.svg){kind=logo}
Traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) still matters, but it’s no longer enough. Search has evolved beyond keywords and backlinks. In 2026, AI driven summarisation and answer engines are changing how people discover brands. Platforms like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), ChatGPT, and Perplexity now surface responses instantly, often without users needing to click through to a website.
This shift means your content needs to be optimised not just for rankings, but for visibility across AI-generated answers. At the same time, local relevance is more important than ever. GEO (geotargeted search) helps brands appear in ‘near me’ results, map listings, and local discovery tools, essential for capturing high intent shoppers close to purchase.
For Shopify and retail brands, the visibility challenge has fundamentally changed. It’s no longer just about ranking on a single platform, it’s about showing up wherever your audience is searching, whether through traditional SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)
Welcome to the new era of visibility, where SEO, GEO, and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) work together to help brands stay discoverable across every search experience.
What SEO still does best
Despite the rise of AI and answer engines, traditional SEO remains a foundational part of digital visibility. It ensures your site is not only discoverable, but also functional, fast, and aligned with how people search.
At its core, SEO breaks down into four key pillars that work together to improve visibility and performance. Technical SEO focuses on site speed, mobile responsiveness, crawlability, and structured data, ensuring that search engines can easily access, interpret, and index on your site.
On page SEO involves optimising individual pages with relevant keywords, metadata, headings, and internal linking to improve relevance and user experience. Off page SEO helps build domain authority through backlinks, brand mentions, and social signals, all of which influence how search engines rank your site.
Finally, content SEO is about creating valuable, intent driven content that answers questions, supports the customer journey, and aligns with what your audience is searching for.
Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day, with the majority being transactional or local. That’s a huge opportunity for eCommerce brands to increase product visibility, drive organic performance, and improve site health through optimised content and structured data.
However, not every search begins or ends on Google anymore.
What is GEO
GEO isn’t about traditional rankings, it’s about visibility inside AI driven summaries. As engines like SGE, Perplexity, and You.com reshape how information is surfaced, your content is no longer competing for position on a search results page. Instead, it’s fighting to be included in the answers themselves. That means optimising for how AI understands, selects, and stitches together responses from across the web.
To stand out, your site needs structured data, contextual depth, and topical authority. AI looks for well connected content that provides clear, reliable answers. Using Schema markup, like FAQ, product, and article schemas , helps machines understand your content’s purpose and relevance. Including expert quotes, customer reviews, and case studies builds credibility and signals trustworthiness. It’s also important to write in a natural, conversational tone that mirrors how users actually ask questions, such as long-tail, intent-driven questions such as: “What’s the best waterproof jacket for winter hiking?”
For Shopify merchants, this matters more than ever. Getting featured in generative results means your brand shows up before the click, appearing right at the moment a shopper is forming their intent. That early awareness can be a game changer.
In the age of GEO, ranking is no longer the end goal. It’s about being selected, cited and summarised, wherever your customers are searching for answers.
What is AEO
AEO is all about making your content discoverable by AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants like Alexa or Siri. Unlike traditional search engines, these tools aren’t showing users a list of links, they’re providing direct answers. That means your brand needs to be the one quoted, cited, or referenced in those answers.
To do this effectively, your content should be structured with clarity and purpose. Creating pages in a Q&A or FAQ format helps AI easily identify question and answer pairs. Responses should be concise, factual, and direct, such as two to three sentence summaries that deliver value instantly. Schema markup and structured data play a crucial role here, helping answer engines understand the intent and context behind your content. Adding real reviews, testimonials, or data points enhances credibility and increases the chance of your brand being chosen as the trusted source.
For eCommerce brands, this matters even when there’s no click involved. When an AI delivers an answer and your band is the one mentioned, it builds trust, authority, and awareness in the moments that matter most.
Why all three matter for your business
SEO, GEO, and AEO aren’t competing strategies, they’re complementary layers of a future ready visibility plan. Each one plays a unique role in how, where, and when your brand is discovered.
SEO ensures your website remains visible in traditional search results, helping drive organic traffic, product discovery, and long term performance. GEO helps your content get included in AI-generated summaries across platforms like Google SGE and Perplexity, positioning your brand at the top of the funnel, often before a user even sees a list of results. AEO builds brand authority in answer engines in answer engines, voice assistants, and conversational AI platforms, where users expect instant, trusted responses without clicking through.
Together, these strategies deliver true omnichannel visibility, across all browsers, AI interfaces, voice search, and beyond. They strengthen your brand’s credibility with both human users and machine interpreters, ensuring your content is discoverable and trusted across every search environment.
As search becomes more fragmented, integrating SEO, GEO, and AEO isn’t just smart, it’s essential. This is how you future proof your organic strategy and stay easily found everywhere your customers are looking.
Visualsoft’s SEO and data teams are already preparing for this shift by combining content, schema, and data strategies that ensure our clients appear across every layer of discovery, from Google to generative AI.
Ready to future-proof your visibility? Speak to our SEO team today about strategies to increase your revenue.
