SEO is not dead: why AI search still starts with the basics
Buyers now ask AI assistants for recommendations. Here is what SEO, AEO and GEO mean in plain language, why the order you do them in matters, and a checklist to see where your company stands.
More buyers no longer start with a page of search results. They open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity and ask a question the way they would ask a colleague: which logistics companies in Nairobi handle cold chain deliveries, or who can set up a CRM for a SACCO. The assistant answers with a short list of names, and those names get the first call.
This is not a niche habit. Forrester reports that 94 percent of B2B buyers now use AI in their purchasing process. For a company that sells to other companies, that means the first shortlist is often put together by a machine before anyone visits your website.
The natural reaction is to look for a new trick to get into those answers. That is where many companies go wrong.
Three terms, in plain language
You will hear three terms for this work. They overlap, but they are not the same thing. To keep it concrete, picture a logistics company in Nairobi that moves goods between Mombasa, Nairobi and Kampala.
SEO, search engine optimisation, is getting found in Google and other search engines. It covers the technical health of your website, how the site is structured, whether the content is useful, whether credible sites link to you, and local listings such as your Google Business Profile. For our logistics company, SEO is what puts its page near the top when someone searches for “freight company Mombasa to Kampala”, and what puts it on the map when someone looks for transporters in Industrial Area.
AEO, answer engine optimisation, is structuring your content so it becomes the direct answer: in the boxes at the top of search results, in voice assistants and in AI overviews. That means clear questions with clear answers, structured data that tells machines what each page is about, and short, accurate definitions. For the logistics company, AEO is a page that answers “how long does a truck take from Mombasa to Kampala” in two plain sentences, so that answer is the one search engines show.
GEO, generative engine optimisation, is being mentioned, cited and recommended by AI assistants. It depends on your business being described clearly and consistently across the web, on earned mentions in credible publications, and on content an AI can quote with confidence. For the logistics company, GEO decides whether it is named or left out when a procurement manager asks an assistant for reliable cross border logistics firms in East Africa.
Why chasing GEO and AEO on their own gets you nowhere
GEO is new, and the market around it is moving quickly. One industry analysis found that only about 14 percent of agencies offer GEO as a structured service, even as demand for it grows. A market guide from an AI visibility agency put the GEO agency market at about 1.48 billion dollars in 2026. When money moves that fast, a lot of advice follows it, and much of that advice is about tactics: special prompts, files written for AI crawlers, pages written for machines rather than people.
Some of those tactics are reasonable. The problem is that many businesses get so caught up in GEO and AEO that they forget what both of them sit on.
AI assistants do not make up what they know about your company. They learn it from the web, and many of them search the web as they answer. If your website is slow, vague about what you do, hard to find on Google, or contradicted by an old directory listing with the wrong phone number, an assistant has nothing solid to work with. It will recommend a company it can describe with confidence, and that is usually a competitor whose basics are in order.
So SEO is not dead. It is the base layer. Without it, there is nothing for AI to find and trust.
The order that works
We treat search and AI visibility as three layers, built in order.
- Lay the foundation with SEO. Fix the technical health of the site. Make every page say plainly who you are, what you do and where you do it. Set up and look after your Google Business Profile. Earn links from credible sites. This is slow, unglamorous work, and everything else depends on it.
- Build GEO on top. Make the facts about your business the same everywhere they appear. Earn mentions in credible publications, from industry bodies and from partners. Publish content specific enough that an assistant can quote it accurately.
- Optimise for AEO. Shape the pages that answer real customer questions so they are the clearest answer available: a direct question, a short answer, then the detail, with structured data marking it up.
Done in this order, each layer makes the next one work. Done the other way round, you end up polishing answers on a site that search engines and assistants barely see.
A checklist for decision makers
You do not need to be technical to see where your company stands. Ask your team these questions, or check for yourself:
- Website clarity. Can a stranger tell quickly what you do, who you do it for, and where? Does each service have its own page?
- Website speed. Does the site load quickly on a phone with an ordinary mobile connection?
- Google Business Profile. Is it claimed, complete and current, with the right hours, phone number, address and photos? Is someone replying to reviews?
- Consistent company facts. Are your company name, address, phone number and description the same on your website, LinkedIn, directories and everywhere else you are listed?
- Earned mentions. Has a credible publication, industry association or partner written about you in the last year?
- Answers to real questions. Does your site answer the questions customers actually ask your sales team, in the words they use?
- Structured data. Do your pages carry structured data that tells search engines what your organisation, services and articles are?
- Tracking. Can you see which searches, pages and channels bring in enquiries, and follow those enquiries into your CRM to see which become customers?
If several of these come back as a no, start with the foundation before spending money on anything labelled GEO.
Where we come in
At Eflapy Digital, this work is part of our Performance Marketing and AI Visibility service. We run paid campaigns that bring in enquiries now, and we build search and AI visibility in the order above: SEO first, GEO on top, AEO to finish. All of it is tracked through to the CRM, so you can see what it brings in.
If you want to know where your company stands, book a free 30 minute Operations Review. Bring one question, such as why a competitor keeps showing up in AI answers and you do not. You leave with a written summary of what we see, whether you hire us or not.