SEO, AEO, GEO & LLMs

My first SEO work was at planetFear in the UK, where I managed the writers whose articles held high search rankings. At GO Outdoors in 2008 I led all product content for the UK's largest outdoor retailer. By 2010 Hitwise had it as the most visited outdoor website in the country. That didn't come from tricking Google. It came from being clear about what we sold and who it was for, in a way both the algorithm and the customer understood.

At PGG Wrightson and ChristchurchNZ the same clear-first approach grew website visits year after year. At PGG, Livestock traffic grew 900%.

The mechanics have changed. Search used to mean ten blue links and a fight for position one. Now it increasingly means an AI reading your site and deciding, on your behalf, whether you're worth mentioning at all. That is what AEO and GEO are. The same craft, aimed at a reader that happens to be a model.