What is the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?

SEO (search engine optimization) gets a page crawled, indexed, and ranked in search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) shapes a page so it can be lifted as the direct answer in featured snippets, AI Overviews, and voice assistants. GEO (generative engine optimization) makes your company the source AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cite or recommend. They build on each other.

Is SEO still worth doing if buyers use ChatGPT instead of Google?

Yes. Assistants that answer from the live web find pages through search indexes and their own crawlers, so a page that can’t be crawled and indexed rarely gets cited. SEO is the foundation; AEO and GEO are built on top of it.

What is llms.txt, and do I need one?

llms.txt is a proposed convention: a Markdown file at the root of your site that summarizes what you do and links to your key pages, written for AI agents. It isn’t a Google ranking factor, but it’s cheap to add and gives any agent that looks for it a clean outline of your services. Here’s mine.

What is programmatic SEO, and is it safe?

Programmatic SEO (pSEO) generates many pages from a template plus data. It’s safe when every page carries unique, useful information and is published on your own domain in reviewed batches. It gets sites penalized when pages differ only by a swapped keyword or city, which Google’s scaled content abuse policy targets directly.

contento.sh is the programmatic SEO platform I built. It’s a local CLI that uses your own AI keys to fill strict content schemas, rejects pages that fail validation, and builds static HTML on your own domain with canonicals, JSON-LD, Open Graph tags, internal links, and a sitemap. The CLI is free; Pro and fully managed tiers are available.

Can you guarantee rankings or AI citations?

No, and be wary of anyone who does. Search engines and AI assistants decide what to show. What I can do is remove everything that keeps them from finding, reading, and trusting you, and measure what changes before and after.

How long before we see results?

Technical fixes are picked up as engines recrawl your site, often within weeks. Content and reputation compound over months. Because I measure before and after, you can see which changes moved the needle and which didn’t.

Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at how search engines and AI assistants see your site today and decide whether a discoverability engagement fits.

AI Discoverability: SEO, AEO & GEO Services

Definitions

SEO, AEO, GEO: three acronyms, one job

Each one answers a different question a machine asks about your site. You need all three, and they mostly reinforce each other: the work that makes a page easy to rank also makes it easy to quote.

SEO	Search engine optimization. Can a search engine crawl this page, understand it, and rank it? Technical health, relevance, links, and reputation decide where you appear in Google and Bing results.
AEO	Answer engine optimization. Can this page be lifted as the answer? Question-shaped headings, short direct answers, FAQs, and structured data feed featured snippets, AI Overviews, and voice assistants.
GEO	Generative engine optimization. Will an AI assistant cite or recommend you? ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot favor sources they can reach, parse, and corroborate: the same facts about who you are, in machine-readable form, repeated across sites they trust.
llms.txt	A plain-text summary of your site for AI agents at `/llms.txt`. A proposed convention, not a ranking factor, but cheap to add and the most direct way to hand an agent your services and how to engage. See mine.

How it works

From invisible to quotable

I guide you through the whole process, hands-on: I make the technical changes myself or alongside your team, and leave a setup your team can keep running.

1
Audit

How Machines See You

Crawler access, CDN bot settings, canonicals, sitemaps, structured data, and speed — plus what the major AI assistants say today when asked about you and your category.
2
Foundation

A Machine-Readable Site

JSON-LD for your organization, services, people, articles, and FAQs; an llms.txt; a robots.txt that lets the right crawlers in; canonical URLs that actually return a 200.
3
Content

Answer-First Pages

Service pages and FAQs built around the questions buyers ask: the direct answer first, then the evidence, with one consistent description of who you are everywhere.
4
Scale & Measure

Programmatic, Not Spam

Useful pages at scale with contento.sh, published in batches, measured in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and pruned when they don’t earn traffic.

What’s included

Everything a machine checks before it trusts you

Access

Crawlers & Bot Settings

robots.txt, content signals, and CDN bot rules for the crawlers you want — Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended. Plenty of sites block them by accident.

Structure

Structured Data

A JSON-LD graph for your organization, people, services and offers, articles, FAQs, and breadcrumbs — generated from the pages themselves so it never drifts out of sync.

Agents

llms.txt & Agent-Ready Pages

An llms.txt that outlines every service and how to engage, stable anchors for each offer, and Markdown versions of key pages where they help.

Technical

Technical SEO

Canonicals, sitemaps, redirects, page speed, Open Graph and social cards, and Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools set up and verified.

Content

Answer-First Content

Pages and FAQs written around real buyer questions, and the same facts about you on your site, LinkedIn, directories, and partner sites — so assistants can corroborate them.

Evidence

Before-and-After Measurement

Search Console and Bing data, plus a fixed set of buyer questions asked of the major AI assistants before and after, so you can see whether you’re mentioned and cited.

Built by George — contento.sh Programmatic SEO

contento.sh: programmatic SEO that deserves to rank

Hundreds of useful pages on your own domain, without the spam.

Programmatic SEO earned its bad name: thousands of near-identical pages where only the city changes. Google’s scaled content abuse policy targets exactly that. I built contento.sh to do the opposite. It’s a local CLI that uses your own AI keys to fill strict content schemas — idea lists, checklists, how-to guides, comparisons, FAQs, glossaries, tool pages — and rejects any page that fails validation.

Output is static HTML on your own domain, wrapped in your site’s header, footer, and CSS, with canonical URLs, JSON-LD, Open Graph tags, internal links, and a sitemap on every build. It runs with any OpenAI-compatible provider, has a --json mode and an MCP server for AI agents, and the CLI is free.

Visit contento.sh Read the docs

In an engagement I set it up and run it for you: niche and schema selection for your market, your site’s chrome, batched publishing, and human editorial review before anything goes live. Tiers and pricing are on contento.sh.

The contento.sh pipeline5

01Pick niches150+ bundled niches (1,000+ with Pro), each with audience, pain points, and subtopics — or fork your own

02Choose a schema10 content types with pattern-based titles, never AI-invented

03Generate & validateAny AI provider, your keys; item counts, lengths, and required fields checked, failures rejected

04Build & deployStatic HTML in your chrome with canonicals, JSON-LD, sitemap, and cross-links; ship with your pipeline

05Measure & pruneSearch Console data flags zero-traffic pages so they get cut, not left to rot

Safe pSEO, judged

“Service in [city]” pages where only the city changesCritical
Near-duplicate pages chasing keyword permutations, or subdomain farmsCritical
Thousands of pages published in one burst with no reviewNeeds work
Schema-validated pages with real per-niche context, on your own domainPass
Batched publishing, human review, and pruning by Search Console dataPass

Evidence

Run on my own sites first

I don’t ask clients to try anything I haven’t shipped. View the source of any page here and you’ll find the work. The write-up covers what I found and fixed.

Structured data	A JSON-LD graph on every page of georgerios.com: organization, person, services and offers, articles, FAQs, breadcrumbs.
llms.txt	georgerios.com/llms.txt outlines every service and how to engage; it’s linked from every footer.
Crawlers	robots.txt names the search and AI crawlers explicitly, with content signals for search, AI answers, and training.
Canonicals	Every canonical and sitemap URL is the address that returns a 200, not one that redirects.
geearr.com	My security practice at geearr.com adds an llms-full.txt and a Markdown version of every page.

FAQ

Questions, answered

What is the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?: SEO (search engine optimization) gets a page crawled, indexed, and ranked in search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) shapes a page so it can be lifted as the direct answer in featured snippets, AI Overviews, and voice assistants. GEO (generative engine optimization) makes your company the source AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cite or recommend. They build on each other.
Is SEO still worth doing if buyers use ChatGPT instead of Google?: Yes. Assistants that answer from the live web find pages through search indexes and their own crawlers, so a page that can’t be crawled and indexed rarely gets cited. SEO is the foundation; AEO and GEO are built on top of it.
What is llms.txt, and do I need one?: llms.txt is a proposed convention: a Markdown file at the root of your site that summarizes what you do and links to your key pages, written for AI agents. It isn’t a Google ranking factor, but it’s cheap to add and gives any agent that looks for it a clean outline of your services. Here’s mine.
What is programmatic SEO, and is it safe?: Programmatic SEO (pSEO) generates many pages from a template plus data. It’s safe when every page carries unique, useful information and is published on your own domain in reviewed batches. It gets sites penalized when pages differ only by a swapped keyword or city, which Google’s scaled content abuse policy targets directly.
What is contento.sh?: contento.sh is the programmatic SEO platform I built. It’s a local CLI that uses your own AI keys to fill strict content schemas, rejects pages that fail validation, and builds static HTML on your own domain with canonicals, JSON-LD, Open Graph tags, internal links, and a sitemap. The CLI is free; Pro and fully managed tiers are available.
Can you guarantee rankings or AI citations?: No, and be wary of anyone who does. Search engines and AI assistants decide what to show. What I can do is remove everything that keeps them from finding, reading, and trusting you, and measure what changes before and after.
How long before we see results?: Technical fixes are picked up as engines recrawl your site, often within weeks. Content and reputation compound over months. Because I measure before and after, you can see which changes moved the needle and which didn’t.
How do we start?: Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at how search engines and AI assistants see your site today and decide whether a discoverability engagement fits.

Start here

Find out what the AI says about you

Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at how search engines and AI assistants see your site today, and what to fix first.

Book a discoverability call Visit contento.sh

Get found by the AI your buyers ask