £2,950 a month on Foundation, £5,950 on Authority (£6,500 for regulated sectors) and from £12,950 on Dominance. Across the wider UK market, only two of the seven agencies we track publish any pricing at all.
Which businesses benefit most from AI SEO?
Businesses whose buyers research before making contact. Considered, comparison-heavy, higher-value purchases where somebody builds a shortlist before speaking to anyone. That covers most B2B, professional services, healthcare and financial services, and a growing share of consumer categories. It matters least for impulse purchases and pure proximity-driven local trade.
Will AI SEO make traditional SEO obsolete?
No, and the evidence points the other way. AI Overviews are built on Google’s ordinary index, so ranking is close to a precondition for appearing in them. Analyses consistently find that a large majority of AI-cited URLs already rank on page one. Traditional SEO is becoming the foundation layer rather than the finished job.
How long does AI SEO take to work?
Structural work can surface within weeks, because fixing an entity a model cannot resolve or content it cannot extract removes something actively blocking you. Citation authority takes three to six months, because it depends on third-party corroboration accumulating and that cannot be accelerated with budget. Anyone promising citations in thirty days is describing something they do not control.
What is the difference between AI SEO, GEO and AEO?
AI SEO is the umbrella. GEO is being cited inside a generated answer from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude. AEO is winning the direct answer, meaning AI Overviews, featured snippets and voice results. The engineering behind them is roughly eighty per cent shared, which is why MarGen delivers them as one engagement and why you should be sceptical of anyone selling them as three separate retainers.
Where to Go Next
Understand a specific discipline: GEO · AEO · LLMO · AI Overviews
Work out whether you need help: can I do GEO myself · in-house versus agency · what to ask an AI SEO agency · red flags when hiring
By sector: SaaS · financial services · legal · healthcare · e-commerce · insurance · manufacturing · logistics · higher education
Have it delivered: MarGen is a UK AI SEO agency, GEO agency and AEO agency. Pricing is published, the method is published, and the results are in the case studies.