Three acronyms, three jobs — stop buying a slogan
Treat SEO, AEO, and GEO as jobs on a brief. SEO: ranked URLs and organic sessions. AEO: short-form answers Google or assistants can lift. GEO: citable passages models can attribute. One page can serve two jobs. One invoice should not pretend they are three unrelated sciences.
Agencies that rename the same blog calendar three times are selling vocabulary. Ask what changes: titles, schema, original data, author bios, or intern-written listicles with no Tamil Nadu specifics.
A one-line test for vendors
If they cannot name a query, a URL, and a KPI for each acronym, they are pitching a deck. We write that map on a consultation before anyone pays ₹15,000/mo.
What SEO still pays for in India
Classic SEO still moves enquiries for clinics, manufacturers, SaaS, and local services: crawl, intent pages, internal links, Core Web Vitals, and links that look like real citations. Tamil and English searchers still click results when they want a phone number, a price band, or a portfolio.
AI Overviews sit *on top of* some queries. They do not delete the rest of the SERP. National informational queries get more generative UI; “near me” and transactional queries still lean Maps and ads. See local vs national SEO.
If your site is slow, duplicated across ten city doorway pages, or blocked in robots.txt, no AEO plugin will save it. Fix the site. Then write answers.
SEO KPIs we still report
Indexed important URLs, non-brand clicks on money queries, leads attributed to organic, and technical issues closed. “Impressions in AI Mode” without enquiry is a vanity line.
When ads still beat unpaid search
New domains, thin catalogues, and festival launches often need performance ads (from ₹20,000/mo + spend) while SEO compounds. Unpaid and paid are not a morality contest.
What AEO actually means (not a rebrand)
Answer engines want a claim, a constraint, and a next step. “CA firms in Chennai typically charge X–Y for a private limited incorporation, depending on DSC and MCA fees” is extractable. “We are passionate about excellence” is not.
AEO work is FAQ blocks that match real People Also Ask phrasing, speakable-length sentences, service pages that define the offer in the first 80 words, and schema that matches visible text. Detail: What Is AEO and schema tactics.
Voice and Maps are AEO surfaces too
Assistant answers and Google Business Profile Q&A are answer engines with a local bias. A Chennai clinic that ignores GBP while buying “AEO retainers” has the wrong surface. Pair: SEO for Chennai businesses.
What GEO is — and what it is not
Generative engines compose answers from training data and live retrieval. GEO is making your pages worth retrieving: original numbers, named authors, dates, and passages that stand alone when quoted. It is not submitting a form to “get listed in ChatGPT.”
llms.txt files are optional hints, not a ranking cheat code. See llms.txt and llms-full.txt and how to get cited.
Citation is not a contract
Models hallucinate, omit, and rotate sources. We will not sell guaranteed ChatGPT mentions. We will sell citable pages and track whether they appear in sampled prompts.
How Indian searchers actually find vendors now
A T. Nagar parent still Googles a school, checks Maps photos, then WhatsApps. A B2B buyer in OMR may ask Gemini for a shortlist, then click two sites. A founder may paste your URL into ChatGPT and ask “is this legit?” Your brand has to survive all three.
Hindi, Tamil, and English queries do not share one SERP layout. Transliterated queries (“seo company chennai”) still dominate commercial intent. Write for how people type, not how a US playbook titles H1s. Research: keyword research for Indian searchers.
WhatsApp is not an answer engine
Closing on WhatsApp is conversion, not discovery. If the only “SEO” you do is a status message, you are invisible to Google and to models.
Measurement: rankings vs citations vs answers
Pick one primary KPI per job. SEO: qualified organic leads. AEO: snippet/PAA ownership on a defined query set, plus GBP questions answered. GEO: presence in a monthly prompt sample (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Overviews) — logged as observation, not a SLA.
Search Console still matters. So does a simple sheet of 30 prompts you care about. Fancy AI dashboards that cannot name a URL are theatre.
Do not average three scores into one “AI SEO index”
A clinic can win Maps and lose Overviews. A SaaS blog can win citations and lose local pack. Report surfaces separately or you will “optimize” the wrong one.
Content shapes that serve all three
Definition in sentence one. Specifics (price bands, cities, constraints) in paragraph two. FAQ that matches spoken questions. Author and updated date. That structure helps snippets, Overviews, and human readers. Writing craft: content for AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
Programmatic city pages without unique proof fail all three jobs. Handwritten pages with real photos and fees travel further. Split: programmatic vs handwritten.
Stack, speed, and schema — technical overlap
Crawlable HTML, stable URLs, and decent LCP matter whether the reader is Googlebot or a retrieval crawler. WordPress can do this; so can Next.js. Plugins do not “enable GEO.” See on-page vs technical vs off-page and Core Web Vitals in India.
If you are rebuilding, WordPress vs Next.js SEO and React/Next.js vs WordPress cover the CMS call. Floors: Business Website ₹28,000; custom Next.js from the Next.js path; Dynamic + SEO ₹50,000 + ₹15,000/mo.
Schema must match the visible answer
JSON-LD that claims a 4.9 rating you do not show is a trust problem, not an AEO tactic. Markup the FAQ you actually published.
Budget: do not buy three retainers for one site
Brevia’s honest floor is ₹15,000/mo SEO for one website: technical, on-page, and content. AEO/GEO tasks sit inside that work when they match your queries. A second “GEO specialist” fee for the same intern calendar is waste.
Build quality still caps SEO: Landing Page ₹7,500; Business Website ₹28,000. Ads from ₹20,000/mo + spend if you need pipeline this month. Cost detail: how much SEO costs in India.
What we refuse to sell
Guaranteed #1, guaranteed Overview inclusion, guaranteed ChatGPT citation, and doorway-page “500 cities” packages. Those pitches are still mistakes Indian agencies make.
How Brevia scopes SEO, AEO, and GEO from Chennai
We start with a query set, not a trend article. Local pack vs national info vs “how does X work” determines the mix. Engineering and SEO sit in Thousand Lights; delivery is India-wide.
Hire question: agency vs in-house. Start: consultation or contact.
What to bring to the first call
Search Console access if you have it, top landing pages, cities you actually serve, and whether a founder will put their name on articles. Without that, we will not invent a GEO roadmap.
Ready to automate one painful workflow?
Tell us your stack — n8n, Make, Zapier, WhatsApp, or Playwright. Chennai HQ · India delivery · reply within one business day.