SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what should a Vancouver business invest in?
SEO, AEO and GEO describe overlapping work. Start with the questions your customers need answered, the pages that serve those questions and a measurement plan. Buying three disconnected packages can duplicate effort.
What each term means
SEO addresses how a website is discovered and represented in search. AEO focuses on clear answers to customer questions. GEO is commonly used for visibility in generated answers. These are useful descriptions of priorities, but their boundaries are not universal. A service page can help a prospective customer, support organic search and provide source material for an AI answer at the same time.
Choose the starting point from the problem
If important pages cannot be crawled or have conflicting canonical URLs, start with technical SEO. If customers cannot understand what you sell, improve service explanations and supporting proof. If relevant visitors abandon an enquiry, review the conversion flow. If the business already has strong foundations, investigate the questions and sources appearing in AI search and identify specific evidence gaps.
Ask for a coordinated scope
A proposal should name the affected pages, research questions, implementation owner and review method. For example, a Vancouver business might improve one core service page, publish a useful comparison based on real expertise and correct inconsistent service-area information. The same improvements may support several discovery channels. Ask which deliverables are shared so the same task is not charged three times.
Keep Google guidance in context
Google says its established SEO practices remain relevant to AI features. It does not require special AI schema or llms.txt for inclusion. That guidance is about Google; do not assume it describes every answer engine. Check the current documentation of each product being evaluated. A technically eligible page can still receive no citation.
Compare four kinds of evidence
Search impressions describe exposure in the reports available to your account. Sampled citations show where a particular answer linked to a page at a particular time. Referral sessions show observed visits. Confirmed leads show that someone completed a customer action. Keep these measures separate and investigate lead quality before drawing a commercial conclusion.
Use a repeatable question sample
Select a small set of actual customer questions across discovery, comparison and purchase. Record the product, exact question, market, date and any visible settings. Save the cited URL and check whether the answer describes the business accurately. Repeating this sample can reveal issues, but it cannot establish the brand’s visibility across every user and answer.
What a sensible first 90 days looks like
Use the first month to establish access, baselines and technical priorities. In the second month, improve the service pages and original answers that matter most. In the third, compare the available evidence, fix incorrect representations and improve the enquiry journey. Timing depends on scope and data; none of these milestones guarantees a ranking or citation.