AI Search vs Traditional Google: Should You Optimize Differently?
The honest answer: mostly the same techniques, with two important divergences. Here's how to think about effort allocation.
The 70% overlap.
Traditional SEO and AEO share the same fundamentals: well-structured content, clean technical baseline, fast page load, mobile-friendly, schema markup, authoritative inbound links, trustworthy domain. If you do those well, you're 70% of the way to ranking in both.
This is good news. It means you're not running two parallel programs. Most of the work compounds across both.
The 30% divergence: citation optimization.
AI engines need to decide which sources to cite. Traditional Google needs to decide which results to rank. The decision criteria diverge in three places.
1. Citable claim density. AI engines need quotable sentences. Google ranks on overall page quality.
2. Author authority. AI engines weight named-author bylines more heavily.
3. Cross-source consistency. AI engines validate by checking other sources. Google ranks on its own signals.
How to think about effort split.
For most small businesses in 2026, the answer is roughly: 70% traditional SEO and content marketing, 20% AEO-specific work, 10% experimentation with newer engines (Perplexity, Bing Copilot, niche AI search).
The 70% is what gets you organic traffic today. The 20% is the leading-indicator investment for the next 24 months. The 10% is option value, most of it won't compound, but the 1-2 things that do will be huge.
Where to start if you're behind on AEO.
Three highest-impact interventions, in order:
1. Add FAQPage schema to your top 5 pages. Highest-effort-to-result ratio.
2. Add an explicit Person/author byline to your blog and About page. Same person, same disambiguation, every time.
3. Audit your top pages for citable claim density. Aim for 2+ verifiable facts per 100 words. Rewrite paragraphs that have zero.
What not to do.
Don't rebuild your site for AEO. Don't pay for "AI optimization" services that just install schema. Don't chase every new AI engine that launches.
The fundamentals haven't changed. Be useful, be specific, be findable. Apply the AEO-specific techniques on top of a strong SEO baseline.
Tracked queries, schema deployment, citation monitoring, monthly reporting. For Bay Area businesses serious about being cited in AI answers.
Talk to Eric →