What are SEO, AEO, and GEO, and how do they differ?
Search and visibility have quickly evolved from one channel into three, and they each have somewhat different technical requirements, even though content remains the most important factor.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about appearing in traditional search engines such as Google through relevant results in search listings. It is based on factors such as performance, mobile optimization, structure, and how easily the page can be indexed.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is about appearing in answer engines, voice assistants, and features that directly answer a question, such as a featured snippet or a voice search. Here, it is essential that the content is clearly structured and can be extracted as a concrete answer, often with an FAQ as one way to achieve this.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about appearing in and being cited by generative AI services such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews, which appear at the top of Google search results. This requires content to be accessible and understandable to AI crawlers, and the website to be built in a way that allows AI to interpret it without important information being lost.
All three share the same technical foundation. A solid technical foundation increases visibility across all three channels at the same time, rather than requiring three separate solutions.
Our role in optimizing your website or application
At Itiden, we do not write copy, develop keyword strategies, or analyze competitors. There are already skilled specialists who do this better than we would, and we are happy to recommend one of our partners for this type of work. Our role is to ensure that the technical platform is built so that the content you or your content partner creates can actually be optimized, found, and interpreted correctly, whether it is intended for Google, a voice assistant, or an AI chatbot.
In practice, this means building the right conditions into your solution instead of adding them afterward.
How we work with technical SEO
The foundation for appearing in Google and other search engines is laid in the code, not the content. Among other things, we work with semantic HTML, fast load times, mobile optimization, a clear link structure, and ensuring that the page can be crawled and indexed without obstacles.
We also make sure that essential metadata, sitemaps, and robots files are configured correctly, so that search engines receive the right signals about what is available on the website and how it is connected.
How we work with AEO
For content to be extracted as a direct answer, it must be possible to identify and interpret it in isolation, without the rest of the page and its other content. We structure pages with clear headings, question-and-answer formats or blocks where relevant, as well as structured data according to schema.org, so that answer engines and voice assistants can find and reproduce the right and relevant information.
The aim is to make it technically possible to extract a specific answer, not to formulate the answer itself.
How we work with GEO
Generative AI services build their responses by reading and interpreting websites on a large scale. We ensure that the website is built in a way that allows AI crawlers to access and understand the content, for example by avoiding hiding important information behind JavaScript rendering that cannot be interpreted, and by using a clear structure and machine-readable markup.
We continuously stay up to date on how AI service crawlers work and which technical standards are emerging in the field, so that the website remains equipped to handle the arrival of more AI services.
How we work
We always start with an initial conversation to understand where you are today, what is reasonable to prioritize, and the challenges you are experiencing. We then build the right technical conditions into the development process, test that structured data and crawlability work as intended, and follow up over time as both search engines and AI services evolve.
If you already have a website, we can conduct a technical review and identify what needs to be improved to strengthen your visibility in SEO, AEO, and GEO.