All playbooks / Search & discovery
SEO & GEO
& AEO Playbook
Make your website easy to find, clear to understand and useful enough to reference. 21 chapters with diagrams, worked examples and numbered sources, checked against primary documentation and studies in October 2026.
Choose a starting pointPlan your pagesDiagnose discoveryBuild a 90-day plan
- SEO
- Search engine optimization. Research the question, make the site reachable and help people find the right page.
- AEO
- Answer engine optimization. Put a clear, supported answer where the reader and any system extracting it expect to find it.
- GEO
- Generative engine optimization. Be a source worth citing when an AI system assembles an answer.
A note on the labels. Google’s own guidance says optimizing for its AI features is optimizing for Search, and that you can ignore new acronyms and special files. We keep the three labels because they are common working vocabulary and help sequence the work. Every chapter says whether a claim rests on platform documentation, a published study or our own editorial judgment.
21 chapters
SEO: get found
Research the question, connect the site and make the page work.
- 01
Start with the search, not the keyword
Match each page to the job behind a query, and give every page one clear reason to exist.
8 min read - 02
Build a keyword map from customer questions
Turn enquiries, search data and keyword ideas into a prioritized set of useful pages, with a brief for each.
7 min read - 03
Make the page easy to reach
Crawling, indexing and canonical URLs: check the chain from URL to search result before rewriting the content.
12 min read - 04
Write titles and links people can use
Make the promise in the search result match the page, then connect the next useful answer.
10 min read - 05
Connect the library around real decisions
Plan topic hubs, contextual links and clear ownership so every useful page has a place and a route to the next answer.
7 min read - 06
Make JavaScript pages work as documents
Check initial HTML, rendered content, routing and error responses so a polished interface still exposes a useful page.
8 min read - 07
Make the discovered page worth opening
Use performance, mobile usability and stable layouts to protect the visit you worked to earn.
7 min read
AEO: answer clearly
Plan the explanation, support the claims and help someone decide.
- 08
Put the answer where the question is
Write a direct answer, keep the conditions beside it and make the explanation easy to follow.
7 min read - 09
Write a brief that produces a useful answer
Turn a topic into a clear assignment with a reader, an evidence plan, an outline and acceptance checks.
7 min read - 10
Build comparisons that help someone choose
Use shared criteria, explicit assumptions and honest tradeoffs to turn a comparison into a useful decision tool.
6 min read - 11
Answer the questions that stop the next step
Use real objections to build useful FAQs, place answers at the decision point and avoid repeating the article.
7 min read - 12
Use structured data to describe reality
Choose accurate markup, connect the page to its publisher and validate what you ship.
7 min read - 13
Make useful answers, not snippet bait
Format definitions, processes and comparisons clearly without treating a search feature as a promise.
7 min read - 14
Make claims and authorship easy to check
Build a source trail, describe the method and show who is responsible for the advice.
7 min read
GEO: become a useful source
Clarify the source, audit the evidence and measure the outcome.
- 15
Give AI answers something worth citing
Publish specific evidence and useful expertise that another answer can point back to, and know how strong the evidence for each tactic really is.
8 min read - 16
Make the business behind the pages unambiguous
Keep your name, offer, profiles and organization metadata consistent so readers and machines can verify who they are dealing with.
7 min read - 17
Make each explanation useful on its own
Keep names, units, conditions and evidence inside coherent sections so an extracted answer keeps its meaning, without chopping your page into fragments.
6 min read - 18
Separate AI search access from training
Understand what each crawler is for, then decide per service before you change robots.txt or your hosting rules.
8 min read - 19
Audit AI citations with a repeatable method
Build a fixed question set, preserve the observation context, repeat each run and separate citations from mentions and referrals.
8 min read - 20
Measure discovery all the way to the enquiry
Separate visibility, citations, visits and business outcomes so each number answers a useful question.
7 min read - 21
Turn the playbook into a 90-day working plan
Sequence technical access, useful answers, original evidence and measurement into one realistic improvement cycle.
7 min read
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