AEO & GEO: How to Get Your Business Cited by AI Search

Search is no longer just ten blue links. Google shows AI Overviews, and millions of people ask AI assistants questions like “best tour operator for a 10-day Sri Lanka trip” or “who builds WooCommerce stores in Sri Lanka?”. If your business isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a growing share of buyers.

SEO, AEO and GEO in plain language

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) helps your pages rank in traditional search results.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) structures your content so search engines and voice assistants can lift a direct answer from it, featured snippets, “People also ask”, and voice results.
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) makes your brand clear, credible and well-referenced enough that AI models mention and cite you when they generate answers.

They aren’t competing strategies. Good GEO is built on good SEO and AEO.

How AI assistants decide who to mention

AI search tools pull from pages they can crawl and sources they consider trustworthy. In practice, they favour businesses that:

1. Explain clearly what they do, where, and for whom, in plain sentences, not just slogans.
2. Answer specific questions directly, near the top of a page.
3. Are mentioned consistently across other reputable sites: directories, reviews, news, partner pages.
4. Use structured data so machines can read facts like services, prices, location and reviews.
5. Have fast, accessible pages that crawlers can read without running heavy JavaScript.

Seven quick wins you can start this month

1. Write a one-sentence “who we are” statement and use it consistently on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories.
2. Create a real FAQ page with the questions customers actually ask, answered in the first sentence.
3. Add schema markup: Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Product and FAQPage.
4. Make each service its own page with a clear heading, who it’s for, what’s included and starting prices.
5. Collect reviews on Google and industry directories, and reply to them.
6. Publish expert content that answers comparison and cost questions honestly.
7. Check your site renders without JavaScript: if a crawler can’t read it, an AI can’t cite it.

How to measure AI visibility

Traditional rankings don’t show the whole picture any more. Track branded search growth in Search Console, referral traffic from AI tools in analytics, and periodically ask the main assistants the questions your customers ask, note whether and how you’re mentioned.

The local-language advantage

Very few Sri Lankan businesses publish quality content in Sinhala and Tamil. Multi-language pages with correct hreflang tags help you rank for searches your competitors aren’t even targeting, and give AI tools more context about your local relevance.

Want a hand?

Our SEO, AEO and GEO service starts with a technical and content audit that shows exactly where you stand, in plain language, with a prioritised action list.