AEO vs SEO: What's the Difference — and Do You Actually Need Both?

The question everyone is asking — and why it's slightly the wrong question

"Should I do SEO or AEO?" It's become one of the most common questions in local search right now — and it reveals a problem with how these two disciplines are usually presented. The question frames them as a choice. They're not.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) doesn't replace SEO. It extends it. The technical foundations are largely shared. But the targets are different, the content structures are different, and the customer behaviours they address are different enough that you need to plan for both — not pick one and hope it covers the other.

Think of it like asking whether you need a front door or a back door. You could manage with one. But you'd miss everyone who arrives the other way. In London, with the competitive density it has, you genuinely can't afford to leave an entrance unattended.

What SEO actually does (the quick version)

Traditional SEO — the discipline that's been around for 25-plus years — is about earning a position in Google's ranked list of results. When someone types "accountant Islington" into Google, SEO determines whether your business appears on page one, and where.

The levers are well understood: technical site health, quality content, backlinks from credible sources, and local signals — your Google Business Profile, consistent citations, genuine reviews. Get these right and you rank. Rank well and customers click through. This is still the foundation. Nothing else works without it.

BrightLocal's consumer research puts the number at 98% of people using the internet to find local businesses in the past year, with Google as the dominant starting point. SEO is very much alive — anyone telling you otherwise is selling something, and you should probably change the subject.

Where it's getting complicated: around 60% of UK searches now end without a click, according to Search Engine Journal. The searcher gets their answer directly from the results page — through AI Overviews, featured snippets, or the Local Pack. Ranking on page one still matters. But ranking in position zero, the direct answer, is increasingly where the genuine traffic sits.

What AEO actually does (and how it's different)

Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems — voice assistants, featured snippets, and AI Overviews — select your business as the direct answer to a relevant query. Spoken aloud, or displayed at the very top of the page, above every other result.

Where SEO gets you onto the list, AEO makes you the answer. That sounds like a small distinction. It isn't. When someone types a query, they get ten options and the freedom to browse. When someone asks Siri "Which electrician can come out tonight in Hackney?", Siri gives them one name and stops. No comparison. No browsing. The business that did their AEO gets the call. The others get nothing — and no way of knowing they were ever in the running.

The shift is bigger than most businesses have clocked. Over 60% of local searches in 2026 are now voice-based — people asking their phone or smart speaker rather than typing. For urgent, in-the-moment queries ("emergency plumber near me", "dentist open today in Camden"), voice is often the first and only search. If you're not optimised for it, you're not in the running — not metaphorically, literally not mentioned.

There's no notification when a voice query goes to your competitor. No "you nearly got this one." The customer hears a name, they act, and they never know you existed. That's not dramatic — that's just what happens, silently, across London every single day.

The key differences, side by side

Where they share the same foundations

Here's the thing that makes "do I need both?" slightly the wrong question: AEO isn't built on a different foundation from SEO. It's built on the same one, with additional structures on top.

A fast, technically sound website helps both. A well-completed Google Business Profile feeds both. Consistent NAP (name, address, phone) citations across directories matter for both. Good, clearly-written content performs better in both contexts. None of that changes.

What AEO adds is structure. FAQ sections built around real questions, with direct answers. Speakable schema markup that signals to voice platforms which content to read aloud. Featured snippet targeting — position zero in Google's results, which is also the primary source for Google Assistant voice answers. These are additions to an SEO foundation, not substitutes for it.

Which means good SEO work is never wasted from an AEO perspective. Businesses that try to skip SEO and go straight to AEO find that AEO underperforms — the foundations aren't there to build on. You can't optimise the roof if the walls aren't up yet.

The four things AEO specifically requires

If you've already done solid local SEO work, here's what you add for AEO — specifically:

1. Conversational content structure. Your pages need to answer real questions in plain English — the way someone would actually ask them aloud. "We're a family-run plumbing firm in Hackney, available for emergency call-outs seven days a week" wins voice answers. "We offer premium residential plumbing solutions across East London" does not. Voice assistants don't speak marketing; neither do your customers.

2. FAQ sections designed for extraction. Voice assistants and AI Overviews actively look for FAQ-formatted content because it's the easiest structure to convert into a direct spoken answer. A question followed by a clear, concise answer — that's the format they prefer. If your site doesn't have it, you're not in the running regardless of how good your other content is.

3. Speakable schema markup. This is a piece of structured data (implemented in your site's JSON-LD) that tells voice platforms which sections of your page are suitable to be read aloud. Google's own documentation recommends it specifically for AEO. Without it, even excellent content might be passed over in favour of a competitor who bothered to raise their hand.

4. Featured snippet targeting. Google Assistant draws its answers from featured snippets — the highlighted box that appears above all other results. Winning featured snippets for your key local queries is the most reliable path to becoming the voice answer. According to Moz's local SEO research, position zero visibility also feeds directly into how AI models understand and represent local businesses — meaning AEO work improves your GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) performance too.

What about GEO — where does that fit in?

If AEO is about voice search (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant), GEO is about AI tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot. When a customer asks one of these tools for a local business recommendation, GEO determines whether you get named.

The three disciplines form a stack. SEO is the foundation. AEO extends it to voice. GEO extends it further to AI research tools. Each requires the previous layer to work effectively. And each addresses a different customer — at a different moment, with a different level of intent.

We've written a full breakdown of how GEO and AEO differ if you want the detail. The short version: if you're only doing SEO, you're visible in one channel while your customers search across three.

The London-specific case for acting now

London businesses face a specific tension. The traditional SEO market is deeply competitive — established agencies, well-funded brands, years of accumulated domain authority. Breaking in from scratch is hard and slow.

AEO is a different story. Despite London's density and the sophistication of its business community, the vast majority of London businesses have done nothing to optimise for voice search or AI answers. The competitive field is almost entirely open. The solicitor in Islington who structures their FAQ content for Speakable extraction this month is likely to hold that voice answer position for years — not because competitors can't replicate it, but because most haven't noticed they need to.

That gap is real and it's finite. Not closing tomorrow. Not next month. But the agencies and consultants who've been reading the same industry publications you have are already talking about this. Their clients will start showing up in voice answers and AI citations. The businesses that have already moved will be the ones they're displacing.

My dad had a phrase for this: "The best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining." He said it about gutters, usually, while standing in the rain having not fixed the gutters. Don't be Dad. Fix the roof now.