It is 2025 and we totally understand that this might just be the most burning question for you. Doesn’t matter if you’re as early as a growth executive or even a CMO (or even a founder), this is one of the most discussed topics in war rooms of companies that are actively either trying to control or lower their CACs. Fairly so.

While the answer to this is not really simple, we all have to agree that SEO as a marketing channel as we all know is evolving everyday. 

With more than 1000+ blogs and writeups on this topic on the internet today, we continue to write this piece with an assumption that you already know what SEO and AEO are. What they really mean. What the real difference is. Hence, we will keep this focused on what you should “do” instead of what you should “know”.

Consider this a two chapter mini hand book that helps you put your SEO/AEO efforts in the direction that really matters. The direction that really translates to revenue.

Chapter 1: Pick your stage

Before you start channelising your best shot, it is important to acknowledge your current state and pick the right set of action items. The below graph helps you pick your right stage.

1. The Hummingbird Stage

   (1-2k monthly non brand relevant traffic. 0-2 year old domain. 1-5 member marketing team. No dedicated SEO team)

2. The Phoenix Stage

   (1M+ monthly non brand relevant traffic. 5+ year old domain. 10+ member SEO team)

3. The Swan Stage

   (5-10k monthly non brand relevant traffic. 4+ years old domain. No dedicated SEO team. Reliant majorly on paid acquisition channels)

4. The Eagle Stage

   (100 k + monthly non brand relevant traffic. 4+ year old domain. 2+ member SEO team)

Points to note:

While picking the stage, please make data cuts basis these pointers

1. Non-brand traffic

   • The traffic on your website that is not coming from your brand or brand related keywords

2. Relevant traffic

   • The traffic on your website that is relevant to your business i.e. the cluster or set of keywords that are not relevant to your business and you are still ranking on it

3. Non brand relevant traffic

   • This is a combination of both of the terms

Once you have this number at your disposal, you have a 100% clear picture of which stage you lie in. Pick it up and let’s proceed.

Chapter 2: Execute 

If you’ve picked your stage already, all you have to do is make sure all these steps are in your checklist and you are executing them on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. 

Stage 1 - The HummingBird Stage

Pretty clear from the diagram above. This is a very nascent stage of your company and thankfully, you are thinking of controlling your CACs from this stage itself. 

At this stage, it is extremely difficult to fight the Goliaths of your industry to outrank them on Google Search. Primarily due to the fact that it takes a lot of time and investment to build your topical authority.

Framework:

• Focus area: 100% AEO (Optimize for ChatGPT and AI overview)

• Attack area on AEO: Longest tail keywords (i.e. questions/queries) instead of head keywords

• Steps

  • A consistent process to source questions that your users are asking to the AI platform

    • Sub steps

      • Collect from Reddit/Quora

      • Collect from your sales/cx calls

      • Collect from your user interviews

      • Collect from ChatGPT and Google AI (Give sharp prompts to understand what others are asking)

  • Cluster these questions to topics/sub topics and categorize them to questions and follow up questions

  • Cover the core questions in blogs and make sure to cover the follow up questions in FAQs

• Track citations on these set of questions using any citation tracker tool

• Keep optimizing content

Don’t forget, the goal is not only to get cited in #1 position on these LLM platforms, but to get cited the most number of times.

While there are more things to do on this, this happens to be one of the most important steps for executing AEO correctly.

Stage 2 - The Phoenix Stage

As the name suggests, this is the stage where you have done it all and are already topping the charts when it comes to Google Search. Not only this, your brand hits are also high when it comes to searches, i.e. users know how to reach you.

At this stage, you just want to make sure that you don’t fall behind in this new race of AEO and you keep hitting your business targets. While the AEO hype can certainly get to your nerves, it is important to focus on what you always do right - Strong SEO fundamentals (Topical Authority, Page Performance, etc)

Framework:

• Focus area: 40% SEO + 60% AEO

• Attack area on AEO: Longest tail keywords (i.e. questions/queries) instead of head keywords + Brand citations from Reddit/YouTube

• Steps 

  • A consistent process to source questions that your users are asking to the AI platform

    • Sub steps

      • Collect from Reddit/Quora

      • Collect from your sales/cx calls

      • Collect from your user interviews

      • Collect from ChatGPT and Google AI (Give sharp prompts to understand what others are asking)

    • Cluster these questions to topics/sub topics and categorize them to questions and follow up questions

    • While the Hummingbirds can only cover these in blogs, you should actually play smart to cover them in the FAQs of your relevant strong pillar pages (Higher rate of conversion → More revenue)

    • Track citations on these set of questions using any citation tracker tool

    • Keep optimizing content

    • Optimize Video content and Reddit answers

Stage 3 - The Swan Stage

If you lie in this stage, it is okay to be a little worried. You can also not be worried at all if your CACs are in super control with your paid channels. But an even lower CAC never hurts. 

This is actually a tricky stage because your domain is decently old, you have been acquiring users via paid campaigns and the users know you. From here, you can’t just focus on AEO and totally dissolve the idea of SEO. You have to carefully score with the two. And, do it faster.

Framework:

• Focus area: 75% SEO + 25% AEO

• Attack area on SEO: Improving Topical Authority with high quality content and cluster of keywords + Technical SEO + Backlinks

• Attack area on AEO:  

  • Steps

    • A consistent process to source questions that your users are asking to the AI platform

      • Sub steps

        • Collect from Reddit/Quora

        • Collect from your sales/cx calls

        • Collect from your user interviews

        • Collect from ChatGPT and Google AI (Give sharp prompts to understand what others are asking)

    • Cluster these questions to topics/sub topics and categorize them to questions and follow up questions

    • Cover the core questions in blogs and make sure to cover the follow up questions in FAQs

  • Track citations on these set of questions using any citation tracker tool

  • Keep optimizing content

While the Phoenix stage companies can easily put 60% of their efforts on AEO, you have to get the SEO fundamentals right first. Parallely invest your time in replicating what the Hummingbirds are doing for AEO.

Stage 4 - The Eagle Stage

Probably one of the most interesting stages. You are definitely not at the Swan stage and have the potential to be at the Phoenix stage soon. At this moment, you are just thinking if you should just turn all of your SEO team’s direction towards AEO or keep doing the good work that you have been pulling off in SEO.

Pretty much like the Swan stage companies, you can’t let go of SEO fundamentals. Your prime focus should be to scale the fundamentals of SEO to a level that it takes you closer to the Phoenix or even surpass them.

Framework:

• Focus area: 60% SEO + 40% AEO

• Attack area on SEO: Scaling SEO fundamentals and making it super strong (Topical authority, Tech SEO, Backlinks)

• Attack area on AEO: Longest tail keywords (i.e. questions/queries) instead of head keywords + Brand citations from Reddit/YouTube 

  • Steps

    • A consistent process to source questions that your users are asking to the AI platform

      • Sub steps

        • Collect from Reddit/Quora

        • Collect from your sales/cx calls

        • Collect from your user interviews

        • Collect from ChatGPT and Google AI (Give sharp prompts to understand what others are asking)

    • Cluster these questions to topics/sub topics and categorize them to questions and follow up questions

    • Rank these questions in order of importance to the business and then go back to your business goals

      • If you are looking to crack higher conversions on your existing good performing pillar pages, cover these questions in FAQs there

      • If you are looking to get more citations, covering the core questions in blog and answering the follow up questions on FAQs is the answer

  • Track citations on these set of questions using any citation tracker tool

  • Keep optimizing content

  • Optimize Video content and Reddit answers

While the Swan stage companies should only put 75% of their efforts on AEO, you have the liberty to invest more in AEO (more team members). This is because you have YT/Vimeo and Reddit and other UGC platform content optimizations.

Chapter End: That’s a Wrap

While there is so much to talk about the current developments in AEO vs SEO, we wanted to keep this more actionable. We understand that this piece leaves you with more questions and that is totally alright. 

You can reach out to us on contact@revenifynow.com or book a call with us using the CTA mentioned below.