SEO & AEO

what is search engine optimization?

the strategic process of affecting how search engines work to make a website rank higher in organic search results

• is the key to how marketers make a website rank higher in the organic search results

what do search engines do?

all search engines follow links to a page, index everything, and measure popularity

what are the 3 main functions of a search engine?

• read content

• index content

• retrieve content

what are the two kinds of crawlers google uses?

• a deep crawl bot that scours the entire web monthly

• a fresh bot that crawls sites more frequently

can a crawler read images and videos?

no it can only read the name or description provided for the image/video

• crawlers read the source code

what is a meta title tag?

and HTML element that specifies the title of a web page.

• title tags are displayed on search engine results pages (SERP’s) as the clickable headline for a given result

what is a meta description tag?

an HTML attribute that provides a brief summary of a web page

what is alt text?

• is the first and foremost principle of web accessibility

• are displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded

• provide better image context/description to search engine crawlers

what is page speed?

a measurement of how fast the content on your page loads (the time it takes to FULLY display the content on a page)

how do search engines index content?

• crawlers cache or save the page

• they read the title

• they scan the content and identify main keywords

• records the URL of the page

• stores the info in a structured manner

• info is stored on super large servers around the world

Google algorithms are part of how search engines retrieve content. how does this work?

Different algorithms pick up different categories of keywords (ie: pigeon is for local results) a find relevant pages from those keywords

• the search engine then goes to where the indexed pages are stored & returns relevant info to the user

what is the most important algorithm?

PAGE RANK

what is anchor text?

text that links to another location or document on the web (essentially a clickable text in a hyperlink)

what does traditional SEO look like?

• keyword density & placement

• backlink quantity

• ranking pages on Google & Bind

• Gaming algorithms

What does AI powered search look like?

• natural language understanding

• content synthesis & summarization

• direct answer generation

• contextual comprehension

how does AI search work with keywords?

• intent analysis

• multi-layered search

• synthesis & generation

what is the the bottom line with keywords?

keywords remain important but must be imbedded semantically within high quality content & supported by structured data for AI comprehension

What 3 things to traditional search engines have?

• algorithm based ranking

• list based results

• limited conversation

what are some AI powered search engines?

• ChatGPT

• Perplexity AI

• Google Gemini

what are the key differentiators between traditional search engine and AI powered search engines?

AI platforms provide direct, concise answers with source citations, support contextual follow up questions, and retain conversation history

what is AEO?

• optimizes for AI comprehension

• focuses on being cited in AI answers

• entity and context driven

• designed for direct answers

which is better, SEO and AEO?

neither, SEO and AEO are complementary and essential, they are not competing strategies

what is the process of how AI search works?

1. user asks a question

2. AI performs multiple searches

3. AI synthesizes & understands

4. generates direct answers

what does content marketing need to have for AI discovery?

• comprehensive FAQ pages

• data rich case studies

• comparison articles

• detailed how to guides & tutorials

• authoritative glossary pages

• topic clusters & hubs