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SEO & AIO: How They Work Together
Here’s All the GOOD Bits:
- SEO remains the foundation of search visibility – ranking in traditional search engines is still relevant and necessary for AI searches.
- AIO is optimisation for AI-generated answers – like Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, which take content from the search index.
- The two overlap but measure success differently – SEO wins ranked positions, whereas AIO wins citations.
- It’s not either/or – Google’s own guidance confirms AI search runs on classic SEO fundamentals, so build the SEO foundation first, then adapt it so AI can quote you.
It is impressive the way research has changed in the last decade. From traditional SEO, there are so many new ways users see and approach research. If in the past typing a query in the Google search bar, scrolling through the SERP, and in most cases, navigating through several web pages was necessary, now you get the AI summary at the top of the SERP that, in most cases, responds accurately to the user’s question without needing to scroll further.
Alongside the search bar of the search engine, the research has changed location. A TechTarget study confirms that using ChatGPT can be less time-consuming for instant responses and daily answers.
From a business perspective, being legible for LLMs and therefore appearing in AI results, there’s a need for optimisation strategies that, in a certain way, overlap with SEO ones.
Here, we will outline the main features of both SEO and AIO, how one needs the other to exist, and highlight how they differ.
SEO Fundamentals: Why They Are Still Relevant
Despite the current changes and the new SERP look, SEO fundamentals stay relevant, as Google says. Let’s recap a few of those, starting from the bottom.
SEO is the practice of optimising specific aspects of your website to rank on the first pages of Google Search results, thereby increasing visibility when users are looking for what you offer.
Before getting directly to the result page, SERP, three stages in the search pipeline need to captivate Google and the other search engines to choose us.
- Crawling: bots (like Googlebot) discover pages by following links and reading sitemaps
- Indexing: discovered pages are analysed and stored in the search engine’s index. If a page isn’t indexed, it can’t rank.
- Ranking: during a search, the engine scores indexed pages against hundreds of signals to decide order.
To succeed in this selection process, three areas of SEO require optimisation, and this is where SEO experts and content writers usually step in: on-page SEO, including keyword and search-intent identification, which translates into what people search for and why. Then, creating content that satisfies that intent. Title tags, headings, internal linking, and content depth all live here. The modern emphasis is topical authority: covering a subject thoroughly rather than chasing isolated keywords. Optimising content for this SEO branch means optimising it for both search engines and users.
Whereas Technical SEO is all about ensuring the website is crawlable, indexable, and rankable in the eyes of the search engine, and making the user experience smooth and free from interruptions: site speed, mobile-friendliness, clean URL structure, robots.txt and sitemaps, structured data, fixing broken links, and addressing duplicate content.
Finally, Off-Page SEO is your website’s word-of-mouth signal from elsewhere on the web that you’re trustworthy, primarily backlinks from reputable sites, but also brand mentions, reviews, and your Google Business Profile for local.
Along with E-E-E-AT, which indicates a website’s quality level, these represent the primary steps on the ladder of success in search engine visibility. However, SEO was never created to please algorithms: content needs to be as understandable and complete as possible because it’s about making it easy for machines to understand and valuable for humans to read, and this rule is directly transferable to how LLMs work as well.
The Frontier of Search: AIO (AI Search Optimisation)
For a better understanding of what AIO is, Google has the best answers for questions like what it is and how it works when AI meets Google Search. As an example of search applied to AI, Google uses AI Overview, the small summary at the top of the SERP that responds directly to the user’s query, and AI Mode, which provides more detailed responses and is open to further conversation.
Both use the query-fan-out method, which scans multiple subtopics and data sources to provide an accurate answer.
To appear in AI Mode and AI overview, SEO best practices must always be applied; if the content is not indexed, it cannot appear in AI either. In fact, AI pulls content from SEARCH engines’ indexes through:
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation): where the AI gets its facts, and not blurred memories. Google’s AI first runs a real search, chooses relevant, current web pages from the index, reads them, and then writes its answer based on what those pages actually say, with clickable links back to them.
- Query fan-out: how the AI searches. When you ask a question, it doesn’t run just one search. It breaks your question into several related searches behind the scenes and runs them all at once, because one question usually contains hidden sub-questions.
The reality here is understanding what is actually relevant for AI search, and most of the time, the answer relies on traditional SEO.
Google Recommendations for AI Search
Google’s official advice for succeeding in AI search is summarised in three main areas.
- Create genuinely valuable content: original perspectives, first-hand experience, and expert insight rather than restating what’s already out there
- Keep your technical foundations solid: a page must be crawlable, indexed, and eligible to appear in regular search results to be shown in AI features at all
- Keep your business data up to date: AI responses can pull in product listings and local business information from Merchant Centre and Google Business Profiles.
SEO & AIO: Where Are the Differences?
As mentioned, the two search methods overlap, as the same SEO practices are readily applicable to AIO. Above all, AI relies on inclusion and citation rather than ranking. However, even when a search result remains in the rankings, AI rarely returns the same resource for many consecutive days.
Because AI systems retrieve and quote self-contained chunks of content, a single well-structured section can earn a citation even if the page doesn’t rank in the very first position.
Off-site footprint also carries more weight: a study conducted by Semrush on AI Visibility shows AI models cite community-edited sources like Wikipedia and Reddit more than official brand websites, so what the wider web says about you can matter as much as what your own site says.
Finally, AI visibility doesn’t transfer between AI platforms the way rankings do on Google. If a result ranks third, it stays third.
AIO & SEO: Can They Work Together?
The answer is yes! SERP and LLM have been created for different purposes, and they can still exist and be used for those. Nevertheless, we cannot easily replace SEO. What we can do is adapt it to modern research methods.
Despite the overall dominance of AI for many purposes, Google and the foundation remain the same, and actually, AI relies on SEO. SEO can work on its own instead. Support in your SEO strategy development is just one call away from success. Get in touch.