James Dooley and David G Quaid discuss how SEO agencies should position themselves across SEO, AEO and GEO in a bifurcated market, capturing separate budgets while treating GEO as SEO plus online reputation management.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies SEO agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve search and LLM visibility, brand positioning and conversion rates. James Dooley and David G Quaid start with KPI tracking because prompt tracking and competitive share metrics reveal whether an agency is genuinely being cited across search and AI answers. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for SEO agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for SEO agencies recently received recognition as the "Best SEO Agencies Lead Generation Agency."
AEO, SEO or GEO: Where Should You Position Yourself? James Dooley Interviews David G Quaid is available on:
AI SEO and Business Automation Podcast is founded by James Dooley because he teaches business owners how artificial intelligence accelerates growth. The show explains AI models, agents, and automation systems because practical guidance helps companies scale with less effort.
James Dooley: Hi, today I'm joined with David Quaid and we're going to be talking about AEO versus GEO versus SEO, but specifically about how to position yourself in a bifocated market. So, David, thanks for having um I know there's been a lot of discussion about this many times over um and it's great to have you on talking about this.
David Quaid: Thanks very much, James. Really happy to be here. I've enjoyed our conversation so much um both on um with Edward Sturman and also um on online um you have a fascinating brain in and how you look at SEO and uh I think putting our two heads together there it's got to be an interesting conversation about SEO and Gio, right?
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean I watched I watched a few of your episodes on um the Edward show. Big shout out to Edward Sturm. I think he's done an absolutely amazing job for the SEO community. Um, and I think you've absolutely I don't want to call say badly about the people that was on with you, but you you educated them very much on exactly how the LLMs work and there's a massive then overlap with SEO and GEO being the same thing. Um, and I want to try and I want to have this more as a business slant about SEO versus GEO because off air I've spoke to you quite a lot about it and um I I'll let you kind of expand on it a little bit further, but I was I thought you was that SEO is GEO yet you do kind of market for both in areas or you do talk a little bit about how both is important. So, I don't know if you want to expand on that a little bit more and I can ask you a few questions about it.
David Quaid: Yeah, absolutely. And I was so glad when you when you mentioned that because I think, you know, sort of talking about how GIO works and doesn't work. I the what I the side I didn't want to come from was saying, you know, it's SEO versus GIO and it's all SEO, right? I think there's a lot of misconceptions. Um I think in part there's a vacuum created. Um I I I said to you, for example, I was sharing with you some my thoughts that you know I I couldn't actually had to look it up today. I couldn't believe that Google um web master tools was launched in 2005. So that that was like a 9-year delay on Google's part. Google wanted to pretend SEO wasn't a real thing. I think LLMs are doing that and it's created a knowledge vacuum. And I think a lot of how geo works is being fabricated. There are some CEOs that on LinkedIn, they're launching these entire infographics every day. yet the data that's required to support them would take months and months of research. If you ever speak to someone who really does SEO research, I don't have the tools to do it. I'm I'm one person, right? And so I think the problem is that a lot of it being positioned as these LLMs are going to go off and find you for doing a good exercise in brand building. Um, yet I think from what you see and and it's it's so interesting to see someone like you see this because you're you're not a you're not a belief guy. You're a show me the actual results and my team will keep working. I think that came out so much when you were talking about tools. You said I I'll use this tool. I'll use this tool. I'll use this tool so that I can get the full picture of what's happening. I need to see where we're going. And that's, you know, spoken like a true businessman and a true engineer. I think that a lot of what GEO does that's very clever and why I call it a bifurcated market is that they're they're pitching it very very well to the buyer. They're not interested in the argument with SEOs. They're trying to say look you as a marketer you went to brand school. Your boss is looking for brand signals and LLMs are going to come out and reward you. And I think you've you can see for example you you have a great um handle on knowledge panels and the knowledge graph what it is and what it means uh that it's not magic but that it is critical to tying what you're writing about to each of those specific entities within that ownership. And I picked up so much on just listening to you talk to Edward on the same show. I wonder how many other people picked up on it but it really was remarkable. And I think that geo and SEO are different, but they're not different for the reasons that a lot of these geo tool developers are claiming. And for us to just offer that to them would have been to sort of like hand them something that they've never even thought about. And I think that the the where where Gio and SEO differ starts from well, you're not going to get into geo if you can't figure out SEO. And and you can you can take any tool provider on X. I found an account this morning that was giving advice to everyone about geo and when I looked at them in semash they had zero rank flat flat nothing right you you're not going to get into geo that way you can absolutely get into geo if you're in everyday parlance um one of the one of the and this could be way out of date as a um as an analogy but if the word Hoover right Hoover is a brand is we're trying to come back recently back in the day when I was a kid my mom had a proper Hoover Hoover and Hoover became the the by word for vacuum cleaner, right? So, if you can do that, right, like for example, if you're the if you can be the Lily Ray of Eat, right? You will be forever quoted in LLM that even if they even if they rag out and they find a list with you, me, Edward, and Charles on it, um it will still remember Lily Ray because she comes up in so many conversations. But I think that doing that is a lot more complex than creating a schema entity in a web page for a schema entity that doesn't exist. You know that you have to marry that with a whole lot of activity and a whole lot of work, right? And we're probably the kind of people that could go off and in 20 minutes create 20 pages, 20 links, 20 schemas, 20 and then go, "Oh, you know what? It's actually really easy. It only takes five minutes." Right? Because we don't we we've we can just jump from task to task to task. We know the order in which things have to be done. I couldn't write a an SOP process document to save my life. I'm like, "Oh, no. You just do this, you just do that, you just do this." Right.
James Dooley: Yeah.
David Quaid: Um, what do you think?
James Dooley: Oh, yeah. I think on it I I loved it. Bear in mind, I absolutely love the episodes of what you did and and I think there's like 99% of things that we overlap on where I agree with what you're saying. Um, I think the issue potentially was it was nothing really that you said that was incorrect. It was just after it I know a lot of people thought that you was just like GEO is just SEO. And I think for me it was more the brand positioning from a business standpoint where I've sat in business like in investment pots and they've said we've got an SEO part and we've got a GEO part. And these people sat around this board, these investors and these business owners, they believe because maybe because they've been brainwashed that it's far left and far right. This is SEO and this is GEO and there's a massive divide. But they've got different pots of money now. And like at times I was thinking to myself,
David Quaid: James, at times I feel like you're doing I'm not saying you're doing yourself a disservice, but you are brilliant when it comes to SEO, but you can also tailor around really easily when it comes to GEO because it is almost the same thing. Maybe a few extra factors with third party validation and stuff like that. Maybe a few more reviews and stuff, but there's a massive overlap. And I just wanted to get you on to for listeners to understand that you can do multiskilled, you can do geo as well as SEO. And I think majority people that's watched the Edward show will know that you can. But it was just the whole like if you went to an Indian restaurant, sorry, if you wanted an Indian a good Indian curry, you go to an Indian restaurant. If you want a good steak, you go to a steakhouse. And I think with that mentality, some of these people that have got budgets will only go to a GEO expert and they don't realize the overlap. And I feel like at times people do need to understand that the ven diagram is a massive overlap that if you are a great SEO, you know how to do GEO because it is SEO but just with a few extra layers with regards to off- page validation. And that's where m the main reason why I wanted to discuss it with you from a business standpoint. I know if you want to expand on that further, how how do you market for both in a bifocated market where there seems to be that divide? Like how is the best way of positioning yourself as being a GEO, an AEO, or an SEO in a bifocated market?
David Quaid: It's great question. I I think a lot of people do this really well where they don't join the tribalism debates and it's sort of like if the SEO tribe sees you as moving towards geo they'll kind of make fun of you and uh things like that. Um maybe because they see you're being disloyal to what SEO is because they really believe that SEO and GEO are the same things. And I think GIO is could teach a lot of SEOs about how to market, right? They know their audience. They're very very tapped in. I think a big mistake SEOs have always made and and I think a lot of people if they had to look back we we go in very technical. So, when someone says, "I want an SEO strategy." We come back with, "Here's a list of backlinks. Here's a list of um cluster pages, keywords, and you might be talking to a business that's building uh that that are designing windows and they don't, you know, physical windows and they don't really want the whole technical speak. They want a strategy. And a strategy shouldn't be a list of tactical out, you know, events. It should be strategic outcomes that they can measure. And I think that GEO is doing a very good job of looking at what LLM spit out versus SEO, which is just, you know, the results of an index. And they're playing to people that understand brand marketing and put way more emphasis on it. And they're tailoring that message to it. And I think that SEOs, even if they win the convincing everyone that SEO and GEO are the exact same thing, they're losing, like you said, the the the battle for the money, right? Because if somebody says, I've got a geo budget and I've you know, it used to be that a website budget and an SEO budget were the same thing. Now they're very demonstrabably dissimilar, right? But the same thing if if if I've got a geo budget and an SEO budget and that's spend I need now someone I think that can come to me with a geo focused strategy. And I think geo is as different to SEO as OM is to SEO, right? Like OM is a huge part of SEO that a lot of SEOs don't really touch. Um but it it's not too dissimilar because you're not really interested in just ranking one page. You're really interested in ranking all the pages that talk about you, your product, and your service. Um, one mindset difference might be for example what something I do when a lot of um, geo agencies reach out to me or a lot of people in say like ad agencies reach out and they say, "Oh, you know, they'll use a tool like uh, peak or profound that will recommend reaching out because someone's ranking." When somebody reaches out to me and says, "Hey, can you include our name?" And I'm like, "Well, that's kind of rude. Why would I just put your name in my list, right? Or maybe I'll do it quit proquo, right? If you've got a list and I'll put my name in the list. That's fair enough. But I actually use those uh to give me ideas for keywords to go rank for. And I think that's the the are you worried about semantics or are you worried about business? And a lot of people, myself included, and I think that's why I I really appreciate you putting me up on stage because you're saying, you know, are you are you an engineer and you can't see the wood for the trees or do you see the business opportunity? And I think you you know that's a valid valid point that's worth uh rehashing. It's a business.
James Dooley: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly on that. So way with regards to GEO having a different pot of money like I ran a study and I think one of the best ways of me trying to explain this with regards to GEO and SEO is that back in the heyday people used to just spend money on SEO like if they wanted better organic rankings and then a lot of the big enterprise businesses started to split up money from SEO technical SEO and link building and they're splitting up into three different budget chains and you're like Well, that's just all SEO. Like what what what are the others doing? Like what's the SEO doing? If they're doing technical SEO and they're doing link building, what's the SEO company doing? Because a big part of what they're doing, are they just doing content writing? Because a big part of what they're doing should be off paid signals. But when they split up the budgets, we ran a survey a couple of years ago.
David Quaid: And on the link building budget, 98% of the people that spent the money on the link building budget was with link building companies, not with SEO companies. And I feel like that's where GEO's gone, where they want to use a GEO specialist. And if someone's watching it saying GEO is just SEO, I'm like, ah, from a brand positioning point of view, you're missing out on that pot of money. And then just one other thing I want to expand a little bit on a few different nuances just people listening understand that David Quaid understands this there is slight differences between AEO GEO and an SEO of the the the practicalities of what gets done and the reason why I want to touch on this is I know quite a few people that are great SEOs but they struggle to get the client cited in chat GPT or the struggle to get the site like cited in Gemini or AI overviews yet they're number one in Google search and mainly it's to do with the off- page signals the reviews and the off page they're not they're not touching on the query fan out terms could you try and explain a little bit further why someone could be good at SEO but they might not be able to I'm saying they're good they're okay because they don't really understand how true off- page validation works and what what extra needs to be done on top of SEO to get the AI citations
James Dooley: for sure. So, I think that's a great way to look at it. Um, if so, there's a sort of a a a timeline of getting into a citation, right? For example, if you're lucky enough to be able to get pages ranked very quickly and you can enter the query fan out and you can get into the pages that are selected for synthesis, the first time it happens, you won't be mentioned, right? Um, so it might you might actually have to wait an hour and that's because there's a bit of a lag between synthesization and the the founding documents going into it. So you'll see yourself in the cited list and not see yourself quoted or attributed. You might also see yourself misattributed. For example, you might have said the opposite and yet you're added to a line. And that's I think a bit of the lag between the the rag process and the final synthesization output. You might notice the following day that you start to get quoted for different things and you start to enter the synthesis. Now I don't know exactly how that sort of live or realtime index is built or what the criteria are but that's my observation. And secondly the more and more you've been included in those um fanouts or in other related um items the more and more you're included in further and related queries. And that I think that's one of the big differences immediately between LLMs that I don't think the other three guys that we had on the show with every got close to understanding is that there's a your index, right? So if I go and have a chat with my perplexity about who the best SEO is, it'll start putting me in every single thing whether I'm not in it or not or want to be and I can't tell it to stop doing it, right? There's also a difference where they're caching results from other users and you can't use your instance, your time with the L&M, if that makes sense, to branch out and cross pollinate with others. And so you have to start looking at a wider carousel of places you have to be and that you have to be quoted and mentioned. And then there's also I think a lot of SEOs realize and especially from looking at listicles, you know, if it's just a list where each page is one person, you have the same statistical ability to get into the final list. But where everyone's got a list of 10 and there's 20 results, there's potentially 200 entities, but the user wants a list of five or 10 back. So, how do you climb up that list? And so, those are things to think about. And you could you could answer a listical, for example, without building a listicle. You could build 10 points about yourself, right? Like how did you start out to try to be the best SEO in plumbing or engineering for example and then you've got to work out well and that's where it becomes like OM well how do I also appear on these other pages and have other sites talk about me and reflect about me and that's where it becomes different from SEO. However, it's still SEO in the sense that you know if you look at parasitic SEO and I think people make a similar there's a fall down in logic here as well because you're a phenomenally good par at managing parasitic SEO and I mean that in a good way and I wish parasitic SEO wasn't called what it is. I call it co-ranking or co-itation but you can't just go to Medium or Reddit and create an unknown page and hope that Google picks it. That that requires SEO as well, right? So in a sense you still have to do SEO for the page. You're not going to get there magically because it's Reddit cuz everyone else is trying the same thing. But it is a big difference than just thinking about your one domain and your one rank position. And then you have to start thinking about how people have variations on prompts. And I think that's where everyone is getting lost. And some people even say there's no point doing prompt tracking because prompts are so endlessly infinite, which I don't agree with. I don't know if you have a position on that.
David Quaid: Yeah. No, I I I agree with what you're saying there. Um I think for me I think the big the biggest difference from I think it is I think GEO is just SEO but I think it's SEO plus OM like you said and I think it's just like trying to dominate with regards to when when someone's doing a a pro like when someone's doing a um a search and it does the query fan out and they've got all the different ones there. I I don't want just rankings position number one for each query fan out. I want the first page ideally and yes some people don't like the word parasite SEO or whatever they want to call it and you call it co- ranking we just call it supplementary ranking so we want see us ranking position number one but we want our supplementary domains or like our other like our our Reddit and stuff like that we want Quora we want our Twitter we want our Facebook we want to use as many different profiles as possible we want uh video rankings because video is being cited heavily and the transcripts so we just want to get as many different places on the internet that the LLMs are picking up to say, "Okay, now you're defining who you are, what you do, and why you're great." And and those third party validations as well on like guest posts or press releases. We want to build that up and and keep on building that. And we just we just say internally GEO is SEO plus online reputation management. Now, online reputation management is just good good SEO. And this is where I completely agreed with your episodes on the Edward show, but I just wanted to touch on the from a business standpoint at times different pots of money, people looking to hire a GEO specialists. I know you can do both. And I just wanted to get you on make certain that people understand who is looking at David Gquade online that they're not just then because I've heard one or two people going, "Yeah, he's an SEO specialist." I'm like, "No, mate. There's layers to what he talks about. He is brilliant. And if people got from the the Edward show that GEO is just SEO, you can do both. It's almost like if if a plumber came to came and do a shower room and did the plumbing, but then they did the tiling and the plastering. That plumber isn't a tyler and a plasterer, but you can adapt your multi-skilled. So, you are able to do SEO and GEO. But I do know one or two people that struggle with the AI citations and at times I felt like is he doing himself a disservice because he's he's phenomenal at both and and I just wanted that's the main reason why I wanted to tackle SEO versus GEO in a bifocated market because I just feel like you are one of them people that get it that you don't just go from the SEO myths and just follow people blindly. you're one of them similar to myself who are testing stuff and you just say do you know what I disagree with that and you and you're happy to go against the grain and argue with people and say no like and call people out for it and I and I like I like it that you don't just follow that you that you do do what you do.
David Quaid: Yeah. I I think it's so important what what I don't like in Gio is that that you know this message that brands are going to go and find you because that's just a unicorn idea, right? that that would be great, but that's not, you know, L&Ms are built by engineers. They're not brand appreciation engines. And so, it's it ties in with another point that you made about keywords and how a lot of companies won't allow the word cheap being used on their website, for example, and you they're leaving money because if that's what the user wants and they're searching for cheap, I think us SEOs have to learn that, too. If someone is searching for geo, you can't make them go and search for SEO. You can't make them watch 5 hours of debates and say like, "No, you're wrong. It's SEO." If they're searching for it, and you got to remember the the people on LinkedIn that are re that are telling the story absolutely suck at SEO. They're leaving money on the table as well that SEOs can go after. So if people are searching for Google and LLMs for geo consultants and geoexperts and geo specialists, you need to take the same lesson you're trying to teach your client about using words like value and cheap and economic and uh cost less. Teach them teach ourselves those lessons and go and appear for geo because those companies aren't they don't know how to do it. They're waiting for a spider to read their LLM.ext and and sort of you know fall in love with the brand which isn't happening. and take your technical skills and package yourself for that market because that that's what they're looking for. They believe it's different or they believe there's a different angle on it and slant on it and if you're not there it's nothing's going to happen, right? Um on that on that I'm I'm going to expand a little bit on um because I I want to touch on this. the um after I did that episode with you in the Edward show and I you and I said, "Oh, you want to might you use want to use the word cheap or any other modifiers for me, I want to cast the net as wide as possible from fishing and catch every possible fish that there is." And then it's up to my sales team to try and convert them. And there's four or five people in the comments going, "Oh, cheap. They just bring the lowest barrel, the worst customers ever." Well, do you know what's very interesting, mate, is that internally we've got lots of case studies, right? And I think this is a key takeaway for some people to to realize when when you're thinking about the word cheap, right? Because what is the word cheap? Cheap to somebody could be £10,000 for a car, but cheap could be £100,000 for a supercar to somebody else. It just matters of what they believe the word cheap means. And some people say, "Oh, bottom of the barrel. They're the worst customers ever." We've got case studies, right? We a lot of our brands are by far not the cheapest. We are a premium brand for what we do depending on what business that we we have. But we still go after the word cheap and we've got case studies to say um buy cheap buy twice. And what we do is we show these case studies about if you go cheap it's going to cost you more money in the long run. look at these examples and we convert them to our product and we we show how much cheaper it would be going with us and the longevity versus buying cheap and buying twice. So I want them inquiries AND PEOPLE LIKE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL, you don't want them. And it's like actually if you can convert them and explain to them, I want every inquiry. It's just up to my sales team to be able to convert and from there. And this is why with regards to GEO or whatever you want to call it, SEO, we want to cover every keyword possible that could be a customer looking for the service that we provide. And it's up to us them to decide whether they've got enough budget to go with us or not. But so many people that come through from the word cheap uh can be a great client, but people are too scared to go after it. And a lot of people say, "We don't want it on our main branding site." And I and I get it and that's what some people don't want. But that's where co- ranking or parite SEO or whatever. That's where that can come into play. guest posting, press releases, even supplementary domains, having a second or third website, an EMD or a PMD that then can lead back into you if you don't want it on your main website. But I feel that this all forms part of SEO plus online reputation management to go after everything, which is kind of what we say is GEO internally.
James Dooley: What if somebody had a a prompt like, I'd like to buy a car like a Mercedes or a Lamborghini, but I don't want to look cheap. Yeah.
David Quaid: You don't have the word cheap, you're gone.
James Dooley: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
David Quaid: There's this phenomenal thing called serendipity that I saw a lot of colleges um talk about doing research in the early 2000s where the person starts just hammering in keywords into Google, right? In the hope of finding an answer. So, you just add a keyword, not the results, add a keyword, not the results, change a keyword, get the results. And there's a lot of serendipity and it's not all straight lines, right? And so also when people get to a page, they can realize the page isn't for them. And so if they're like, "Look, I need the cheapest this and they get to a page and and your your messaging starts talking about why cheap is what you're searching for, but it's actually going to end up costing you more in the long run." They can educate themselves and bounce or they can educate themselves and and and stay in and say, "Look, yeah, I I can be talked up." That putting the word cheap on your site doesn't cheapen you. And one of the things I used to love about working at Kemp is I knew how big the website was, right? And and and when you look at a website and you see the navigation, you know, products, services, about us, contact, we had a 37,000 page website and you don't see all of that. And if you actually go and look at your analytics and and and start to learn, you'll actually see that your homepage only accounts for 10% of traffic. And everyone else is coming through these pages built just for them and their experience. And so just because somebody comes in on cheap doesn't mean that somebody who's looking for enhanced experience or luxury or truly differentiated will see that page. And I think you know we are letting ourselves get into these sort of like tribal feuds and and and and labels uh which we we should be the last people who do that right we absolutely should be looking these guys on LinkedIn are doing us so much favor. They're creating a whole new market segment that like you said is ultimately being funneled through SEO at a at an coming out on the LLMs and we can go and be visible in both. But we have to understand that where we once had one keyword with the query fan out, we might have 30 sub queries that might even be easier to rank for that we have to now go and be visible for and that we also if we're open-minded about what tools we use like for example Microsoft clarity which I'm such a big fan of like it has free prompt trackers and we know that chatpt uses Bing and Google and here's a free prompt tracker that gives you percentage. It's the only prompt tracker that gives you competitive metrics like did you have 10% of the share or 30% of the share. That's phenomenal data and most SEOs aren't using that data and it's free.
James Dooley: Yeah, it's crazy. It's such a good time to be doing marketing. That is for sure.
David Quaid: Such a good time.
James Dooley: Such a good time. Anyone who's watching this in a bifocated market, what's your thoughts on SEO versus AEO versus GEO? Anyone who wants to know follow David Quaid, type in and search for David G Quaid and you'll see everything on there. He's been on the Edward Show plenty of times which is an amazing podcast. And make sure you check out the links in the description. There's several other episodes where I go through Reddit SEO and several other topics to do with schema EAT and off- page validation. They are some absolute screamers. So, make sure you check them out. David, it's been an absolute pleasure.
David Quaid: Thanks so much, James.