There is a new pile of acronyms flying around about getting found online. Most of it is simpler than it sounds. Here is what each one means, what actually matters, and what is realistic for a small local business.
For twenty years, getting found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. That was SEO. It still matters, but the way people search has split into several habits, and each has picked up its own three letter name. You do not need to become an expert in any of them. You do need to understand what they are so nobody can blind you with jargon or sell you something you do not need.
SEO, search engine optimisation, is the original one. It is about appearing in the ordinary list of blue links when someone searches Google. For a local business that means showing up when people search for what you do, ideally with your town attached. It is driven by having a fast, clear website, pages that genuinely answer what people search for, and other sites linking to you over time. It is still the foundation everything else sits on.
GEO is about geographic and local search, the map and the local listings people see when there is a place involved. Search "café near me" or "plumber in Wantage" and the block of map pins and business cards at the top is GEO territory. For most local businesses this is the single most valuable place to appear, because the people searching are nearby and ready to act.
The main lever here is not your website at all, it is your Google Business Profile: claimed, complete, correct, with real photos, accurate opening hours, and a steady trickle of genuine reviews. Get that right and you are most of the way there. Your business name, address and phone number need to match exactly across your site, your profile and any directories, because inconsistency makes Google less sure of you.
AEO, answer engine optimisation, is about being the direct answer rather than one of ten links. It covers the boxed answer at the top of Google, the snippet read aloud by voice assistants, and the quick facts Google pulls straight onto the results page. Someone asks "what time does the farm shop in Lechlade open" and gets the answer without clicking anyone's site.
You win here by answering real questions plainly on your website. A clear question as a heading, followed by a short, direct answer, is the whole technique. It is not a dark art. It is writing the way a helpful person talks, and structuring it so a machine can lift the answer cleanly.
AIEO, AI engine optimisation, is the newest one. More people are now asking tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini for recommendations instead of, or as well as, searching Google. "Recommend a good wedding photographer near Faringdon" is becoming a normal way to ask. AIEO is about being one of the businesses those tools mention.
This sounds futuristic and is mostly not. AI tools learn about you from the open web: your website, your reviews, directories, mentions on other sites. The same things that make you findable and trustworthy to Google make you findable and quotable to an AI. A clear site that plainly states what you do, where, for whom and at what sort of price, with real reviews behind it, is exactly what these tools reach for. There are a couple of extra technical touches that help, like clean structured data and a tidy file that tells AI crawlers about you, and we build those in as standard, but they are the polish, not the substance.
If you run a business around Faringdon, Oxford, Swindon or the Cotswolds, here is the honest order of priority:
Notice what is not on that list: paying monthly for a vague "AI optimisation package" before the basics are done. Get the foundations right first. For a lot of local businesses that alone puts you ahead of competitors who are still arguing about acronyms.
We will not tell you any of this is instant. Google takes weeks to months to trust a site and start ranking it. AI tools update their picture of the web on their own timelines. What you can do quickly is fix the foundations so that when the engines look at you, they find a clear, fast, trustworthy business instead of a slow, confusing one. That is the part within your control, and it is the part that pays off across all four acronyms at once.
SEO is the foundation. GEO is the local map, and for most of you it is where the customers are. AEO is being the answer. AIEO is being mentioned by the AI tools. They are four windows onto the same house, and the way to be seen through all of them is the same: a clear, fast, honest website, a properly set up Google profile, consistent details, and real reviews. Do those well and the acronyms take care of themselves.
We will check how you show up across Google, the map, answer boxes and the AI tools, and tell you plainly what to fix first.
Ask for a search audit →