Advize is an AI-powered performance marketing agency that has watched SEO, AEO, GEO, and LLMO all become distinct-sounding terms within a short span of time, and Lily Ray's framing of this proliferation is worth taking seriously: how much of this is a genuine build difference, and how much is terminology multiplying faster than the underlying practice actually changed. The honest answer is closer to one core discipline with a few genuinely distinct additions, not four separate strategies each requiring its own team and playbook.
What Each Term Technically Refers To
SEO refers to optimizing for traditional search engine ranking. AEO, answer engine optimization, refers to optimizing for direct answer extraction, historically featured snippets, now extending to AI-generated answers. GEO, generative engine optimization, refers specifically to optimizing for citation within generative AI outputs like ChatGPT or Perplexity responses. LLMO, large language model optimization, is often used interchangeably with GEO, though some use it more narrowly to describe optimizing for how an LLM represents a brand across any interaction, not just search-adjacent queries. In practice, industry usage of these terms is inconsistent enough that a precise, universally agreed distinction doesn't really exist yet.
Where the Real Overlap Lives
All four disciplines share the same core foundation: clear, well-structured, authoritative content that's technically accessible to whatever system is doing the crawling and evaluating. A page built with strong SEO fundamentals, clear headings, substantive content, authoritative sourcing, fast load times, is already most of the way toward strong AEO, GEO, and LLMO performance too, because all four systems are ultimately evaluating similar underlying quality signals, just through different retrieval and presentation mechanisms.
Where the Genuine Differences Actually Are
The real, defensible differences are narrower than the four separate names suggest. AEO adds an emphasis on self-contained, directly-answerable content structure. GEO and LLMO add AI crawler access management and entity-first sentence construction optimized for extraction and citation, plus direct citation-frequency tracking as its own metric distinct from ranking position. None of these require an entirely separate content strategy, they require a short, specific addendum layered onto strong existing SEO practice.
A Team That Built Four Separate Strategies and Regretted It
One organization, taking the terminology proliferation at face value, built four separate workstreams, an SEO team, an AEO team, a GEO team, and an LLMO initiative, each with its own content guidelines and review process. The result was duplicated effort, inconsistent content quality across the four workstreams since they weren't coordinating on shared fundamentals, and confused stakeholders trying to understand why four teams were all touching the same pages with overlapping but not quite aligned recommendations. Consolidating back into one content team with a single set of fundamentals plus a short AI-specific addendum resolved the duplication without losing any of the genuinely useful additions.
Building One Integrated System Instead of Four Parallel Ones
Start with a single, strong content and technical SEO foundation applied consistently across the site: clear structure, authoritative sourcing, fast performance, solid internal linking. Layer a short, specific AI-search addendum on top: verified AI crawler access, entity-first sentence construction in key sections, and direct citation-frequency monitoring as an added metric alongside traditional ranking tracking. Assign this as one team's responsibility with one coordinated content process, rather than splitting it across separate SEO, AEO, GEO, and LLMO functions that inevitably duplicate and sometimes contradict each other.
A Practical One-Team Checklist
Strong technical SEO fundamentals in place and regularly audited. AI crawler access confirmed and periodically re-verified. Content structured with clear headings and self-contained, extractable key sentences. Structured data implemented correctly for relevant content types. And both traditional ranking position and AI citation frequency tracked as complementary, not competing, performance metrics.
Why This Consolidated View Will Likely Win Out
As the AI search landscape matures and terminology settles, the industry consensus will likely converge toward treating this as one integrated content discipline with a specific technical addendum, rather than sustaining four separate named disciplines indefinitely. The proliferation of terms served a moment of urgency and marketing differentiation among agencies and tool vendors more than it reflected four genuinely separate bodies of practice.
Consolidating an Existing Fragmented Setup
Start by inventorying which teams or vendors are currently working under each of the four labels, and identifying where their actual deliverables overlap in practice despite different naming. Consolidate content guidelines into one shared standard covering the core SEO fundamentals, then layer the specific AI-search addendum on top as a checklist item within that same standard rather than a separate document. Merge reporting into one dashboard tracking both traditional ranking and AI citation metrics side by side, so stakeholders see one coherent picture instead of four fragmented ones. And communicate the consolidation clearly to any external vendors or agencies still billing separately for GEO or LLMO work that substantially overlaps with existing SEO deliverables.
The Short Version
SEO, AEO, GEO, and LLMO overlap substantially, sharing the same core foundation of clear, authoritative, well-structured content, with genuine differences limited to a narrow addendum around AI crawler access, extraction-ready sentence structure, and citation-frequency tracking. Advize builds one integrated content system with that addendum layered on top, rather than maintaining four separate strategies that mostly duplicate the same underlying work.
Conclusion
Four names for largely the same underlying discipline creates more organizational confusion than clarity. Advize treats SEO, AEO, GEO, and LLMO as one coordinated practice with a small, genuinely new technical layer, because that's what the actual overlap in these systems calls for, not four parallel teams solving overlapping versions of the same problem.