SEO and AEO are related but not identical. Search Engine Optimisation helps your pages rank in Google and earn clicks. Answer Engine Optimisation helps AI assistants cite your business inside direct answers. Australian buyers now use both channels, often without thinking about the labels.

Traditional SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, technical crawl health, page speed and content depth. Success looks like higher rankings, more organic sessions and conversions from people who visited your site.

AEO focuses on clarity, structure and citable passages. Success looks like your brand appearing when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews "who is a good [service] in [city]?" — even if that person never clicks through immediately.

The overlap is large. Both need fast, well-structured pages. Both reward content that answers real questions. Both suffer if your site is thin, vague or slow on mobile. You cannot bolt on AEO after ignoring SEO fundamentals.

The differences matter in execution. SEO still weighs domain authority and link profiles heavily. AEO rewards explicit definitions, FAQ sections, entity clarity (business name, location, services) and writing that stands alone as a factual paragraph.

A practical example: a Melbourne accounting firm might SEO-optimise for "small business accountant Melbourne". AEO work ensures a page section literally answers "What does a small business accountant in Melbourne cost?" in two sentences AI can quote, supported by FAQ schema.

Doing only SEO leaves you weaker as zero-click AI answers grow. Doing only AEO without technical SEO is fragile because assistants still retrieve from indexed web content that must be discoverable and authoritative.

Devoq integrates both in one roadmap: fix technical issues, align priority pages with keywords, then structure content for machine citation and human readability. Metrics span rankings, traffic and emerging AI referral patterns.

Treat SEO and AEO as one search visibility strategy with two outputs — clicks and citations — not two competing projects. Your competitors will hesitate; that gap is yours to close.