From SEO to AEO: The Quiet Revolution in How People Search (And How Brands Should Respond)
- Khaled Al-Kulaib
- Jul 25
- 3 min read
The Old World: SEO’s Era of Links and Rankings
For decades, brands obsessed over Google, perfecting keywords, backlinks, metadata, and site architecture to earn rankings. SEO delivered search traffic, but increasingly returned ads and guesswork. Today, that system is under pressure from a new paradigm. Traditional click-based search still dominates, but for how long?
Enter AEO: Optimizing to Be the One Answer
AEO is about being the answer AI agents like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot provide. Instead of competing in a list of links, you aim to be the trusted response. That means structured, conversational, fact-based content designed for machine consumption.
The Behavioral Shift: AI Search Is Exploding
Metric | Data Point
Share of U.S. desktop search via AI tools (June 2025) | 5.6% (more than doubled YoY)
Consumers completing 40%+ of searches without clicks | 80% (organic traffic down ~25%)
AI referrals growth in U.S. retail during 2024 holidays | +1,300% (1,950% on Cyber Monday)
Consumer use of AI for shopping recommendations | 42% of LLM users
Higher Quality, Better Conversion
Despite fewer visits, AI-sourced traffic converts better:
Insurance site LLM conversion: 3.76% vs. organic 1.19%
E-commerce site: 5.53% vs. organic 3.7%
AI referrals also linger longer (+8% session time), explore more pages (+12%), and bounce less (-23%) compared to traditional paths.
Examples: Early Adopters Leading the Pack
Bank of America commands 32.2% AI visibility in banking queries, followed by SoFi (25.7%) and LightStream (20.2%)
Mayo Clinic leads health-related AI citations with 14.1% visibility, followed by Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins
QuickBooks, Amazon, and Walmart dominate in retail and SaaS AI recognition: Amazon holds 57.3%, Walmart 45.9% visibility in relevant queries
Why Cetaphil Was Just the Beginning
Cetaphil’s success: they discovered 40–50% of Gen Z shoppers used ChatGPT in-store at Target for skincare advice, prompting them to rewrite product pages with authoritative, structured content and launch their AI assistant “GAIA.” While anecdotal, this demonstrates how real consumer behavior, AI-tools in brick and mortar aisles, drives content strategy.
Core Principles of AEO
Conversational, Q&A Content: answer questions directly, in natural language with clear structure.
Structured Data: schema markup, semantic HTML, bullets/hierarchies, and files like llms.txt to aid AI crawling.
Authority and Brand Mentions: backlinks matter less than weighted brand volume and mentions across the web. Brand mentions correlate ~0.66 with AI overview picks; backlinks show only ~0.22.
Multimodal Formats: AI engines cite YouTube transcripts, Reddit, Quora, so diversify across text, video, forums.
The Risks of Doing Nothing
Brands relying only on SEO risk losing up to 40% organic visibility by 2026.
AI engines favor clarity, relevance, and citation-readiness, not brute force ranking.
Lagging brands face rising costs to catch up, as authorities lock in share-of-voice early.
How Brands Can Adapt (Immediately)
Audit content: Identify where AI overviews or snippets trigger and reshape content into Q&A, FAQs, structured answers.
Track AI visibility: Use platforms like Profound or Amsive to measure your share of voice across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot.
Expand footprint: Contribute long-form answers on Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube; ensure web presence aligns with AI citation sources.
Maintain technical hygiene: ensure server-rendered content, fast load speeds, proper schema, accessible to AI crawlers.
Blend SEO, AEO, GEO: retain keyword strategy while layering in answer-targeted formats and generative content readiness.
Final Thought: Prepare Now or Fade Out
The shift isn’t speculative, it’s already underway:
AI chat referrals up to 1,300% YoY
80% of people completing 40% of their searches via AI
Brands commanding >30% AI visibility across verticals
Whether you're a retailer, SaaS provider, healthcare platform, or founder launching a new brand, your next customer is likely asking an AI chatbot first. Do you want to be that answer?
Act on AEO fundamentals today, structured content, authority signals, cross-channel presence, and you secure relevance in the next wave of discovery. Delay, and risk being invisible.
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