Is AI visibility just SEO with a different name?

Is AI visibility just SEO with a different name?

Is AI visibility — AEO/GEO — just SEO with a new name? Not exactly. In episode 1 of Cited: Voice Notes, I answer it by voice note: they're not the same thing, but SEO is far from dead. You run them in parallel and merge the two systems — keep doing your SEO (keyword rankings, blog optimization) while overlaying AI-visibility practices on top.

That means definition blocks, way more FAQs than content marketers are used to, and rethinking how your product and category pages are structured. The big lift is third-party citations — getting mentioned on the sources AI actually trusts (Reddit, product reviews, industry publications) by activating your PR arm. And then the technical plumbing most marketers never expected to touch: schema and llms.txt.

In this episode:
- Why SEO and AI visibility aren't the same thing — but SEO isn't dead
- Running SEO and AEO/GEO in parallel, and merging the two systems
- The AI-visibility practices you overlay (definition blocks, more FAQs, restructured pages)
- The big lift: third-party citations and activating your PR arm
- The technical plumbing: schema and llms.txt

Full written version + transcript: https://lsxpartners.com/podcast/is-ai-visibility-just-seo

Hosted by Laura Seelinger, founder of LSX Partners — AI visibility (AEO/GEO) strategist helping brands get cited by AI.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

They are not the same thing. However, like SEO isn't dead, like you see some people post, but it also is now run in parallel with AEO and GEO. So the AI visibility. For example, we're still implementing SEO best practices into my clients' work. We're still monitoring um keyword rankings and optimizing blog posts and things like that. Um, but we're overlaying the best practices and principles of AI visibility. So that means we're adding in the definition blocks that um I've talked about in my blogs before. We're adding in um more FAQs than any content marketer thought was normal before, and then revisiting how we have different pages structured, like your product pages or your category pages. And then the big part though, the the big piece that I think is kind of the how am I gonna find time to do all of this stuff is implementing more of the third-party um citations into it or like more so owning those in a way, even though you can't own them. Uh, because AI platforms, they love to use sites like Reddit or product reviews or like industry, um, industry publications and things like that. So really activating your PR arm if you have one in your company, or just like kind of putting that cap on and starting to think, how can we um be um included in these publications? How we can how can we enter the conversation and um then share about our product and service there? That's a big part of the AOGO, which you you're not gonna bring in your SEO into those sorts of answers. Um, so I kind of just rambled there for a little bit, but um too long don't read or too long didn't read or whatever the kids say, um, they are not the same thing. However, you're not just throwing your SEO, SEO out the window. Uh, what I do is again run them in parallel and I merge the two systems um in all of the content planning. And when I do AI visibility blueprints for news sites, so it's really run in parallel, which marketers probably don't like to hear because then that means, oh, I have to run an entirely different system in parallel with what I already do. Uh so yeah, I hope that helps. I feel like this is opening a different can of worms, or it's an entirely different question. But there's also a list of things that I personally never thought I'd be doing as a marketer that I would have handed a developer uh a few years ago. But that's optimizing your schema, your LLMS text, um, and things like that that are more like the technical plumbing sort of thing. Um, that really helps AI platforms um read what you have, understand it so they can then um cite it accurately. So that's again kind of further along or further away from your question about SEO, but it's a very important piece of AI visibility.