Hi Reader, Every few months, marketing gets a new acronym.

AEO, GEO, AI SEO, LLMO, PQRSTUV... okay okay, enough of the jokes.

​Google's latest guidance on AI search makes one thing pretty clear.

This is not a completely new game.

From Google Search Central:

Those last two words. STILL SEO.

We can all calm down (me included) and know that the fundamentals of SEO apply directly to these new acronyms.

The fundamentals still matter

Google says its generative AI features in Search are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems.

In plain English, that means that as Google moves towards a fully generative AI search results, those results still rely on Google's ability to find, understand, index, evaluate, and retrieve useful pages from the web.

So yes, you should care about AEO and GEO.

But first care about SEO.

Create useful pages. Make them crawlable. Structure them clearly. Answer real questions. Show actual expertise. Make your site easy to use. Build trust.

The stuff that is proven to work.

What actually changes

It would be too easy to say, "Relax, nothing has changed."

Some things have changed.

People are searching in longer, more conversational ways. AI systems are summarising pages, pulling out passages, comparing claims, and looking for content that can answer follow-up questions.

That means your website needs to be clearer.

Not more robotic or verbose. Clearer.

Your website should explain what you do, who you help, what problems you solve and why you are credible.

If a human can't understand that, neither is the AI, or more importantly, Google won't rank your site.

A practical checklist

If you want to improve your chances of showing up in the new world of acronyms (AEO, GEO etc), here is your checklist.

• Make sure your important pages can be crawled and indexed by Google.
• Check that key pages are eligible to appear in Google Search with snippets.
• Write clear titles, headings, meta descriptions, and image alt text.
• Use proper internal links so your important pages are not buried.
• Build service and product pages that clearly explain who you help and what you solve.
• Publish content with a genuine point of view, not recycled summaries of what everyone else has already said.
• Use first-hand examples, client stories, lessons, data, and proof wherever you can.
• Add structured data where it makes sense, but don't treat schema as a magic AI button.
• Make pages easy to read, scan, navigate, and use on mobile.
• Improve page speed and overall page experience.
• Review old blog posts and remove, combine, or improve content that adds no real value.
• Use AI to help you research, organise, and sharpen content, not to replace your thinking.
• Check whether your brand, products, people, and expertise are described consistently across your site and other credible sources.
• Build content around the actual questions your buyers ask before they are ready to speak to sales.

This is a lot, I know, but start with the pages that matter most.

Your homepage. Your service pages. Your product pages. Your best case studies. The handful of articles that already bring in qualified traffic or sales conversations.

Make those genuinely useful first.

What does Google say about using AI for content?

The short answer: yes, it is totally fine to use AI.

The longer answer is: don’t use it to produce slop at scale.

​Google cares whether the final thing is accurate, useful, relevant, and created for people.

AI can help with research. It can help with structure. It can turn messy notes into a better first draft. It can help you tighten headings, improve metadata, organise ideas, and speed up production.

Great.

But it cannot replace the bit that actually matters.

Your thinking. Your experience. Your examples. Your point of view. Your understanding of your ideal client.

If you are using AI to make good content better, brilliant.

The question is not, “Did AI help create this?”

The question is, “Would this be useful to a person we would want to have a conversation with?”

That is still the game.

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See you in two weeks,

Jason

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Google’s AI advice, unfortunately, still involves doing the work.

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