In today’s issue, I am showing you how SEO and AEO have officially decoupled from each other.
This is big news because this is the exact moment you have to realize that AEO is a legitimate marketing channel that you cannot afford to ignore anymore.
LFG. 🔥
SEO Tactics And AI Tactics Are No Longer The Same
For the last year and a half, I’ve had clients ask me, “How do I get found in the AI search results?” My answer has always been that to be found in the LLMs, you simply need to do good SEO.
The ranking factors for LLM search and SEO search used to be very similar. I got this viewpoint from an article on Ahrefs, which made a compelling case that AI search and organic Google search followed almost identical ranking factors.
But that play has officially stopped working.
Don’t just take my word for it, though; go ahead and run a test for yourself. Search for something on Google and see the massive difference in the results you get organically compared to what you get in AI mode. For example, look at the query, “Best health insurance plan for a small business.”
These are my top three search results in organic search:
These are my top 3 options in AI mode.
Looking at those two sets of results, the difference is night and day. It is clear that Google is running two completely different algorithms under the hood.
The organic search algo is great at curating information and giving the user an opportunity to dig in and do research, while the AI mode algo is built to index massive amounts of data and serve up the exact solution to your problem on a silver platter.
What’s The Difference?
The main shift comes down to how you build authority for your website.
For SEO, the name of the game is still backlinks. Backlinks are highly technical because every webpage on the internet carries an internal authority score. When you get a hardcoded link from an external site to yours, that authority score is passed over. Backlinks remain the true differentiator for websites trying to pull organic traffic through standard Google search. This includes:
Do follow links on directories
Guest posts
Organic links on other websites
For AEO, the play shifts entirely to citations. Simply put, a citation is just a digital shoutout. It means your company, article, or brand was mentioned naturally somewhere on the web, even without a clickable link. To get seen in AEO, you just need the internet talking about you. This includes:
Blogger mentions
Brand mentions on Reddit
Social media posts about your brand
Natural testimonials in forums or review sites
The New Agency Playbook: Monetizing the Split
If you run an agency, this decoupling is a massive opportunity for you.
SEO and AEO are completely different services now. They require totally different skill sets, different workflows, and different deliverables.
As an agency owner myself, I see this as a whole new way to grow your revenue because you can sell these as two completely separate packages to your clients.
Service 1: Traditional SEO. You focus on technical site architecture, keyword research, and building hardcoded backlinks to generate high volume organic traffic through Google search.
Service 2: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). You focus on entity management, factual data density, schema, and getting those unlinked citations so your client is the answer when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for a recommendation.
In most cases, I bundle these services into one monthly retainer. Even though the strategies and workflows are uncoupled, there is still plenty of operational overlap. That means your fulfillment costs drop, giving you a massive margin upside while letting you offer a killer bundled discount to your client.
Smart agency owners are already selling AEO as a standalone service. I am executing on both right now with my investments and my healthcare company, and if you run an agency, you need to be doing the same. Don’t leave this money on the table.
Conclusion: It’s Time To Learn AEO
I am a nerd, so I have been deep into this topic for months. But most agencies, and even most businesses, are still lagging way behind.
AEO is still new and foreign, but market demand is catching up fast. The reality is that people are finding solutions to their problems through AI mode right now. This is a massive open window for you to earn traffic, generate leads, and increase sales.
Talk to you tomorrow. Press on.
Tim
