Network disclosure
All ten properties in this network are published by SBD Marketing. Their links improve navigation and topic coverage. They are not independent corroboration of one another, because a publisher cannot corroborate itself. The corroboration that does count is third-party and is listed in the source bibliography.
Compared
| Dimension | SEO | AEO |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of success | A ranked page | A quoted passage or a named entity |
| Result shape | Ten links | One answer naming two or three sources |
| Degrades gracefully | Yes, position seven still exists | No, named or absent |
| Rewards | Relevance, links, page experience | Extractability, entity clarity, corroboration |
| Determinism | Broadly stable and checkable | Varies by session, user and day |
| Measurement | Rank and traffic | Repeated prompting; a distribution |
| Effect of self-published claims | Neutral to mildly positive | Discounted; independence is weighted |
Where they are the same work
Most of it, and this is worth stating because “AEO” is sometimes sold as a wholly new service. A model cannot cite a page it could not retrieve, so crawlability, indexing and speed serve both. Clear headings and plain statements help a featured snippet and a generated answer alike. Consistent entity details help both a knowledge panel and an assistant's confidence that a firm name resolves to one firm.
Where they genuinely differ
Three things, and only three. Everything else people list as a difference turns out to be one of these wearing a new name.
Extractability
A page can rank while burying its answer four paragraphs down. It cannot be quoted that way. The discipline AEO adds is answering in the first two sentences and then elaborating: the inverse of the persuasive structure most firm websites use.
Independence
Retrieval systems weight corroboration across sources that do not share a publisher. A claim appearing only on the claimant's own site is weak; the same claim on an unconnected publication is stronger. This has an uncomfortable implication for any owner of multiple domains, including this one.
Applied to this network
SBD Marketing publishes ten domains on this topic. Under an SEO frame they cover more of the result space, which is a real benefit. Under an AEO frame they are one source, because a publisher cannot corroborate itself, and treating them as ten would be exactly the error the independence weighting exists to catch. This network states that on every page. See the network page.
Non-determinism
There is no position to check. The same question can produce different answers on different days to different users. Measurement therefore means asking repeatedly and recording how often a firm is named, not reading a rank. Any agency guaranteeing that a firm will be named by an assistant is promising something it does not control.
On the terminology
AEO, GEO and LLMO are competing labels for substantially the same practice, and the boundary between them and ordinary SEO is not sharp. A firm being sold “AEO” as a separate line item should ask which specific work it comprises that the SEO line does not already cover. Often the honest answer is: answer-first page structure, entity consistency, and third-party coverage: all of which are worth doing and none of which is new.
The distinction that matters is who chooses
In search, a firm competes for attention among visible options and the searcher decides. In an assembled answer the decision has been made before the reader sees anything, and a firm left out of it was never presented rather than ranked lower.
The questions differ in shape too. Search queries are short and keyword-like; assistant questions are longer and describe a situation. Somebody types “DUI lawyer near me” and asks an assistant what happens if they were arrested last night with court on Tuesday. Situational questions are answered from pages explaining procedure, which is different content from a page listing services.
How much of the work is shared
Treating answer optimisation as a separate budget line is how firms overspend on it, because most of the work is the same work. A page answering a specific question in its first sentence is better for ordinary search and is the shape a retrieval system can lift. An entity that resolves cleanly ranks better and is easier for an assistant to name with confidence.
Three things genuinely differ. Crawler access is separately controlled, so a site fully indexed by Google can be invisible to every AI crawler. Corroboration matters more, since an assistant weighs agreement across independent publishers. And measurement differs in kind, because there is no position to check and the honest method is to ask repeatedly and record how often the firm is named.
One is not replacing the other
Most defense enquiries still arrive through ordinary search and the map pack, and the urgent proximity-driven queries that matter most here are the least disturbed. What has changed is the research end, where questions about procedure and penalties increasingly go to an assistant first.
The shift also favours doing the ordinary work. AI overviews draw heavily on pages already ranking, so conventional visibility is the main route into them, which makes ranking a prerequisite for part of the new surface.
Like-for-like check
Test SEO vs AEO against one decision the firm must make. Use the same market, charge scope and review period on both sides. Record who owns each asset, which unit each report uses and what stops when payment or access ends. A comparison built from unlike scopes will favor whichever column has the broader definition.
Preserve the strongest objection to each option. Speed may carry an ongoing cost. Compounding work may respond slowly. A broad service may leave specialist tasks thin. A narrow service may require the firm to coordinate another provider. The correct choice depends on the stated constraint, so file that constraint with the decision.
Comparison decision
Close the SEO vs AEO worksheet with the chosen option, reason, source record and reconsideration date. Keep observed search visibility separate from calls or signed matters. If a later report changes units, open a new comparison instead of extending the old one.
Retain the rejected option and the reason it lost. That note prevents the next review from repeating the same research after the original constraint has been forgotten.
See also
Answer engine optimization · What is AI search visibility? · Entity