Key Takeaways
- Have you heard of the latest SEO strategy, i.e., AEO and SEO?
- AEO and SEO together can help you reach the epitome of your industry!
- Read the blog to learn about the right combination of AEO and SEO strategy.
- In our digital-first world, digital marketing is undergoing a constant evolution!
Gone are the days when traditional SEO (search engine optimization) used to do the trick and garner your brand the desired organic traffic.
Due to the emergence of answer engines, voice assistants, and AI-powered search engines, the whole purpose of SEO is getting defeated!
Why you may wonder? Because if there are no clicks after the user makes an inquiry, then how will SEO, which is a click-through search engine marketing method, work?
In this blog, we will show how AEO is the answer, but even it needs the handholding from SEO!
If you are a business owner, an SEO expert, a digital marketer, an AI expert, or a tech enthusiast, this blog will help you with the right strategy for using AEO and SEO.
A few facts about SEO
- AI overviews by Google currently stretch beyond 100 countries, catering to more than 1 billion users per month!
- 80% of the users leveraging AI chatbots have had a positive experience.
- 71% of the businesses are planning a budget increase for their AI chatbots!
- While only 20.5% of the users utilize voice search, the number of voice-assisted devices is set to reach 8.4 billion (more than the human population).
- More than 50% of the adults utilize voice searches daily!
What is SEO or search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization or SEO, is a culmination of techniques, strategies, and Google updates to ensure that a particular brand gets the desired attention on the search result pages.
Its goal is to garner as much organic traffic as possible so that visitors can be turned into customers and clients.
What are the key components of SEO?
It is vital to know the key components of SEO, and they are:
- Keyword Optimization
To find out and use those keywords that users leverage in online searches.
- Content Quality
To craft relevant, engaging, thought-provoking, and informative content to address user needs.
- On-page SEO & Off-page SEO
Additional SEO comes into play through link building, guest posting, voice search optimization, or VSO and much more.
- Technical SEO
To ensure that the website is fully compliant and user-friendly!
With these key components, SEO marketing can be easily implemented.
But as conveyed earlier, SEO cannot tackle the zero-click searches, especially the ones coming from an answer engine perplexity and more.
What is AEO or answer engine optimization?
AEO or answer engine optimization helps in ensuring that your web content is visible in the answers sought by answer engines and other zero-click searches.
Its main goal is to beat the zero-click searches, especially the ones from answer engines, aka a search that doesn’t pan out into a click!
What is an Answer engine?
AI-powered chatbot models that are designed to provide answers to the user queries in a conversational language are known as answer engines.
They are of two types i.e.,
- Generative AI chatbots like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and more.
- Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and more.
They have rendered search engines useless, and thus it is vital for the SEO to undergo a modulation by using AEO and SEO together.
What are the key components of AEO?
The key components of AEO are as follows:
- Direct Answers
Keeping content short and direct helps in aligning web content for answer engines & zero-click searches.
- Structured Data
Utilize Metadata & Schema markup to make it easier for the search as well as answer engines to search and display your content.
- Voice Search Optimization
By keeping the length of an answer content between 29 to 50 words, you can optimize the content for voice searches.
- Context & Intent
Understand users’ intent and context to craft content accordingly!
Using these key components, you can implement content marketing services in regards to AEO so that you do not miss out on organic traffic due to zero-click searches.
Why do you need both AEO and SEO?
It is not wrong to think AEO vs SEO but in the real world, both zero-click and click-through searches matter!
This means that a combination of AEO and SEO is needed to conquer the digital world.
Because via SEO, you will get to conquer click-through searches, while with AEO you will conquer zero-click searches.
And thus, to ensure complete visibility online, AEO and SEO are required for a brand to keep shining in 2025!
AEO vs. SEO: Which one to choose and when?
Now that you have understood that you need both, let us tell you when to use which one.
Here we go,
- Target Audience
Depending upon whether your target audience is more tech-savvy or not, you can choose SEO and AEO.
Or, for the older generation, use SEO, while for others, use AEO!
- Content Goals
If you wish to share information, create awareness, and establish yourselves as thought leaders (directly), then use SEO.
While if you wish to just answer questions to capture traffic, then use AEO to indirectly become thought leaders.
- ROI and Resources
Depending upon whether you need broad optimization or just visibility in zero-click searches, you choose SEO or AEO!
- Competitor Strategies
Depending upon whether AEO or SEO is more used by competitors, you can focus on the other one.
- Success Measurement & Adaptation
Use CR or conversion rates & CTR or click-through rates to measure SEO marketing’s performance, while use appearances in featured snippets and voice search impressions to measure AEO marketing’s performance.
Now, as per the differences in current performances and the speculated targets, you make the next move, aka adaptations.
AEO and SEO: The Right Strategy Forward
Here’s how you can use AEO and SEO together:
- Schema Markup for both AEO and SEO
It is required both by the search engines as well as the answer engines to display web content effortlessly!
- Conversational & Natural Content
AEO requires content in conversational language, while SEO requires easily understandable content.
- Featured Snippet Optimization
Write content in paragraphs that are only 30-50 words long so that it can be used by featured snippets.
While relaying other information is possible by writing long-form content for SEO perspective.
- Long-tail Keywords & Questions
You can include long-tail keywords as questions & cater answers to them to optimize the web content for both AEO and SEO!
- Comprehensive FAQs
A well-developed FAQ section serves both AEO and SEO!
As each FAQ individually caters to AEO and together the FAQs section caters to SEO.
With these strategies, AEO and SEO can be leveraged together to rake in maximum benefits of digital marketing services in 2025.
Conclusion: AEO and SEO are the best way forward!
With AEO and SEO combined together, your brand gets the maximum visibility!
This means that not only do you leverage the click-through searches but also the zero-click searches.
This way, your users, customers, and clients will only see your brand whenever they search for a related query, be it by typing or speaking.
It will inherently make your brand the trustworthy and credible player in your industry.
Thus, AEO and SEO are the best way forward for implementing the organic aspect of search engine marketing.
Wildnet Technologies is a leading Digital Marketing and Transformation Company in India that has helped more than 4100+ clients rake in the benefits of the 360-degree digital marketing services.
If you would like to learn more,
- The Future of SEO is AEO!
- AEO vs. SEO | the Future of SE in 2025
- Wildnet’s Digital Yum (our thought leadership’s weekly POV on the latest and hottest in the digital transformation industry)
Contact us now at info@wildnettechnologies.com and get yourselves the apt AEO and SEO marketing strategy.
FAQs
FAQ 1: What are the key differences when comparing AEO vs SEO?
Ans: The key SEO and AEO differences are as follows:
- Goal
AEO -> To answer for answer engines and zero-click searches.
SEO -> To gather more organic traffic.
- Focus
AEO -> Conversational keywords to cater to users’ queries.
SEO -> Maximum keyword infusion to induce click-throughs.
- Primary Devices
AEO -> Answer engines, voice assistants, and more.
SEO -> Desktop and mobile devices
- Content
AEO -> Short Form
SEO -> Long Form
By these differences, you can witness that AEO and SEO are class apart!
FAQ 2: What are the benefits of using AEO and SEO together?
Ans: The benefits of using AEO and SEO together are as follows:
- Boosted brand visibility across varied platforms.
- Balanced content with immediate answers conjoined to form long-form content.
- Exponential increase in user engagement and experience.
All in all, AEO and SEO can garner your brand the ultimate visibility!
FAQ 3: Which is better, AEO or SEO?
Ans: Depending upon your target audiences, competitor analysis, content goals, resources, and ROI, you make the choice as to which one will suit your requirements better.
But remember, you cannot use just one of them if you wish to make your mark in the sky!
FAQ 4: Who can help in leveraging both AEO and SEO?
Ans: A leading digital marketing company like Wildnet Technologies can help you leverage both AEO and SEO.
FAQ 5: Can AEO make digital marketing cost-effective?
Ans: Yes, as now your web content will have much more online visibility, and thus you are bound to achieve the business & marketing goals quicker.
This inherently means the monetary burden of using AEO along with SEO will be balanced out with ROI (return on investment) much earlier than in the case of traditional SEO.