SEO drives visibility. AEO increases influence. Together, they improve traffic quality and conversion rates in AI-driven search environments. Marketing teams should shift focus from volume to intent, clarity, and structured content.
If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably noticed the conversation around search changing. And you’re probably feeling some pressure around it.
AI-generated answers are becoming more visible in Google. Leadership teams are asking whether SEO still matters. Marketing leaders must reconcile what they see in traffic reports with what they’re hearing about AI-driven search.
At the center of those conversations are practical questions: What happens to traffic? What happens to pipeline as search behavior evolves?
In this post, we’ll cover how SEO and AEO work together. We’ll also explain how that shift affects the quality of traffic reaching your site and its ability to convert.
What Are SEO and AEO?
SEO and AEO aren’t just two more acronyms in a marketer’s toolbox. But there meanings aren’t always clear.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages like Google and Bing. It focuses on keywords, backlinks, site structure, metadata, and user signals, with the goal of driving organic traffic to your site.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) has emerged alongside AI-powered search experiences. Rather than focusing only on rankings, AEO is about structuring and writing content so AI systems can understand it, summarize it, and surface it directly in answer-driven interfaces, such as Google’s AI Overviews, voice assistants, and tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
| SEO | AEO |
| Optimizes for rankings | Optimizes for AI-generated answers |
| Focuses on traffic volume | Focuses on traffic quality |
| Keyword-driven | Intent + structure-driven |
| SERP visibility | Answer visibility |
| Click acquisition | Conversion readiness |
In simple terms, AEO is about being the answer, not just the first link.
SEO and AEO: A Useful Distinction
SEO and AEO are often framed as competing strategies. In practice, they address different parts of the same journey.
SEO still plays a critical role in discoverability. It’s how people find your site in traditional search results. AEO influences which users decide to click through, and how prepared they are when they arrive.
When AI summaries explain the basics of a problem, outline options, and surface credible sources. That means the visitors who continue on to your website arrive with more context. That changes how they engage.
Why Traffic Patterns Are Starting to Shift
One of the most common concerns we hear from marketing teams is whether AI answers will reduce organic traffic.
The short answer: yes. Certain informational queries may result in fewer clicks. But a portion of your organic traffic never converted before. Pages optimized for volume brought visitors who skimmed, bounced, or never moved closer to a buying decision. That traffic was never going to impact pipeline.
What we’re starting to see instead is a shift in traffic quality. This can be uncomfortable to acknowledge, especially when traffic volume has long been a primary success metric:
- Some low-intent visits are filtered out earlier
- Visitors who do click through tend to arrive more informed
- As a result, engagement and conversion rates matter more than raw session counts
HubSpot has noted that visitors influenced by AI-assisted search can convert at higher rates in certain scenarios, largely because they are further along in the decision process when they arrive; a point discussed in Marketing Against the Grain’s episode, “SEO vs. AEO: The New Rules for Winning on Google and AI Models.”
Where AI Search Creates Risk
AI search changes how people find and trust your brand. It also changes what your analytics can tell you. That means common search engine metrics can send misleading signals. For example, AI-generated answers replace traditional search results. Users get what they need without clicking, resulting in “zero-click” searches. According to Search Engine Land, news publishers expect their search traffic to drop 43% by 2029.
That shift makes attribution harder. When prospects interact with AI summaries instead of your website, referral data disappears. First-party signals weaken. It becomes more difficult to connect content investment to pipeline impact, making ROI and optimization harder to track.
There’s also a messaging risk. AI summaries may misrepresent nuance, compressing complex ideas into oversimplified statements—or pulling outdated or partial information. In industries where differentiation and credibility matter, losing control of context can dilute your value proposition or introduce reputational risk.
Finally, brand visibility itself is at stake. If your content isn’t clear, authoritative, or often cited, AI systems may not reference you at all. When that happens, competitors gain presence while your brand fades from the conversation. In an AI-driven landscape, visibility is no longer just about ranking. It’s about being recognized, referenced, and trusted by the machines shaping customer decisions.
What This Means for Conversion-Focused Teams
For teams measured on pipeline and performance, this shift reinforces an important principle: not all traffic is equal.
AI-driven summaries often handle the early, exploratory questions. That means the people who continue on to your site are more likely evaluating fit, credibility, and next steps.
For example, a visitor landing on a services page after seeing an AI summary may already understand the problem you solve and the available approaches. Instead of asking “What is this?”, they’re asking “Is this the right partner for us?”
That’s a very different conversion moment, and your site needs to support it.
SEO vs. AEO: Practical Areas to Focus On
Rather than treating AEO as a separate initiative, it’s more productive to look at how your existing site supports both discoverability and decision-making.
These are the areas we consistently see make the biggest difference:
1. Answer the Primary Question Quickly
Pages should make it immediately clear what problem they address and who they’re for. This helps AI systems interpret the content and helps human visitors orient themselves without friction.
This doesn’t mean stripping pages down. It means leading with clarity before expanding into detail.
2. Prioritize Pages That Influence Conversion
High traffic doesn’t always equal high value. Pay close attention to the pages that support demos, contact requests, or sales conversations.
Those pages often benefit most from clearer messaging, stronger positioning, and tighter alignment with buyer intent.
3. Be Clear About Your Point of View
Content that tries to remain neutral rarely converts well.
AI systems tend to surface authoritative answers. Human buyers tend to trust confident ones. Clear positioning helps both.
4. Invest in Structure, Not Just Copy
AEO isn’t primarily a writing tactic; it’s a structure and governance issue.
Clear headings, consistent content models, and a CMS that supports reuse and clarity make it easier for both AI systems and people to understand your site. This is often where foundational decisions matter most.
Tools That Can Help (Without Adding Complexity)
Tools won’t solve for unclear positioning or weak content, but the right ones can make it easier to see how your site is actually being interpreted, by both search engines and AI-driven systems. For teams navigating SEO and AEO together, the goal isn’t to add more to the stack, but to gain clarity without creating extra overhead.
Here are a few categories of marketer-friendly tools that can be genuinely useful:
Google Search Console
It’s still one of your most important sources of truth. Google Search Console shows how your content is indexed, which queries lead to visibility, and where technical or structural issues may block performance. Watch for queries where impressions rise, but CTR falls; this often means your content is appearing in an AI-generated snippet or overview.
Schema and Structured Content Tools
Schema isn’t a shortcut to better rankings, but it does help reduce ambiguity. Structured data literally defines what a page is about, how different pieces of content relate to one another, and which information is most important.
For marketers, this often looks like:
- Using CMS-native schema capabilities where possible
- Applying structured markup for FAQs, how-to content, and organizational information
- Validating schema through lightweight testing tools to ensure consistency
Schema is most effective when it’s implemented thoughtfully and consistently through your CMS, not added piecemeal. It won’t replace strong content, but it does make that content easier for AI systems to interpret and summarize.
Content Clarity and Audit Tools
If AI systems struggle to summarize a page, human visitors usually do too. Tools that support content audits, readability checks, and internal linking analysis can surface areas where messaging is unclear or content is doing too much at once.
These insights are often more actionable than chasing new keywords, especially for pages meant to support conversion.
Emerging AI Visibility Tools (Use Carefully)
There’s a growing category of tools designed to show how content appears in AI-powered tools. These can be useful for experimentation, but like the technology they’re measuring, they’re still evolving.
Use them to spot patterns and ask better questions, but be wary of replacing established performance metrics.
Is AEO replacing SEO?
No. AEO builds on SEO. Without strong technical and content foundations, AI systems have nothing reliable to summarize.
Does AI search reduce website traffic?
In some cases, yes, especially for basic informational queries. However, traffic that remains may be more qualified and conversion-ready.
How should marketing leaders measure success in AI search?
Shift from sessions to engagement metrics, assisted conversions, branded search lift, and pipeline influence.
Do B2B companies need AEO?
Yes. AI-driven summaries often shape vendor shortlists before buyers ever visit a website.
SEO vs. AEO: The Big Picture
AI-driven search doesn’t change what makes digital experiences work. It tends to make existing gaps more visible, often sooner than teams expect.
Teams that invest in:
- Clear messaging
- Strong content foundations
- Well-structured, maintainable websites
- A focus on buyer intent over raw volume
are generally better positioned as search continues to evolve.
SEO remains an important driver of visibility. AEO adds a layer that influences how users arrive and what they expect when they do.
When approached together, they support the same goal: attracting the right people and giving them a clear path to engage.
If you’re evaluating how changes in search affect your website, CMS, or conversion strategy, these are exactly the kinds of questions we help teams work through at Culture Foundry.
