What Is the Difference Between LLM SEO and AEO?

LLM SEO and AEO overlap heavily but are not identical. AEO is the older, broader term, covering any answer box, voice assistants, featured snippets, and AI chat alike.

LLM SEO is narrower and newer, focused specifically on large language models, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the systems built on top of them, rather than the full range of answer surfaces.

In day to day practice the two use nearly the same techniques. The distinction matters mostly for how a team talks about the work, not how they actually do it.

Either label points at the same output LLM SEO software is built to produce.