The seismic shifts occurring in digital search, driven by the emergence of AI Overviews, are fundamentally reshaping how every enterprise connects with its audience. As CMO and Head of Experience Optimisation at our MarTech Consultancy, I’m seeing leaders across sectors, from telecom giants to major retail chain, all grappling with a pivotal question: will these intelligent AI summaries fundamentally alter user behaviour and “kill the click”? This discussion highlights a critical evolution in AI in search.
My view? This evolution in AI in search offers big strategic chances. Our goal isn’t just to be seen; it’s about building real engagement and deeper connections, even when an AI gives an initial summary. We need to make your brand the trusted, preferred source, the one users want to click on for more.
The days of just chasing rankings are long gone. To truly thrive, businesses need a smart, connected approach using Artificial Intelligence Optimisation (AIO), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). This framework isn’t just about showing up. It’s about delivering great experiences that truly connect, prompting users to engage further. This is the heart of AI in Search and AI-driven SEO.
SEO’s Evolving Mandate: Optimising for AI Overviews and Beyond
SEO has come a long way from its origins of just keywords and backlinks. Today, it’s about truly understanding user intent, delivering valuable content, and ensuring a seamless user experience. As AI continues to play a central role in search, optimising for AI and AI-driven summaries (AI Overviews) has become essential.
With AI Overviews, SEO’s goal has shifted from simply ranking to becoming the authoritative content that AI models trust to cite. To achieve this, your content needs to be clear, well-structured, and answer the user’s main queries right from the start. By using conversational language, clear headings, and well-organised content, you ensure that your page is the top choice for AI systems to reference. This new priority in SEO focuses on becoming the primary answer in AI-generated content, which is at the core of generative AI and SEO.
The “kill click” worry – that users will no longer click through after an AI answer needs to be addressed proactively. While AI might provide an initial answer, users still crave more details, context, and next steps. For example, a telecom brand optimising for queries like “how to check my data usage” doesn’t just want the AI to summarise the process. It needs to go further, offering guides on data optimisation, new plan options, and troubleshooting tips. For a retailer, AI may list product features, but your page needs to include detailed customer reviews, comparisons, and exclusive offers that entice users to click deeper. This strategy ensures that your content continues to provide value even after the AI has summarised the basics, driving engagement and conversions.
AIO: The Strategic Brain for Deeper Engagement in the AI-Driven SEO
Artificial Intelligence Optimisation (AIO) acts as the strategic intelligence powering modern digital approaches, especially vital for AI-driven SEO. It uses machine learning to analyse vast amounts of data, spot patterns, predict trends, and automate optimisation on a massive scale. AIO is essential for handling the complexities AI Overviews bring and shaping the future of SEO.
Here’s what AIO does for modern SEO:
- Predicting Next Steps: AIO helps brands forecast not just initial customer queries, but what users are likely to ask next after an AI-generated summary. For example, if a user searches “how to improve mobile coverage at home” and receives an AI Overview with general suggestions (like switching to 5G or using a signal booster), AIO can help telecoms identify that the next likely queries might be “best 5G plans in my postcode” or “compatible signal boosters from [provider name].” Armed with this insight, the telecom brand can proactively publish and optimise content that directly answers these follow-up needs – such as a postcode-based 5G plan selector or a buying guide for boosters, effectively guiding users from AI Overview to owned content, increasing both relevance and conversions. This is what it means to truly optimise for AI.
- Content for AI and Humans: AIO analyses how AI models summarise content. This insight helps us structure information for both AI (for summaries) and human users (for in-depth reading). For a major financial services institution, this means structuring FAQs on “mortgage rates” so an AI can extract a quick answer, while the full page offers detailed calculators, personalised loan options, and expert advisory insights that prompt a click for consultation. This shows the power of generative AI and SEO.
- Building Brand Trust: A strong brand is your best defence against fewer clicks. AIO helps us track brand mentions and sentiment online across vast customer bases, making sure our message is consistent and reinforcing our authority. When a leading e-commerce platform builds a reputation for accurate product information, secure transactions, and exceptional customer service, AIO helps AI recognise this, making them a preferred source for product summaries and encouraging clicks to complete high-value transactions. This is vital for AI in search brand building.
- Advanced Competitive Analysis: AIO gives deep insights into how competitors perform with AI Overviews – which content gets summarised, and which still gets clicks. This provides a big strategic edge, helping a travel company understand why users click a competitor’s detailed itinerary after an AI overview, instead of just staying in the summary for basic flight info.
AIO doesn’t replace skilled SEO specialists; it empowers them. It frees up valuable time from repetitive tasks, letting teams focus on bigger strategic thinking, creative ideas, and building strong customer relationships, especially as they adapt to the new demands of AI-powered search.
AEO: Optimising for AI-Driven Results
AI-Enhanced Optimisation (AEO) is all about refining your content to align with how AI models interpret and present information. By focusing on the needs of AI, AEO ensures that your content not only ranks well in traditional search engines but is also featured in AI-driven responses, offering users rich and relevant answers that engage them effectively.
Combined with GEO (Generative Optimisation) and SEO, AEO supports:
Optimising Content for AI-Driven Search: AEO ensures that your content is structured in a way that AI models can easily extract and present in response to user queries. This includes crafting concise, well-organised answers that directly address common search questions. For example, a telecom provider optimising for an AI query like “What’s the best mobile plan for heavy data users?” can ensure their content highlights the most important aspects – data limits, speed, and additional benefits—making it ideal for AI-generated summaries.
Contextual Relevance for Better Engagement: AEO also enhances content relevance by making it more contextually rich. It goes beyond keywords and includes detailed, useful information that AI can leverage. For telecom brands, this could mean creating content that not only explains plan features but also ties them to real-world scenarios, such as using high-speed data for streaming or gaming. By doing so, it increases the likelihood of the content being picked up by AI models and presented as a helpful response.
Enhancing Customer Experience with AI Integration: AEO is all about improving the way users interact with content via AI. For instance, when a user queries an AI about “how to change my mobile plan,” AEO ensures that the AI response provides not just a link to the plan comparison page but also offers direct steps for upgrading, customer service options, or even scheduling an in-store visit. This creates a seamless, personalised experience that encourages users to take action.
AEO is about making your content AI-friendly, improving its chances of being included in AI-driven responses, and ultimately enhancing the user experience. This approach ensures that users receive accurate, relevant, and actionable information right from the start.
GEO: AI-Driven Content Optimisation
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) ensures that your content is structured in a way that increases its visibility and relevance when used in AI-generated responses. It’s about creating content that’s easy for AI models to pull from and use in generating accurate, helpful answers for users.
Combined with SEO and AIO, GEO empowers:
Relevant Content for User Queries: When users ask, “What’s the best mobile plan for frequent travellers?” GEO ensures that your telecom content is well-organised and highlights key details like international roaming options, data limits, and travel perks. This makes your brand more likely to be featured in AI-driven summaries that provide a tailored response to the user.
Targeted Content for Specific Needs: GEO helps create content that aligns with common user inquiries, such as comparing data plans or understanding 5G coverage. By structuring this information clearly, telecom brands can ensure their content is more likely to appear in response to user queries about specific plans, features, or network coverage.
Seamless Customer Journey: From the initial AI response to further customer action, GEO ensures the content guides users smoothly through their journey. For example, if a user asks, “How do I upgrade my mobile plan?” GEO optimises the content so the AI can point the user to the correct page to view upgrade options or the nearest store, ensuring the user’s next step is clear and actionable.
The Differences Between SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO
Here’s a side‑by‑side comparison showing how SEO, AIO, AEO, and GEO differ:
| Strategy | Focus | Objective | Key Tactics |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO (Traditional Search Engine Optimisation) | Keywords, backlinks, technical setup | Improve rankings in SERPs | On‑page optimisation, link building, site speed |
| AIO (AI Optimisation) | Machine readability & embedding relevance | Ensure AI systems (LLMs) can interpret & retrieve your content | Semantic HTML, token efficiency, embedding salience, schema |
| AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) | Answer quality and structure | Get featured in answer snippets or voice search | Q&A format headings, FAQs, structured data |
| GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) | CITATION by generative AI | Be quoted or referenced in AI-overviews (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) | Entity signals, expert quotes, schemas, citation markup |
The Synergy: Making the Click Irresistible Through AI-Driven SEO
The real transformation happens when SEO, AIO, AEO and GEO work together. This system, designed for AI Overviews and tackling the “kill click” challenge, creates a powerful engine for experience optimisation. It truly defines modern AI-driven SEO:
- Smart Local Engagement: AIO can spot subtle cues in geo-specific searches that suggest more than a simple answer. This helps local SEO strategies not just appear in an AI Overview, but become the source users feel compelled to click for specific, actionable information. For instance, if an AI answers “best hiking trails,” AIO might see that local users often click for trail conditions, parking, or gear advice, prompting a sports retailer to optimise for this deeper click.
- Personalised Content That Demands Action: Imagine AIO spots a surge in complex enterprise queries like “eco-friendly remodelling contractors near me.” While an AI might give a summary, our integrated strategy ensures our content offers in-depth case studies of large projects, exclusive design insights, or direct booking functionalities that make a click essential for a corporate client ready to move forward. A B2B software company whose product helps manage complex enterprise projects might find AIO identifies that after an AI summarises “project management best practices,” users click through to actual product demos or free trial sign-ups for their robust platform, which they then prioritise. This highlights effective optimising for AI to drive enterprise conversions.
- Orchestrating the Full User Journey: From the first AI Overview to a successful conversion, AIO manages the entire user path. It leverages SEO for that critical initial AI visibility and GEO for precise locational relevance. Even if the first interaction is an AI summary, subsequent steps lead smoothly to our enterprise brand, giving compelling reasons for users to click and engage more. Consider a large healthcare system: An AI might answer “symptoms of X.” The AIO/SEO/GEO synergy ensures that the source of that answer is a trusted clinic within their network, and the page offers immediate options to book an appointment at a nearby specialist’s office, making the click a clear next step in their health journey. This integrated approach is the future of SEO.
The 4-Layer Pyramid of Modern Search Visibility
Building search visibility requires brands to build a layered strategy that addresses both traditional and AI-driven discovery. This is why we have created the 4-Layer Pyramid of Modern Search – to illustrate how SEO, AEO, AIO, and GEO stack to drive visibility, relevance, and citations as search visibility becomes increasingly shaped by AI Overviews.
A Breakdown of the Layers
SEO (Base)
Classic technical & content optimisation for search engines – site structure, speed, metadata, backlinks.AEO (Layer 2)
Focused on formatting content to directly answer user queries – uses FAQs, headings, and featured snippet strategies.AIO (Layer 3)
Optimising for AI readability – e.g., proper use of semantic HTML, schemas, and ensuring content is embedded in a machine-understandable way (salient, structured, unambiguous).GEO (Top)
Optimising for AI-generated summaries & citations – by building authority, clarity, entity richness, and citation potential in LLM-generated overviews
The Future: Evolved Engagement, Beyond the Initial Click
The “kill click” idea often misses a bigger truth: it’s an evolution in user engagement. AI Overviews provide quick answers, but they also raise the importance of authoritative, unique content, shaping the future of SEO.
By embracing AIO, SEO, and GEO, and by focusing on content that AI can easily use and humans find truly valuable, businesses can move beyond generic outreach. Our focus isn’t just about clicks. It’s about building deep trust, giving unmatched value, and creating genuinely personalised, impactful, and profitable digital experiences. It’s about building a digital framework that understands, anticipates, and responds to every user’s needs, no matter their location. This framework provides such compelling value that users are naturally driven to engage further, regardless of an AI-generated summary. This complete strategy truly shows SEO and AI working together.
Are you ready to optimise your brand’s experience, intelligently and geographically, to thrive in the era of AI Overviews?
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About The Authors
Charlie Nicholls
