SEO vs AEO vs GEO — 2026 Comparison Dashboard

Post-HCU, every page must demonstrate real-world experience. First-person perspective, original data, and demonstrable expertise — not AI-padded volume or thin affiliate content.

INP replaced FID as the Core Web Vitals interaction metric. Target below 200ms. Identify long tasks with Chrome DevTools and defer non-critical JavaScript execution.

Build pillar pages linked to supporting cluster content. Google's 2026 ranking model rewards depth of topic coverage more than individual keyword targeting.

Track which queries trigger AI Overviews via Semrush / GSC. Optimise those pages with concise definitions, structured headings, and FAQPage schema markup.

Monthly decay audits using GSC impression data. Update dates, refresh statistics, add new sections — then push to GSC for re-crawl. Don't let ranking pages silently slide.

Auto-generated pages need quality gates. Implement review workflows, thin-content detection, and canonical audits before scaling any programmatic template at volume.

Place structured llms.txt at domain root. Include brand facts, services, key personnel, and links to authoritative pages. Still underused by 90%+ of sites — first-mover advantage is real.

Every service page needs a FAQ section with FAQPage JSON-LD schema. Frame questions exactly as users type them in ChatGPT. 2–3 sentence direct answers are extracted verbatim.

Mark up summary sections with Speakable schema to signal content designed for voice and AI reading. Google's voice assistant and AI Overviews prioritise Speakable-marked sections.

Use Otterly.ai or Frase.io GEO module to track brand appearance rate across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot weekly. Set alerts for drops greater than 10%.

Add a concise, factual brand description near page tops: who you are, what you do, founding date, location, key credentials. AI models extract this as their "About" summary.

AEO E.E.A.T. extends beyond Google. Author credentials must appear on LinkedIn, industry publications, press releases, and Wikipedia — AI models cross-reference these sources.

Register your brand on Wikidata and Google's Knowledge Graph. Disambiguate from similar names. LLMs cite entities they can confidently resolve — ambiguous entities get skipped.

Quality coverage in authoritative outlets (Forbes, trade press, university publications) feeds LLM training corpora. GEO is partly a long-play PR strategy — invest accordingly.

Brand name, description, and key facts must be identical across your website, GBP, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Crunchbase, and major directories. LLMs weight consistent cross-source signals.

AI models (especially ChatGPT Search) weight Reddit mentions heavily. Authentic community engagement — answering questions, building brand presence — drives GEO organically.

1,500+ word guides that become the definitive reference on a topic. LLMs are trained to cite "the source" — comprehensive, well-structured content earns that designation over time.

Implement Organization schema with sameAs linking to every authoritative profile: LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase. This cross-links your entity graph for LLM parsing.