The usual question — "should I drop SEO and move to AEO?" — is framed wrong. Both draw from the same well: useful content and a clear entity.
What carries over
- Technical performance and crawlability: if Google cannot read you, neither can an assistant.
- Search intent: still king. The answer format changes, not the user's need.
- Authority: third-party mentions matter in both worlds.
What genuinely changes
- The unit of success: in SEO, a ranked URL; in AEO, a named brand. You can be cited without a click.
- The winning format: from the long optimised article to the short, verifiable, well-structured answer.
- The metric: average position gives way to mention rate and share of voice against competitors.
- The surface: you no longer control the results page; you influence the sources AI consults.
How to split the effort
A healthy split for most companies: 60% content that serves both (answer-shaped guides, comparisons, FAQs, first-party data), 25% entity signals and third-party presence, 15% technical (schema, speed, content accessibility for crawlers).
One piece of content, two readings
Write every page to work in both channels: direct answer in the first two sentences (AEO), depth afterwards (SEO), verifiable data and a visible date (both).
A joint scorecard
- SEO: impressions, clicks, average position, indexed pages.
- AEO: mention rate, position within the answer, share of voice, cited sources.
- Business: brand traffic, form fills, demos, revenue.
When organic traffic drops but direct and brand traffic rises, you are not losing: you are being recommended without a click. You will only know if you measure both at once.