Small business guide to SEO, AEO & GEO

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SEO has broadened with AI

Search now covers both Google and AI answers. This guide shows how search-engine optimisation (SEO), Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) work together to keep small businesses visible online.

Website Adelaide is a top-rated Adelaide website designer for small businesses & sole traders, with custom web design, copywriting & on-page SEO from day one. We build websites with a strong on-page SEO foundation and an evolving approach to AI-driven search, including new layers such as AEO and GEO.

How small businesses can stay visible in search and AI answers

Search isn’t just “Google + a bit of Bing” anymore. People now ask complex, conversational questions in AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, and often receive answers without needing to click through to a website. Google itself has joined this shift by displaying AI Overviews at the top of many search results, giving instant answers above the traditional blue links we’re used to seeing.

It means search has undergone significant changes. Before you even reach the organic (unpaid) search results on Google, you’ll typically see sponsored ads and an AI Overview. For local searches, you’ll also see the local map pack (the map showing nearby businesses). After the first few organic results, Google often inserts the “People also ask” section, further pushing down the remaining organic listings. The result? The visible space for traditional organic listings on the first page has shrunk significantly.

Clicks from Google’s results are declining as zero-click searches increase, and AI has accelerated the decline in organic traffic. A 2024 clickstream study (SparkToro/Datos) found that a majority of Google searches end without a click to the open web. Further, BrightEdge’s 2025 analysis linked AI Overviews to longer queries and a year-over-year decline in click-through rates. The new reality: more answers surfaced within the results, fewer visits to websites unless your content is formatted to be cited or chosen.

Why GEO & AEO now sit alongside SEO and why Google still matters

This shift is why GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) matter: you’re optimising to be cited accurately inside AI answers (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT/Bing/Copilot, Perplexity) as well as ranked in traditional results. Multiple industry guides now frame GEO/AEO as complementary layers on top of core SEO, rather than replacements. The aim is consistent. Make it easy for machines to understand, attribute and link back to you.

At the same time, Google is still the primary demand channel. Globally, Google continues to hold about 90% of the search share, and in Australia, it’s around 92–94%, so you can’t skip classic SEO or local SEO (map pack). Treat GEO/AEO as an addition to your Google-first plan, not a swap.

A Google source you can quote (the “good SEO = good GEO” idea)

Google’s own documentation on AI features states: “The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary”. That’s effectively Google’s way of saying good SEO is good GEO/AEO. Build people-first, technically sound pages, and you’re eligible for both classic results and AI Overviews.

Helpful, people-first content and E-E-A-T

Writing helpful, reliable, people-first content remains the guiding principle. Google’s guidance emphasises writing for readers, demonstrating E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust), and delivering a strong page experience. So, put yourself in the reader’s shoes, and then prove you can help. It is also where freshness comes in. Google can show byline (publish/updated) dates in results, and it prioritises helpful, well-maintained, people-first content. Clear authorship and basic SEO best practices help Google understand and trust your pages. Therefore, plan regular updates to ensure your content remains accurate, current, and worthy of citation.

What we’re seeing across our clients right now

As AI and voice search encourage natural language, questions are becoming longer and more person-rich, where the person typically describes who they are, where they are, what they need, and any constraints. Therefore, winning content mirrors that context and answers it in one simple scroll. So your website has to do more than list services; it needs to answer the kinds of questions people actually type or say. Easiest way to nail that. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If you were them, what would you search for, what would you ask, and what proof would make you confident to call?

Shallow website content

We’re being contacted by many small businesses with existing websites who wants to rebuild, and where their content is thin, generic, AI-written text. Typically their websites does not perform, and even if the text reads okay, it doesn’t say anything that only you as a small business owner could say or know. This is where good copywriting services becomes so important to outline what works better is specific details that only you would know. How you do the job, common issues you help people avoid, what’s included, how long it takes, and the results or solutions from a recent job.

Words matter more than ever

How you describe your business, and your value proposition now serves dual purpose. It helps people decide but also teaches AI systems how to summarise you. Even if your meta description is within the character limits, Google often rewrites meta descriptions to match a page. So it’s getting harder to control. Now with AEO/GEO, short business description becomes critical as well because it’s what can get cited across other search channels. Therefore you should keep your business description concise and consistent across pages. If you are not succinct enough, the search engines may change it to something different from what you actually want, and you will go, Oh, that is not what I meant!

Freshness helps too

You don’t need weekly updates, but you do need to keep key pages up to date, including prices, ranges, service areas, examples, and common FAQs. That shows experience and care (E-E-A-T), helps real readers, and makes you easier to reference inside AI answers.

First principle, what has not changed

People still want a fast, confident answer to a specific problem.
Well-written, structured, and valuable information still outperforms poor, low-quality content.
Real proof still matters and growing in importance; examples of work, outcomes, reviews, and credible details always outweigh vague descriptions.
Technical basics (speed, mobile, internal links) amplify everything else.

What has changed is where answers appear (often inside AI tools) and how questions are asked (longer, situational, conversational). To adapt, you don’t abandon existing SEO, you continue to improve and optimise and expand it so both humans and machines recognise it instantly.

The SEO job is now twofold

Keep the foundational layer of on-page SEO extremely strong so that pages are easy to crawl, understand, use, and have specific user intent, well structured.
Add two modern layers so you’re included (and have a chance to be correctly described) in AI answers:
- AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation. Package information so that answer engines (e.g., Google AI Overview, featured snippets, voice assistants) can easily retrieve and quote it.
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation. Make it more likely that generative tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and similar) will name, cite or recommend you across platforms.

Site structure: where to start

A typical first website for a small business may include a Home page, About page, 2-3 service pages, and a Contact page. Until recently, it seemed to be common industry practice to use blogging for regular updates. However, today’s reality has shifted, and the generic “what/why/when” posts are usually answered directly within AI tools. That means traffic returns are diminishing rapidly unless your blog offers genuinely valuable, firsthand, local resources.

From an on-page SEO perspective, it’s much better to strengthen your site structure first by building out your service pages, one page per core service, and then adding a few high-trust pages that support both search engines and AI-driven answers.

If you’re an established business ready to invest in on-page SEO, we recommend prioritising these pages in this order.

1. More service pages (one page per core service)

Why this matters: One focused intent per URL is a significant advantage for ranking, clarity but also having a chance being cited by AI. It also gives you dedicated space to answer specific questions thoroughly.

2. Pricing page

Why this matters: Buyers actively search for cost information. A single, dedicated URL establishes topical authority and enables AI tools to accurately answer pricing questions. We’ve observed that businesses with specific pricing information including packages and offers get cited more often in AI responses to cost-related queries than if you are vague.

3. Proof pages (Case studies)

Why this matter: URLs showcasing your work, ROI and outcomes that builds value over time. In our testing, specific results and measurable outcomes, prove credible for both human readers and AI systems that need verifiable information to cite and tend to come up in searches.

Understanding content blocks that AI systems value

Through testing and learning with our own website content and also follow how our clients’ website content are cited in AI answers, we can identify directional patterns in the information AI systems extract and utilise. We are starting to identify why some are getting cited, or not getting mentioned, or cited differently than what you thought or wanted. Or, missing out on showing up for specific services, etc.

It’s also important to read what SEO leaders in this area are saying as they do their analyses on scale with more robust data, so we suggest read what companies like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz publish, as well as academic work on GEO and industry guidance on AEO.

When we explain AEO and GEO, we discuss two categories: AEO blocks (for answer engines, such as Google AI Overview) and GEO elements (for generative AI tools across various platforms).

Five AEO Content Blocks

These are specific content structures that, based on our observations, make information more “quotable” by AI answer engines:

1. Definition blocks

Concise explanations of what the business or a specific service is and when someone would use it. We’ve observed that content with succinct definitions near the top of pages seems to appear more frequently in AI Overviews. These act as quote-ready summaries that help both the AI model and the reader understand your service without needing extra context.

2. Decision blocks

Brief sections describing common choices customers face (for example: new web design vs. website redesign, or DIY vs. hiring a professional) with explicit guidance. Many search queries are really decision questions, and this format is likely to reduce ambiguity for AI systems trying to provide helpful answers.

3. Steps blocks

Short, numbered sequences describing your process. From a small sample and tests, though, it seems that featured snippets and AI Overviews are extracted. It gives AI systems confidence that they can accurately represent your process.

4. Local + assurance blocks

Concise sections covering service areas, relevant standards or memberships, insurance details, team information, and verifiable facts like review counts or years in business. This has always been important for good on-page SEO. However, as more decisions are made without going through clicks, AI answers must identify the right company and mitigate risk. These details help distinguish your business and provide safe, verifiable information to cite.

5. Short FAQ sections

Questions written in buyer language with concise answers covering topics like timing, pricing factors, and logistics. This is nothing new for solid on-page SEO. However, good Q&A format mirrors how people search today, and based on our observations, it provides AI models with packaged snippets that reduce the risk of generating incorrect information.

Five GEO Distribution Elements

GEO focuses on making sure AI tools across different platforms can find, understand, and cite your business correctly:

1. Consistent facts across profiles

Make sure you match your business names, service descriptions, locations, and links across your website and all major business profiles (Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, LinkedIn, etc.). Cross-platform consistency enhances AI confidence in accurately identifying and describing your business.

2. Quote-safe facts placed prominently

Short, verifiable statements, such as review counts, years in business, or the number of projects completed, are clearly displayed where they’re easily accessible. In our work, we’ve observed that easy-to-reuse genuine facts increase the likelihood that a business will be cited in generative summaries. Even with good social proofs, and not displayed properly, you may lose out to others that making it more accessible.

3. Persona-level context

Describing what type of customers you serve has always been part of good on-page SEO. Now, it’s getting even more important to have clear articulation of who you serve with outcomes that matter to each specific audience. Many search queries now include situational context (“I’m a tradie in Adelaide looking for…”), and content that addresses particular customer personas appears to align better with these intents.

4. Conversational Q&A clusters

Sets of more detailed Q&As (longer than the short FAQ format) covering decisions, requirements, local factors, costs, timing, and logistics for specific audiences. This broadens the range of questions your content can satisfy and provides material for multi-step conversations that AI tools handle.

5. Evidence with specific details

Case, project outcomes, ROIs and other examples with concrete details, specific locations, constraints faced, and outcomes achieved has also been important for on-page SEO. However, what we notice in our testing is that it seems that AI prefer this vs. general claims and making it more likely to be referenced across different AI platforms.

Making these changes work for your business

Understanding what needs to change is one thing; implementing it systematically across your website is another. This is where website strategy becomes critical, it’s the difference between making random improvements and following a structured plan that compounds and supports the business over time.

Effective website strategy answers the fundamental questions that determine whether your SEO, AEO, and GEO efforts succeed or not.

What is my current website structure
What does Google Search Console data say
What market are you in?
What are the drivers of revenue to my business
What type of customers do I want more of
How well recognised is the brand?
Where are the gaps and opportunities
What are my goals and objectives?
Which pages need attention first
How to structure each block for maximum effect
Where exactly each element should sit on your pages
How to maintain consistency across your entire site
How to measure whether it’s working

Without strategy, most businesses end up with fragmented efforts. A blog post here, an updated service page there, but no cohesive system that makes each page work harder. And more importantly, making sure the website is aligning with the business long-term goal. With strategy, every page has a clear purpose, structure, and path to improvement.

Combined SEO, AEO and GEO, is the new SEO way forward

As search has evolved beyond traditional Google results to include AI-generated answers across multiple platforms, good foundational on-page SEO still remains critical. We don’t believe in shortcuts for on-page SEO. A website needs to have valuable content for the reader that is appropriately structured for search engines and is easy to scan or dive into for more in-depth information. The shift. There are blocks and layers that that should be consistently presented both traditional search and AI-driven answers.

This is where having a systematic implementation framework becomes valuable. As Website Adelaide continues to focus on effective on-page SEO for our website customers, with the introduction of new layers of AEO and GEO, we are developing our methodology for implementing these changes for small businesses and sole traders as needed.