Hire for the problem you have, not the label on the proposal. If buyers struggle to find your site at all because of technical or structural problems, a provider focused on SEO is usually the better first call. If your site is sound but does not answer the questions buyers ask in a way an assistant could quote, a provider focused on answer-first content fits better, and many businesses end up needing some of both.
The two labels overlap more than their marketing suggests. Google's own guide to hiring an SEO lists content development and optimizing for generative AI among the services an SEO may offer, and many providers that sell AEO also handle traditional search work. Some businesses hire one provider for both; others split the work between two and coordinate.
This page compares the providers and the engagement: what you are buying, who does what, and how to choose. How the content itself differs is covered in the comparison of AEO and SEO content. No agency is named here, and the descriptions below are common patterns, not rules every provider follows.
What each kind of provider usually focuses on
Agencies use both labels loosely, so read the table as a description of where each kind of provider tends to start, not what it is limited to.
| Area | SEO-focused provider | AEO-focused provider |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | The site: how it is crawled, indexed and structured, and which searches it appears for | The buyer: what people ask before choosing, and whether anyone answers it well |
| Typical deliverables | Technical fixes, keyword research, page optimization, local listing work | Question research, answer-first service and question pages, rewrites of existing pages |
| Technical depth | Often deep: redirects, error pages, hosting, JavaScript | Often lighter: crawler access and structured data that matches the page |
| What it needs from you | Access to the site and analytics | Time with the people who answer customer questions |
| What it reports | Rankings, clicks and organic traffic | What assistants say for a fixed question set, plus visits and inquiries |
The row about what each needs from you is the one owners overlook. Technical work can often move forward with logins alone. Answer work cannot, because the answers worth publishing live with your staff: how you scope a job, what you check first, what you tell a customer who is nervous about the cost, and a writer should never be left to make up what your business already knows. A provider who never asks for that time is planning to guess.
Where the work overlaps
Most of the groundwork is shared, and the platforms say so. Google's page on AI features says appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode needs no extra requirements or special optimizations, and that its SEO best practices remain relevant for those features. OpenAI's publisher FAQ says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search, and that for a site's content to be included in summaries and snippets, the owner should make sure it is not blocking OAI-SearchBot. Pages that load, can be crawled and say plainly what the business does serve both kinds of search.
That shared base is why the labels blur. The name on a proposal is not the work inside it. An SEO agency that interviews your staff and writes answer-first pages is doing AEO work under another name, and an AEO provider that cannot tell you whether your pages are indexed is skipping a step both disciplines rely on. Judge each proposal by its list of tasks and its deliverables, then decide which label fits.
Which fits which situation
| Your situation | Usually the better first fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You are redesigning or moving the site | SEO-focused, brought in early | Google's hiring guide calls a site redesign a great time to hire, the earlier the better |
| Pages are missing from search or errors are piling up | SEO-focused | Access problems hold back every other kind of visibility |
| The site works, but buyers still call with basic questions | AEO-focused | The gap is in the content, not the code |
| You compete in several cities or segments | AEO-focused, with local research | Each market has its own questions and detail |
| You have a writer but no plan | A planning-only engagement | Your team produces; the provider researches and briefs |
| You work in a regulated field | Either, if it has a review workflow | A licensed professional or compliance staff should approve what publishes |
If the table points both ways, start with whichever problem costs you more. One way to find out is to ask your front desk or sales team, "Do new customers tell us they had trouble finding us, or do they find us easily and then call with questions the site should have answered?" Trouble finding you points to findability work. Easy discovery followed by the same repeat questions points to answers.
Questions to ask either kind of provider
Google's hiring guide suggests questions that suit any provider: ask for examples of previous work, whether they follow Google Search Essentials, what results they expect and in what timeframe, how they measure success, and whether they will share every change they make to your site along with the reasoning. It also tells owners to check business references. Add these for anything sold as AI search work:
- Where do the facts in each page come from, and who checks them?
- Who on my team do you need to interview, and for how long?
- How will you observe what assistants say about my business, and how will you separate that from what you control?
- What happens to the pages, the research and any voice guidance if we stop?
- If another agency handles my SEO, who owns which task, so nothing is done twice or skipped?
Listen, too, for curiosity. Google's guide says an SEO should ask questions about what makes your business unique, and the same test suits a provider selling answers.
A fictional example: one site, two proposals
A fictional custom cabinetry shop in Tennessee rebuilt its website last year and saw calls drop. It receives two proposals. The first, from an SEO-focused agency, finds that dozens of old page addresses now lead to error pages, the new site loads slowly on phones, and the service pages target phrases few people in the region search for. The second, from an AEO-focused provider, finds that the site never explains lead times, how a design consultation works, or what changes the price of a kitchen, all questions the owner answers on nearly every call.
Both findings describe real problems, and they are not in competition. The owner fixes the broken addresses first, since visitors who land on error pages read none of the answers, then brings in the answer work once the site is sound. Both providers are asked to agree in writing on who handles page titles and structured data, the two places their work could collide. A single provider able to do both would have been an equally reasonable choice, as long as its proposal named both kinds of task.
Where Hudson South fits
Hudson South is a content company, and its AI search content service runs in four steps, in this order. Authority Asset gathers the expertise your business has that your website does not show. Hudson Twenty-One records how your business communicates across 21 dimensions. Market Intelligence researches what buyers in your market ask and what competitors have already answered. AEO Creation produces the pages and posts, with clear answers near the top, specific evidence, named expertise and the technical setup that helps a machine understand what it is reading. You review each piece and Hudson South publishes it.
Hudson South does not promise that ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI features will name any client; the aim is to give them a clear reason to. If another agency already handles your SEO, ask both sides to map who owns which task before work starts. The technical foundation both kinds of provider depend on is laid out, with a checklist you can run yourself, on our AI SEO page. For what the label covers in the first place, see what answer engine optimization means.
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- Do You Need an SEO? Tips for Hiring an SEO. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
- AI Features and Your Website. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
- Publishers and Developers FAQ. OpenAI Help Center. Read 2026-10-17.