What’s with all the new acronyms? What’s the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO?

Are GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) really new? Kinda, but they both work together with SEO. Matter of fact, we would put GEO and AEO under the umbrella of SEO.

When your SEO is really good, your GEO and AEO will follow suit and your website should also show up in GEO and AEO search results.

Here’s the difference:

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

That’s something everyone knows. It’s when your website shows up well organically in Google’s search results page. Search the phrase “Ohio web design companies that do home builder websites” and you’ll see we show up well in the “organic” searches, right after the Sponsored Ads. The majority of people don’t click the ads, so showing up in the “organic results” is way better.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization.

Basically, it’s showing up in a search done on an AI search engine, like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization.

This is when you ask voice assistant the same type of question, in our example: “What are the best web design companies that design home builder websites?”

This’s why keyword research, and specifically, voice search questions, are critical. When you know the questions your audience is asking, and that exact question is the title of your blog posts, the chances of that blog showing up very high on page one of Google (and other search engines) goes way up.

When keying in a question, the AEO answer used to be the text results that showed up in a side bar on a search engine’s results. But now, that’s pretty much been taken over the each search engine’s AI overview.

Q: How much does a website cost?

Of course, the answer is: “it depends,” because there’s so many variables. For an in-depth assessment of how much a website costs, check out our blog here.

Q: Is it cheaper to use a template or have a custom design?

As you might expect, templates are less expensive, but let’s define a template. Is it a Wix template or SquareSpace template? Or is it a WordPress template? There’s a big difference between those three.

• Wix and SquareSpace templates are far simpler than WordPress templates, so it takes a lot less time. But your choices are limited.
• If you want your website to truly look unique, and look better than your competitors, WordPress is the way to go.
• If you want your website to have better SEO (and GEO and AEO), then WordPress is definitely the way to go.

Remember: as with most things in life, from haircuts to cars, you do get what you pay for.

Q: What’s included in the price of my website?

What should be included is everything from doing a wireframe design of the homepage, walking you through every aspect of the site, constant communication, hand-holding as needed, and designing and building both the desktop version and mobile version.

And if you’re wondering “Will I be able to update the site myself?” The answer should be “absolutely!”

If the web design firm is sensitive to your needs, they should provide you with at least one video tutorial for how to use your website. We do videos for how to add blogs since that’s what you should be doing most often on your website. See an example of an online video tutorial we did for updating their blogs for a client here.

Of course, the video should in addition to  an initial online training session.

Options to your website are things like, SEO, creating an awesome homepage video, or writing the content for your website and/or blogs, among other things.

Another option is making your website ADA-compliant. Google wants the entire wen to be accessible to everyone, so you get bonus points for making your site accessible. Read why being ADA accessible is good for SEO here. Our site is ADA compliant, as you can see by clicking the circle icon in the lower right corner.

Q: Do I own the website?

Seems to go without saying that you should be the owner. But make sure you also own the domain name, the hosting is in your name, and you’re the Administrator of the website. If you’re not made an Admin of the website, you’ll never have total control of your website.

We’ve seen scenarios where only the web designer made themselves the only Administrator role within the website. That means if things go south with the designer, you wouldn’t  e able to have another designer just take the site over to keep it updaated. You have to be in the Administrator role within your website (more than one person can have an Admin role) in order to manage it and control it.

Q: Are there ongoing costs?

Yes. With WordPress websites, there’s always be ongoing costs for doing security updates to your website. All software needs updating, and a website’s content management software is especially important.

Why? Because hackers write code that cruises around the internet and tries to worm it’s way into unprotected websites. Should that happen, your website can go down and could take time to get back up and running again.

And a hacker’s code doesn’t even have to be looking for your  website specifically. That code just keeps searching for an opening to cause havoc in any  website that hasn’t had it’s “holes patched.”

Q: What’s the difference between SEO and SEM?

In the simplest explanation:

• SEO is what happens ON your website to help it show up in search results.
• SEM is what happen OFF your website to help people get to your website.

To keep you SEO up-to-date, blogging is one of the best ways to do that. The more you update your website, the more often Google re-indexes it, keeping it relevant in their algorithms. Read why all blogging (also called content creation) IS new business development.

Of course, you’d have to have keyword research done so you’re using the same words your audience is using to find your products or services. Read about the exciting world of keyword research here.

See what goes into the on-page SEO for a blog here (though it’s the same for every page of your website). These guys tell you all about it in the video.

One of the things SEM (the stuff that happens off your website) consists of is getting backlinks to your website.  On that page you can see a report for our website that shows how many backlinks you should get for yours.

Q: What kind of marketing goes into our website?

From our perspective, there’s more than one kind of marketing that goes into website marketing.

• One is the content on your website. This means your website shouldn’t be talking about you, but about how what you do benefits your audiences. That’s because no one really cares about you (or us) until they know what you (or we) can do to solve their problems. If a web design firm’s homepage talks about them, and not what they do for you, they’re not marketing-focused.
• Another is Search and Display ads. Read what the difference is between the two here.
• Then there’s getting backlinks to your website. See how getting backlinks to your website happens here.
• Social Media is another avenue for getting people to your website.

For a more complete list of the bullets points above, see our SEO and SEM page here

Q: When is SEO built into a website?

Good SEO is built into the website’s DNA from the start. “Adding in” SEO after the website is built isn’t the ideal way to do it, though it is an option. There’s just some backtracking required.

And there’s the option as to which SEO plugin to a WordPress website. There’s the Yoast plugin which is the basic one, and there’s Rankmath, which is a step up.

SEO is also about the content on every page. You might think someone at your office is the best person to write the content for the website. However, if you’re serious about SEO, you should think twice about writing the content for your website.

Q: How long does it take for my site start showing up on Google?

Again, the answer is: it depends. Just a few of the items it depends on is:

• How competitive your industry is
• How many keywords you want to be found for
• How large of a geographic area you want to be found in
• Whether you’re writing the content, or an experienced SEO professional is, and
• How serious you are about writing blogs while using keywords in the right spots in the backend

That said, even though you’re entering a marathon that your competitors have been running for a while, it’s never too late to start. No website, no matter how small, can benefit from good SEO and SEM.

Q: Will my site be mobile-responsive?

Yes it will. It’s important, because – depending on your industry – half of the traffic of your website could be viewed on mobile devices.

If you have a video on your homepage, it night play on mobile devices. That’s because people looking at websites on their phones are not typically in an office or home with a high-speed internet connection. They could be in their car, a coffee shop, or any other place they’re using cell service to connect. And with cell service, it could take too long for a video to load. And everyone’s time is valuable.

Q: How long will it take to build my website?

Usually, it takes between 3 and 4 months to develop a unique, custom website in WordPress. It can be fast-tracked, but 3 to 4 months is a comfortable timeframe. There’s a lot of back and forth, so rushing a website isn’t the ideal scenario.

We start with an information gathering session to learn as much as we can that is relevant to your business that goes into the website.

From there we create a static wireframe with content and place holder images. That way you’re able to make revisions before we even start the final design and coding. Of course, there’s constant communicate throughout the project, so you’re always in the loop.

See what’s involved with a “going live checklist” here.

Then, after the site goes live, we work on your website doing security updates, and ongoing support. That way, if something breaks, we’re in the backend of your website almost every month, so we know how to fix things.

If you have more questions you’d like answers to, please contact us and let’s start a conversation.