AEO vs SEO
SEO earns a position in a ranked list of links. AEO earns a place in a written answer. Joe Ashta, a GEO / AEO consultant for law firms, works in both and reports them separately. This page sets the two side by side: the unit of result, the unit of success, what each one optimizes, how each is reported, what carries over from one to the other, what does not, and why a law firm needs both.
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of result | A ranked list of links | A written answer |
| Unit of success | Position and click | Mention and recommendation |
| What is optimized | The page and its links | The entity and its corroboration |
| How it is reported | Rankings and organic traffic | Mention rate and citations |
| Who decides | A ranking algorithm ordering documents | A language model writing from retrieved documents |
| What absence looks like | Page two; the buyer can still scroll | Unnamed; the buyer never learns what was left out |
Unit of result
An SEO result is a list. Google returns ten links for "family lawyer Burnaby", and each is a page. The buyer chooses which to open. An AEO result is an answer: a paragraph that names two or three family firms in Burnaby with a reason for each. The buyer reads it and acts. In the first case the firm's page is the thing being ranked. In the second the firm itself is the thing being named, and its page may or may not be linked.
Unit of success
SEO succeeds by position and by the click that follows it. Position three earns a share of the clicks, position eight earns a smaller share, and the page's traffic is the outcome. AEO succeeds by the mention, the firm named in the answer, and by the recommendation, the firm named as one to contact. There is no share for the fourth firm. It is named or it is absent.
What is optimized
SEO optimizes the page and its links: the content on the page, its relevance to the query, its technical health, and the links pointing to it from other sites. AEO optimizes the entity and its corroboration: whether the firm is one clear thing, described the same way on its site, its lawyer profiles, its directory listings and the records third parties hold; and whether sources the firm does not control confirm what the firm says about itself. A page can be improved in an afternoon. An entity's corroboration is built over months, across places the firm does not own.
How it is reported
An SEO report shows rankings for a set of keywords and organic traffic to the site. An AEO report shows a mention rate, the share of relevant AI answers in which the firm is named, with recommendations counted within it, and citations alongside as the vendor-available proxy. The two reports use different units and cannot be added together. A firm can see its rankings hold steady while its mention rate falls, or the reverse.
What carries over
Three things built for SEO transfer directly. Crawlability: an AI system retrieves pages through a search index, so a page Google cannot crawl is a page no answer will draw on. Relevance: a page that is plainly about the buyer's question is retrievable for it in either system. Authority: the links and references that raise a page's ranking also raise the weight a generative system gives it as grounding. A firm with sound SEO starts AEO with the retrieval step already working.
What does not carry over
A page can rank and never be named. The ranking step ends with the page in the list. The naming step requires the system to recognize which firm the page belongs to and to trust that recognition enough to write the firm's name into the answer. That depends on the entity being clear and corroborated, which SEO never had to address, because the buyer did the recognizing when they read the page. The pattern shows up in practice: a firm with first-page rankings for its main terms is absent from the AI answers for the same questions, while a competitor with weaker rankings and a cleaner public record is named.
Why a law firm needs both
Buyers still use both doors. Some search Google and read the list; some ask an AI system and read the answer; many do both for the same decision. A firm with SEO alone is visible to the first group and silent to the second. A firm attempting AEO without SEO would be trying to be named from pages no system can find. The order is SEO first, because it is the retrieval layer, then AEO on top of it, because it is the naming layer. Joe Ashta's role is written GEO / AEO consultant for that reason, and Answer Engine Optimization describes the second layer in full. The entity record is the canonical statement of what he does.
Related: AEO vs GEO, Entity authority and AI citations.