Framework

The layers of modern search optimization

SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO, DEO and SXO are not six competing strategies. They are six successive moments in the same journey: being found, being quoted, being cited, being understood, being recommended, and being chosen. Each one asks something different of the same page, and none of them replaces the one below it.

From discovery to decision. Below, each layer gets its goal, what it optimizes for, what it needs from your content, and the signals that tell you whether it is working.

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  1. 01

    SEO

    Search Engine Optimization

    Goal

    Get crawled, indexed, ranked

    SEO services →

    SEO is the work that makes a page reachable, indexable and worth ranking: the technical base, the content, the internal links and the authority behind them.

    Focus areas

    • Technical SEO
    • Content quality
    • Topical authority
    • Internal linking
    • Core Web Vitals
    • Schema
    • E-E-A-T
    • Backlinks

    Outcome

    • Rankings
    • Organic traffic
    • Indexed pages

    What you measure

    • Rankings
    • Organic traffic
    • Indexed pages

    Why it exists. Still the floor under everything else. A page an engine cannot crawl or index is not a candidate for an answer, a citation or a recommendation either.

  2. 02

    AEO

    Answer Engine Optimization

    Goal

    Become the direct answer

    AI visibility →

    AEO is writing and marking up a page so a search engine can lift the answer straight out of it: question-shaped headings, short direct answers, lists, tables and FAQ markup.

    Optimize for

    • Google AI Overviews
    • Featured snippets
    • Voice search
    • FAQ answers
    • Rich results

    Requirements

    • Question-first content
    • Short direct answers
    • Lists
    • Tables
    • FAQ schema
    • Clear entities

    What you measure

    • AI Overview appearances
    • Featured snippets
    • Zero-click visibility

    Why it exists. A growing share of queries are resolved on the results page. If the answer is buried in paragraph nine, the box above it belongs to somebody else.

  3. 03

    GEO

    Generative Engine Optimization

    Goal

    Get cited by AI

    LLM citation tracking →

    GEO is earning citations inside generated answers by publishing what a model cannot get anywhere else: original data, named expertise and a brand it can resolve consistently.

    Platforms

    • ChatGPT
    • Gemini
    • Perplexity
    • Claude
    • Copilot

    Optimize with

    • Original research
    • Statistics you generated
    • Named expert opinion
    • Brand mentions
    • Entity consistency
    • Fresh updates
    • Structured content

    What you measure

    • AI citations
    • AI mentions
    • Brand references

    Why it exists. A generative answer quotes a handful of sources and drops the rest. Being in the index is table stakes; being the source it names is the job.

  4. 04

    AIO

    AI Optimization

    Goal

    Make content machine-readable

    SEO audits →

    AIO is making a page parseable end to end: resolvable entities, structured data, consistent brand facts, and media a model can actually read rather than skip.

    Optimize

    • Semantic entities
    • Knowledge-graph signals
    • Machine-readable content
    • Structured data
    • Consistent brand info
    • Multimedia
    • Freshness

    What AI reads

    • Text
    • Images
    • PDFs
    • Videos
    • Tables
    • Structured data

    What you measure

    • Entity recognition
    • Correct brand facts
    • Coverage across surfaces

    Why it exists. Models do not read a page the way a visitor does. Anything that depends on layout, a click or client-side rendering to make sense may never be understood at all.

  5. 05

    DEO

    Decision Engine Optimization

    Goal

    Get chosen, not just cited

    Local SEO →

    DEO is giving an assistant the facts it compares on before it recommends anyone: suitability, price, availability, reviews, policies and terms, in a form it can read.

    Optimize for

    • Suitability and relevance
    • Pricing and availability
    • Reviews and reputation
    • Policies and terms
    • Comparability
    • Trust and credibility
    • Structured decision data

    What AI does

    • Evaluates options
    • Compares
    • Weighs criteria
    • Recommends
    • Takes action

    What you measure

    • Recommendations
    • Shortlist appearances
    • Assisted conversions

    Why it exists. Assistants have stopped listing options and started shortlisting them. The comparison happens off your site, using whatever data it could find.

  6. 06

    SXO

    Search Experience Optimization

    Goal

    Turn visitors into customers

    SEO web design →

    SXO is what happens after the click: speed, clarity, navigation, trust and the shortest honest path from landing on the page to making an enquiry.

    Improve

    • UX and design
    • Page speed
    • Navigation
    • Trust signals
    • Readability
    • Calls to action
    • Conversion rate
    • Mobile experience

    Outcome

    • Engagement
    • Leads
    • Sales
    • Revenue

    What you measure

    • Engagement
    • Leads
    • Sales
    • Revenue

    Why it exists. Every layer above delivers a visit. Traffic that arrives on a slow, unclear page converts nothing, and the bounce is a signal of its own.

All layers, one foundation

  • Data
  • Content
  • Entities
  • Authority
  • Trust

Strong foundations power every layer of visibility and growth.

Order of operations

The layers stack, so the work does too

Nobody buys their way to a citation while the site is uncrawlable. This is the sequence, and the reason each step is where it is.

  1. 1

    Access before anything

    If a crawler cannot reach the page, render it without JavaScript and index it, no later layer has anything to work with. This is SEO, and it did not stop being the prerequisite.

  2. 2

    Then the shape of the answer

    Question-shaped headings, an answer in the first paragraph, tables where there are figures. AEO formatting is also what makes a passage retrievable, which is why GEO gets easier once it is done.

  3. 3

    Then something worth quoting

    A model can generate the definition already. Citations go to original data, named expertise and first-hand findings, so GEO is a publishing problem before it is a markup problem.

  4. 4

    Then the facts it compares on

    An assistant shortlisting suppliers needs price, availability, terms and reviews in a form it can read. AIO makes them parseable; DEO decides whether what it parses puts you on the list.

  5. 5

    And conversion throughout

    Every layer above delivers a visit or a mention. SXO is what that visit turns into, and it is the only layer whose result lands in the bank account.

What actually changed

New acronyms, older obligations

Most of the list on the left has been true for a decade. The list on the right is what the answer engines added to it.

Unchanged since 2015

  • Crawlability, indexing and a site that renders server-side
  • Content that answers the question it was written for
  • One consistent set of facts about the business, everywhere
  • Demonstrable expertise, named and credited
  • Speed, clarity and a path to an enquiry

New since generative answers

  • The answer is often assembled before the click, so the snippet is the SERP
  • Assistants quote a handful of sources and drop the rest of the page
  • Entities are resolved across the whole web, not read off one page
  • Structured facts decide who gets shortlisted by a model, not just ranked
  • Fewer visits, each one further along the decision

No engine exposes a ranking lever, and none of this makes a citation owed to anyone. The layers describe what you can control.

Companion piece

What the layers look like on one page

The model says what to optimize for. The anatomy shows where it lands in the HTML: title and URL, the answer above the fold, extractable passages, tables, original data, schema, author and freshness, annotated block by block on a sample page.

Read the page anatomy →
FAQ

Questions this model gets asked

Short answers. Longer ones live on the service pages each layer links to.

No. Every layer above SEO reads the same index SEO feeds. A page that is not crawlable, indexable or credible is not a candidate for an AI Overview, a citation or a recommendation either. What has changed is that ranking is no longer the last step.

Where does your site sit on the stack?

An audit tells you which layer is actually blocking the next one, which is usually not the layer people arrive worried about.

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