Todd Friesen, one of the most experienced digital marketers in our industry, recently posted on LinkedIn that the core foundations applied to traditional search engines work exactly the same for AI search optimization. His posts quickly received dozens of comments and over 100 likes. This shows that he's not the only one who believes he doesn't need to give SEO another name.
Who is Todd Friesen?
Todd previously had a long career in SEO for Salesforce and other top agencies and companies. Like me, he was a moderator on the old Webmaster World forum, but only he has done SEO for a long time. He's younger than me, but I totally consider him to be my elder in the SEO business. Todd Friesen, along with Greg Boser, was the SEO podcasting pioneer of the SEO Rockstars show.
AEO – Answers to Engine Optimization
There is a race to name it to optimize the web content of AI search engines, with little detail as to why it deserves a new name.
We find ourselves today in five names for the exact same thing:
- aeo (responds to engine optimization)
- AIO (AI Optimization)
- CEO (Chat Engine Optimization)
- Geo (generating engine optimization)
- LMO (Language Model Optimization)
Today, there are many people who agree that optimizing AI search engines is fundamentally the same as traditional search engine optimization. Even AI search engines like Perplexity use versions of Google's Pagerank algorithm to rank prestigious websites, which are rarely new names.
A post by Todd Friesen on LinkedIn claimed that AI search engine optimization is essentially the same as SEO.
“It's basically basic SEO and basic brand building. Can you stop complicating it?
– Appropriate code (HTML, schema, etc.)
– Fast and responsive site
– Good content
– Keyword research (yes, I still do this)
– Coordinating with brand marketing
– Create some links
– Analysis and Reporting (focusing on traffic transformation)
– Rinse, repeat.”
AI SEO = Same SEO Basics
Todd Friesen is right. Whether it's an AI search engine or not, there's room for detailed quibling the overall SEO framework, but you can reduce it to these seven optimizations.
Digital marketer Rosy Callejas (LinkedIn Profile) agreed that there are too many names for the same thing.
“Too many names! SEO vs AEO vs Geo”
commented Kevin Doory, Director of SEO at Razorfish (LinkedIn Profile).
“People who talk about what they are doing can change their name to what they want.
SEO consultant Don Rhoades (LinkedIn Profile) agreed.
“All of these (failed) have attempted to distance themselves from it by the 'ideological leader', and still SEO.
Ryan Jones (LinkedIn Profile) (and founder of Serprecon.com), Razorfish's Senior Vice President of SEO, commented on the ridiculousness of the GEO name.
“Geo is a terrible name.”
Pushbacks of AEO elsewhere
In the discussion about Bluesky, Google's John Mueller commented on his motivation for creating the hype.
Preeti Gupta posted her opinion on Bluesky:
“In this discussion of Geo/AEO and SEO, everyone says that building a brand is not essential for SEO, but it's absolutely wild that everyone says it's important for Geo/AEO.
It's cold like my friends. This AI thing did not invent the need to build a brand. It existed before that. SMH. ”
Google's John Mueller replied:
“Being reasonable will not organize your audience online and we will not sell new/services saying that our current status is sufficient.”
What do you think?
What do you think? Is AI SEO fundamentally the same as normal search engines?
