Getting found: SEO, AEO, GEO — and what each one actually means
Four acronyms, one question: when somebody nearby needs what you do, does your business come up? Here is what each one means in plain English, which ones matter today, and which parts your Atelier site already handles without you touching anything.
Four acronyms, one question
For twenty years, "getting found online" meant one thing: appearing in a list of blue links. That is no longer the whole game. The same customer might type "barber near me" into Google, ask ChatGPT where to get a fade before a wedding, or say it out loud to a phone on the way home from work. Those are three different systems, reading different things, deciding in different ways.
Start with the one you need
SEO — Search Engine Optimisation
Ranking in Google's results: the map of businesses at the top and the list of pages underneath. They are two different systems with two different sets of rules, and mixing them up is the most common reason local SEO feels like it is not working.
Read more →AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation
Being the source a search engine quotes when it answers the question directly instead of handing over a list of links. In an answer there is no tenth result to be.
Read more →GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation
Being the business an AI assistant actually names when somebody asks it for a recommendation. Our operators tell us this is already sending them clients.
Read more →VEO — Voice Engine Optimisation
Being the answer when the question is spoken rather than typed. The newest of the four, and the one where we have the least to claim — so we say so.
Read more →They are not four separate projects
Here is the good news, and the reason we can do most of this for you. All four systems want the same underlying thing: clear, current, machine-readable facts about your business. What you do. What it costs. When you are open. Where you are. Who works there. What people say about you.
The difference is only in how each system asks for those facts. A search engine reads structured markup embedded in your pages. An AI assistant reads a plain-text summary. A voice assistant reads a knowledge graph assembled from both. If your services, prices, hours and staff live in one system that publishes to all of those formats at once, you optimise for all four by running your business — not by doing four jobs.
That is the actual argument for your booking system and your website being the same product. When your booking catalogue is your published data, changing a price at the front desk updates what every one of these systems knows about you. When they are separate products, you are hand-maintaining the same facts in several places forever, and they drift.
What your site does on its own
On every Atelier plan, including the free one, your public pages publish structured data describing your business, your services with their current prices, your opening hours, your team and your review rating — in the format search engines specify. Your titles, descriptions and social share previews fill themselves in. Your URLs are clean and readable, and keep working if you rename a service. Your sitemap regenerates as you publish and gets submitted to search engines automatically. And your site publishes a machine-readable summary at a standard address that AI assistants look for.
None of that is a setting you turn on. It is the default output of running your business on the platform.
What stays yours — and why we say so out loud
The map at the top of a local search — the three businesses with pins, hours and directions — is not driven by your website. It is driven by your Google Business Profile, scored on how relevant you are to the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how prominent your business is generally. Your website feeds the prominence part. It does not control the other two.
We are telling you this because plenty of vendors will imply otherwise, and because it changes what you should spend your time on. Your Google Business Profile — the categories, the services, the photos, the questions and answers, the review replies — is the highest-leverage half-hour in local marketing, and today it is yours to keep current. What we do meanwhile is make sure that everything Google, and every assistant, finds about you elsewhere is accurate, current and complete.
We are also building the other half. Google Business Profile sync — keeping the services, hours and descriptions on your profile matching the ones in your booking system, instead of you retyping them — is built and waiting on Google's approval of our API quota before we roll it out. We will say so on a feature page when it is live rather than counting it here early.
Where this sits in your plan
The structured data, the meta tags, the clean URLs, the sitemap and the machine-readable summary are on every plan, the free one included — they are plumbing, not an upsell. Your own domain and a listing in the Atelier directory come with every paid plan. A blog and operator-managed FAQ sections, which are the two biggest levers you personally control, come with the Website plans. The AI Suite can draft the copy for any of it.
See what that adds up to, or read the discipline that matters most to you: local SEO, answer engine optimisation, generative engine optimisation, or voice engine optimisation.
Four things every Atelier tenant gets, on day one
- A brand-fit URL. Pick a vertical-branded subdomain on day one (yourshop.atelier.salon, .tattoo, .spa, .dance, .fitness, .golf, .dog, .pet, .skin, or seated.studio). Connect a domain you own any time, no upgrade tier.
- Pick a plan, not a parts list. Forms, staff profiles, two-way calendar sync, no-show protection, waitlists, resource scheduling, multi-location support, reviews and in-person card payments, all in the plan, including the free one. Gift cards, packages and text reminders come with every paid plan. That leaves a short list of clearly-priced extras, the Marketing Suite, the AI Suite, window kiosk displays, and branding removal, and the higher plans fold some of those in too.
- Flat as your team grows. Unlimited staff, services, and customers: the same bill with five team members as with fifty, on every plan. Additional locations are a flat $25/month each, with your full plan at each.
- A free directory listing. Every paid plan (Booking Pro and up) is auto-listed in the public Atelier directory. New customers find you there and click straight through to your booking URL, no commission, no per-booking fee, no marketplace cut.
Start free. Take real bookings today.
Free to start, and your first month of any paid plan is free: paid plans from $29 a month after that. Cancel any time. Bring your domain, your brand, even your own Stripe, Square or Clover account. Atelier Booking handles the rest.