SEO, AEO and GEO sound like three different things to buy. They’re really three ways a client finds your firm, and they stack on top of each other using the same foundational tactics. This guide explains each one and gives you a list of tasks you can do on your own site this month.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO gets your firm into Google’s map results and website links, the standard Google search results we’ve all known for the past 10+ years. AEO gets your answer quoted when someone asks an AI tool a question, like how long a green card takes. GEO gets your firm recommended when someone asks an AI tool who to hire in your market. Each one builds on the one before it.
An easy way to remember it: SEO is being found, AEO is being quoted, GEO is being recommended.
The same client can touch all three in one week.
- On Monday they search Google for “immigration lawyer near me.”
- On Wednesday they ask ChatGPT how long a marriage-based petition takes.
- On Friday they ask Gemini who the best immigration attorney in Miami is.
Three different moments, three different chances for your firm to show up or get skipped.
The AI tools people use most for these searches are Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, the Google Gemini app and Perplexity. AEO and GEO both happen inside those tools. The difference is the question being asked: “what is the answer” versus “who should I hire.”
What does SEO mean for an immigration firm today?
SEO is showing up when someone searches Google for an immigration lawyer. That happens in two places. The map pack at the top runs on your Google Business Profile. The website links below it run on the pages of your site. A firm that only works on one is giving up the other.
Google publishes what drives the map pack. Local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and “businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results.” Google also says “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”
What you can do:
- Fill out every section of your Google Business Profile: category, services, hours, photos and a description that names the cases you take.
- Create a process that asks every happy client for a Google review after a completed service, and reply to every review you get. Google says a reply “shows that you value their feedback.”
- Open Google Search Console, click Performance, then the Queries tab. This shows the searches where your site already appeared. Look for questions with a lot of impressions and very few clicks. Those are the pages to write or fix next.
- In the same tool, open the Page indexing report and check which of your pages Google has not indexed. A page Google can’t index can’t rank.
What is AEO, and how do you get your answer quoted?
AEO is getting your answer used when someone asks Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity a question. These tools pull short passages from web pages. A page that puts the client’s question in a heading and answers it in the first sentence or two gives them a clean passage to quote.
AI tools are lazy. They scan countless sites in milliseconds looking for the most accurate answer as fast as possible. Finding the question in a heading and the answer right below it makes their job easier, which makes your content more likely to be used.
The research lines up on this. Daniel Shashko studied 42,971 citations across six AI platforms in March 2026 and found three quarters of the cited sentences came from the first half of the page, and most were 6 to 20 words long. Semrush compared 304,805 AI-cited pages with Google’s top results in January 2026 and found question-and-answer formatting more common on the cited pages. Both studies show what cited pages have in common.
What you can do:
- Use your clients’ questions as headings, in their words. “How long does an I-130 take in 2026?” beats “Family-Based Immigration Services.” Start writing down the questions clients ask during consults, intake and the case itself.
- Answer it in the first one or two sentences, then explain. If your page says “At our firm, we understand every family’s journey is unique,” it won’t get picked over a competitor who wrote “USCIS currently lists [X] months for this petition at the [Y] service center.” The second one can be quoted. The first one can’t.
- When USCIS changes a fee, a form or a processing time, update the page and show the “last updated” date. Seer Interactive looked at 7,683 pages cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity between March and June 2026, and 75% had been updated within the past year. Ahrefs found the pattern is weaker in Google’s AI Overviews, so keep updating as a habit and don’t expect overnight jumps.
What is GEO, and how do you get your firm recommended?
GEO is getting your firm named when someone asks an AI tool who to hire, like “Who’s the best immigration attorney in Miami?” An AI tool can only recommend firms it can read about. Your site has to be open to AI tools, and other trusted sites have to mention your firm by name.
Start with access. OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.” Law firm sites block AI tools more than most, whether they mean to or not. Ahrefs checked the robots.txt files of about 140 million websites in May 2025, and Law & Government sites blocked AI bots 42% of the time.
Then look at where AI tools find lawyers. BrightLocal studied 13,354 citations from lawyer searches across Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, published in August 2026. Google’s own listings made up 42%, Yelp 7.9%, Justia 3.2% and Avvo 2.5%. Across every business type in that study, Yelp showed up as a source in 80% of ChatGPT’s answers.
Language matters too. Temso analyzed more than 7 million AI citations in early 2026. When people asked in Spanish, 74.6% of ChatGPT’s sources and 83.4% of AI Overviews’ sources were in Spanish, and Temso says the pattern held across every language it tested.
What you can do:
- Ask your web person to confirm your robots.txt file and firewall allow OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Googlebot. GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler, so blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search.
- Claim and complete your Yelp, Justia and Avvo profiles, with the same name, address and phone number as your Google Business Profile.
- Add pages in the languages your clients speak. You don’t need to translate the whole site. Start with your top three practice areas.
Do you need three separate strategies?
No. Google says its AI features are built on the same core ranking and quality systems as regular search, so good SEO still carries most of the weight. The work overlaps. What changes is which questions you answer and where your firm’s name shows up.
There is one wrinkle. Ahrefs looked at 863,000 searches in March 2026 and found only 37.9% of AI Overview citations came from the top 10 Google results for that search, down from about 76% in July 2025. Google runs extra related searches behind the scenes, and pages that answer those follow-up questions get pulled in. Ranking for “immigration lawyer Miami” is still worth it. Answering “how much does an immigration lawyer cost in Miami” and “can I change lawyers in the middle of my case” is now worth it too.
What can a firm do in the next 30 days?
Six tasks I’d recommend. Complete your Google Business Profile and set up a system for requesting Google reviews. Connect and read your Search Console queries. Rewrite three key pages question-first. Check that AI tools can reach your site. Claim your Yelp, Justia and Avvo profiles. Add one page in your clients’ second language.
Here’s the order I’d go in:
- Complete your Google Business Profile, and send a review request to your last ten closed cases. Then set up a system that automatically requests a review once a satisfied client’s case is complete.
- Open Search Console, pull the Queries tab and pick the three questions with the most impressions.
- Rewrite those three pages with the question as the heading and the answer in the first two sentences. Add a “last updated” date.
- Have your web person check robots.txt and the firewall for the four crawlers listed above.
- Claim and fill out Yelp, Justia and Avvo. If you already have these, add more trusted directories, such as BBB and Super Lawyers.
- Publish your top practice area page in the second language your clients speak most.
Then run a free test. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini “Who’s the best immigration attorney in [your city]?” once in English and once in Spanish. Write down every firm they name. Run the same test in 30 days and again in 60 days, and compare.
Frequently asked questions
Is AEO the same thing as GEO?
They overlap, because both happen inside the same AI tools: Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The difference is the question. AEO is about getting your answer quoted when someone asks a factual question, like how long a petition takes. GEO is about getting your firm named when someone asks who to hire. The same well-structured, up-to-date pages help with both.
Do I need schema markup to show up in AI answers?
No. Google’s AI optimization guide says structured data isn’t required for its generative AI features. Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added schema and found AI citations barely moved. Schema can still help with regular Google rich results, so keep it if you have it, but don’t expect it to get you cited by AI.
Should my firm add an llms.txt file?
It won’t hurt, but don’t expect it to help. Google says its search ignores these files. Ahrefs looked at server logs for 137,210 domains in May 2026 and found 97% of llms.txt files got zero requests. Your time is better spent on the 30-day list above.
Want to see if AI recommends your firm?
You could run the test above by hand, one question at a time, across three AI tools. Or run the free CiteSight check and see whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini name your firm when someone asks for an immigration lawyer, and who gets named instead. The tool is free and takes a few minutes.
Jarrod White
J. Oliver Advertising
Marketing For Immigration Attorneys
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