People now ask AI assistants questions like “who are the best commercial cleaners near me?” or “what should I look for in a private dentist?”. The answers draw on what these systems can find and understand about businesses.
SEO, AEO, GEO and AI visibility — in plain terms
- SEO helps customers find you in search results.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation) helps your business answer the questions customers ask.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) helps make your business easier for AI systems to understand and describe accurately.
- AI visibility is observing how your business actually appears in AI-generated answers.
What helps
- Consistent business information everywhere: name, address, services, areas served.
- Clear pages for each service, written in the language customers use.
- Direct answers to real questions — process, pricing guidance, timescales.
- Genuine reviews that describe what you do well.
- Accurate structured data describing your organisation.
What doesn’t
There is no special “AI markup” that guarantees mentions, and nobody can guarantee an AI system will cite you. Thin pages written to game assistants tend to make a business harder to trust, not easier.
Start by observing
Ask the questions your customers would ask, in the places they ask them, and note whether you appear, how you’re described and which competitors are mentioned. That gives you a baseline to improve against.