A client I’ve been creating online content for recently asked me to shift priorities. Instead of writing for traditional SEO first, they want me to focus on AEO first, with SEO as a secondary consideration. I understand the logic. Discovery is changing. Content isn’t just competing for blue links anymore. It’s competing to be cited by AI systems. Most of us are fluent in SEO by now. We’ve been living with it for decades. But the newer terms floating around — AEO, GEO and LLMO — are still settling, and they’re often used interchangeably. They’re related, but not identical: - **Search engine optimization (SEO): **Optimizing content to rank in traditional search engine results pages. - **Answer engine optimization (AEO): **Structuring content so it can be extracted and surfaced as a direct answer in AI-driven interfaces. - **Large language model optimization (LLMO): **Optimizing content specifically for retrieval and citation by large language models.…