SEO, AEO and GEO: what should a small business prioritise?

Write down the question a prospect asks before contacting you. Are they identifying a provider, comparing two solutions or checking whether you work in their sector? These situations call for different information. A keyword list does not replace that distinction.

Fictional example: a bicycle repair workshop wants more maintenance enquiries. Before creating a general cycling guide, it can specify accepted bicycles, available operations, booking arrangements and the information to bring. Readers can then understand whether the workshop suits their needs.

Google says its SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode. In particular, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet to qualify as a supporting link. Meeting these conditions does not guarantee that it will appear.

Have the priority page checked: is it accessible without signing in, readable on a phone, linked from the website and correctly understood in Search Console? Request a list of confirmed and corrected obstacles with the affected URLs, rather than an isolated score that is difficult to explain.

Google does not require a special AI text file or additional schema for its AI search features. We therefore consider llms.txt an optional contents list to maintain, not an indexing requirement. It replaces neither your pages nor the access rules in robots.txt.

Crawlers also have different purposes. OpenAI distinguishes OAI-SearchBot, associated with ChatGPT search, from GPTBot, associated with content that may be used for training. Their settings are independent. A decision about search access is therefore not the same decision as one about training.

Record the choice and the person who applies it. “Allow AI” is too vague to serve as a technical instruction.

For a direct answer, start with a sentence that actually answers the question, then explain its conditions. For a comparison, give the criteria that change the decision. A service described only as “complete, fast and tailored” leaves readers to guess its scope.

Returning to the fictional workshop, a page could distinguish visual inspection, adjustment and parts replacement, then indicate what requires an on-site examination. It could present an example of a well-specified request without inventing a price or timeframe. The value comes from these business details, which the workshop manager should confirm before publication.

Apply the same principle to identity: company name, contact details, service area and contact person should be consistent. A client reference must remain authorised and documented; a simulation should be labelled as such.

Prepare a work package someone can review: a service page, a few questions received and the links that help people find it. For each change, record the problem, the decision and the publication date. This record makes later observations interpretable.

Compare periods of equal length and the same scope of pages and queries. Search Console documentation explains that detailed page or query exports can lose data. Adding those rows therefore does not necessarily reproduce an overall total.

Bing AI Performance exposes measures including citations and cited URLs in the covered experiences. Bing states that these measures represent neither a rank nor a page’s position within an answer. They should not be converted into estimates of customers gained.

Record enquiries received separately from other business changes: a promotion, new offer or redesign. At Oryon, this scoping helps choose between tailored SEO, AEO and GEO work and focused editorial work. Observed progress deserves examination; it is not enough to establish its cause.