What is AI SEO?

The short answer

AI SEO is everything you do to make sure that when someone asks the internet a question; whether on Google, in ChatGPT, through Perplexity, via an AI agent doing the searching for them; your brand turns up as a credible, citable, clickable answer. It bundles together three distinct disciplines: traditional SEO, Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), and Agentic SEO.

The three layers underneath

How AI has added a new layer to search

For 25 years, search meant Google. You typed a query, you got ten blue links, you clicked one. That model is not going away; people still go to Google to make a transaction, to compare prices, to find a specific page.

But a second model is now layered on top. People research first in ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity; they ask "what is the best CRM for an Australian B2B with under 50 reps?" and they get a synthesised answer with three or four named brands. They might still Google one of those brands to make the actual purchase, but the decision has effectively been made before Google sees the click.

This is the part most brands have not absorbed yet: your competitor's name being said inside ChatGPT is now a top-of-funnel ad you cannot buy. If you are not the answer there, you are not in the consideration set.

Where transactions still happen (for now)

Today, the typical journey looks like this:

1. Discovery in AI; ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot.
2. Validation on Google; brand searches, review sites, comparison reading.
3. Transaction on your site; quote forms, checkout, demo booking.

That sequence will probably change. Agentic browsing (ChatGPT Agent, Claude with computer use, Perplexity Comet) means the AI may eventually transact on the user's behalf without ever sending them to Google. The brands that are easiest for an agent to read, compare and buy from will win that next layer too.

Who AI SEO suits

AI SEO is most useful for brands in considered-purchase categories. That means:

• Ecommerce & DTC brands at $1M+ ARR; especially those with category competitors already being recommended in AI tools, whether on Shopify, WordPress or a custom build.
• B2B SaaS; long sales cycle, comparison-heavy, "best X for Y" queries.
• Professional services; legal, finance, consulting; where AI tools are increasingly the first port of call.
• Industrial & manufacturing; technical buyers who research deeply before requesting a quote.
• Local & multi-location brands; national and international businesses that need to be found in AI answers across every market they serve.

It is less critical (right now) for impulse-purchase ecom under $1M, hyper-local services, and anything where the buyer types two words into Google and buys the first result.

What you should actually do, in order

1. Fix your traditional SEO foundation first. Crawl, indexation, Core Web Vitals, schema. If Google can't read you cleanly, neither can the AI tools that pull from Google's index.
2. Run an AI visibility baseline. Find out how often (and for which queries) you are currently being cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
3. Ground your brand entity. Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase, industry directories. This is what AI models pull from when they decide who you are.
4. Engineer answer-first content. FAQ schema, short directly-quotable paragraphs, the kind of writing AI can extract a single sentence from.
5. Open the door to AI crawlers. robots.txt for GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended. Add llms.txt.
6. Earn brand mentions, not just backlinks. Press, Reddit, podcasts, forums, industry trades. AI models care more about how often you are mentioned than how often you are linked to.

The plain warning

Agencies are now selling AI SEO packages, AEO packages, GEO packages. Some of it is real, some is rebranded basics, and some is genuinely premature. The strong content, clean technical SEO, real brand authority and proper schema you needed in 2022 are still the foundation. AI SEO is what you build on top of that foundation; not a replacement for it.

If you are unsure whether you should be paying for an AEO programme yet, the answer is in your data; look at how much traffic you are already getting from AI tools, and how often a competitor is being recommended in your category. Then decide.