AEO and SEO are core components in digital strategies for modern B2B and B2C businesses. Yet, many marketing agencies overcomplicate the difference between AEO and SEO. In reality, the distinction is simple: AEO is SEO, but with a different approach to content marketing, performance monitoring, and reverse engineering how they rank. Let’s break down what that actually means below.
For Starters, Understand How Search Engines and Answer Engines Work
Before we get into the differences, you must know these core AEO and SEO concepts:
- Answer engines are built on top of search engines – Answer engines pull information from search engine results pages and algorithmically compile answers to user prompts. They do not crawl the web in real time to find answers. You’ll find them referencing results from search engine crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Bingbot for Copilot, and GoogleBot for Gemini.
- Search engines are designed to return a list of results, while answer engines are designed to deliver an answering experience – With search engines, it’s a simple results page. With answer engines, users are guided with follow-up prompts and/or related question suggestions. In doing so, answer engines keep users engaged on the platform longer rather than sending them to multiple websites, as search engines do.
Once you understand these concepts, the difference between SEO and AEO becomes very clear.
Difference 1: Content Marketing Strategy
This is the most significant difference between SEO and AEO:
- Traditional SEO focuses on keywords and phrases – To rank in search engines, you must evaluate keywords, search volume, competitiveness, and intent, then publish content optimized for those keywords.
- AEO focuses on questions – To rank in answer engines, you must develop content specifically designed to answer real user questions. The challenge is identifying which questions matter most. To assist with this, use a structured Question Map™, which identifies question chains and prioritizes questions based on intent, value, and relevance.
Difference 2: Measuring Performance Metrics
Measuring SEO performance is a familiar territory. You rely on tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools. Increases in traffic, engagement time, and indexed pages signal SEO success.
In contrast, AEO performance requires a different lens and has two key areas of focus:
- Origin Server Logs
- Origin server logs reveal which bots are crawling your site and how often. You’ll want to confirm visits from the following:
- Search engine crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot indicate that your site is being crawled for indexing.
- User agents like ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User indicate when your site is being referenced in answers from answer engines. This is the quickest way to measure AEO success.
- Answer engine crawlers indicate that your content is being used to retrain and improve their answer models.
- If these bots are not appearing in logs, it often signals issues with your SEO and/or AEO.
- Origin server logs reveal which bots are crawling your site and how often. You’ll want to confirm visits from the following:
- CDN Logs
- Most effective SEO strategies use CDNs, such as Cloudflare and AWS CloudFront, which block origin server logs from recording crawler visits. When CDNs are present, their logs should be reviewed to confirm the visits from search crawlers, user agents, and answer engine crawlers. If not, your CDN may be blocking them from crawling.
Difference 3: Reverse Engineering Rankings
The final difference is understanding how they rank. If you reverse engineer search rankings, you need to review SERPs, research keywords, analyze competitors, and compare content structure, backlinks, and technical signals. This is tedious work and is essentially a black box. However, this hard work pays off, yielding insights that guide your overall SEO strategy.
On the other hand, reverse engineering answer rankings is simpler. Instead of looking at all the SEO components, you can look at the sources cited in their answers. If citations are consistently linking specific sites, such as directories, news, or authoritative resources, you know what answer engines value most and where your AEO efforts should focus.
The Bottom Line
SEO and AEO are not competing strategies. SEO lays the foundation for making your content discoverable, while AEO determines whether that content is used directly in answers. If you want visibility across both search engines and answer engines, you need them to work together: keep optimizing for SEO while incorporating an AEO approach for content marketing, performance monitoring, and reverse engineering how they rank into your overall digital strategy.
Contact us for a free consultation on AEO and SEO, and how we can develop a ranking strategy that meets your organization’s needs. You can also check quotes for our SEO for AEO packages.
