Short and sweet:
AI SEO; the practice of adapting search engine optimization strategy to account for AI-powered search features like AI Overviews and chatbot answers, while also using AI tools to support keyword research, content creation, and technical optimization.
A broader, evolving discipline sitting alongside traditional SEO as search increasingly blends ranked results with AI-generated summaries.
See also: SEO, AEO, Featured Snippet
AI SEO covers two connected shifts happening in search: optimizing content so it performs well when AI systems generate summaries or overviews, and using AI tools to make the SEO process itself faster and more effective. In practice, this includes:
Because it spans both the optimization target and the optimization method, AI SEO is best understood as an expansion of traditional SEO rather than a replacement for it.
An agency might use an AI research tool to identify content gaps across a client’s site, then rewrite key pages so they’re more likely to be pulled into Google’s AI Overviews.
A retailer auditing its product pages for AI SEO could add structured data and clearer specifications so an AI shopping assistant can accurately summarize and recommend its products.
A marketing team tracking both organic rankings and how often its brand appears in AI-generated answers is practicing AI SEO rather than traditional SEO alone.
