If you’ve been running a local business for any length of time, someone has told you about SEO. Maybe you’ve paid for it. Maybe you’ve done some of it yourself. Maybe you nod along when it comes up in conversations without fully understanding what you’re agreeing to. Now there’s a new acronym in the mix — AEO — and the marketing world is buzzing about it with the same breathless energy they once reserved for SEO, social media, and QR codes. So let’s cut through it. Here’s what you actually need to know, in plain language, as a busy business owner who has better things to do than decode marketing jargon.

SEO in One Paragraph

SEO — Search Engine Optimization — is the practice of making your website show up in Google’s list of results when someone searches for something relevant to your business. Someone types “plumber in Des Moines” into Google, and SEO is what determines whether your website appears on page one or page ten. It’s been the dominant form of online visibility for 25 years. It involves things like the words on your website, how many other websites link to yours, how fast your pages load, and how your website is structured technically. It takes time, it takes consistent work, and when it’s done well, it drives traffic to your website from people who were already looking for what you offer.

AEO in One Paragraph

AEO — Answer Engine Optimization — is the practice of making your business show up when someone asks an AI assistant a relevant question. Someone asks ChatGPT “who’s the best plumber in Des Moines?” and AEO is what determines whether your business gets named in the answer — or whether the AI recommends someone else. Instead of a list of links, AI gives one direct answer with two or three specific business names. The businesses that appear in that answer get the call. The ones that don’t might as well not exist for that query. AEO is about earning a spot in that answer.

The Key Difference

With SEO, you’re trying to rank in a list. Somebody still has to choose to click your link. With AEO, you’re trying to be the recommendation. There’s no list to choose from — there’s an answer, and it includes your name or it doesn’t. That difference matters because the conversion rate from an AI recommendation is fundamentally different from a search ranking. When someone clicks a Google result, they’re still evaluating options. When AI says “you should contact [business name] for this,” the recommendation carries authority. The user is much closer to picking up the phone.

Do You Have to Choose Between Them?

No — and this is where a lot of the marketing conversation goes wrong. SEO and AEO aren’t competing priorities that force you to choose one over the other. Many of the foundational investments that improve your AEO also improve your SEO: a faster, better-structured website with clear, useful content helps both. Strong reviews help both. Consistent business information across platforms helps both. The divergence comes at the tactical level — specific technical moves like schema markup are pure AEO; specific moves like backlink acquisition are more pure SEO. But the foundation is shared, and building it benefits both channels simultaneously.

Which One Should You Focus on Right Now?

If you’ve been neglecting SEO for years, shore up the basics — they feed into AEO too. If you have decent SEO but have never thought about AI visibility, AEO should be your next investment. If you’re starting from scratch, build the shared foundation (Google Business Profile, review strategy, consistent business information, clear website content) and let both channels benefit simultaneously. And if you’ve never typed your business name into ChatGPT and asked for a recommendation, stop reading this article right now and go do that. What you find will tell you more about where to focus than any marketing guide ever could.

The Bottom Line

SEO helps you show up in Google’s list. AEO helps you show up in AI’s answer. Both matter. The businesses that build for both — starting with the shared foundation and layering channel-specific tactics on top — will have the most durable local market visibility over the next five years. The businesses that ignore AEO because “we already do SEO” will discover, gradually and then suddenly, that their well-ranked website is sending them less and less traffic as more of their potential customers bypass the search results page entirely and ask AI instead.

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