How to Avoid Common AEO and GEO Mistakes

If you work in marketing, you’ve probably seen the shift already. People are no longer only searching on Google, scrolling through multiple pages of results, or clicking into ten different links in search of answers. Instead, they’re turning to AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, or Google’s AI Overviews. 

That’s why AEO and GEO are important. 

• AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, helps your content show up as a clear, useful answer within AI engines.
• GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, helps your brand become a trusted source that generative AI tools mention, reference, or cite.

We’ve talked about AEO and GEO best practices. It’s all about making your team’s expertise easier to find, verify, and use. You know you should provide clear answers to questions your audience is actually asking, along with structured information, updated content, and credible citations. 

So, what’s missing? Let’s cover some of the most common AEO and GEO mistakes we see, and how to avoid them. 

Mistake 1: Treating AEO and GEO just like SEO

AEO and GEO build on SEO fundamentals but optimize for a different outcome.

Traditional SEO is focused on ranking pages in search results. AEO and GEO focus on helping AI-powered answer engines understand, cite, summarize, and recommend your content. Methods that work for traditional search can be helpful for AI search, but it’s a mistake to assume that your SEO strategy has you covered for AEO and GEO. 

What to do instead:

Make your positioning painfully clear, use consistent terminology across all content, and create pages that focus on answering real questions in plain language, rather than on targeting keywords. If you haven’t already, integrate content governance into your existing workflow to enforce consistency, brand standards, and best practices. 

Markup AI reviews and optimizes your content for AI search readiness, so your brand shows up when buyers are asking the questions that matter. Ready to see whether your content meets the standard answer engines are applying? Try Markup AI free for 30 days.

Mistake 2: Optimizing only for your own website

Your website is only the first step. AI answer engines pull from a much wider web of sources, including review sites, news articles, forums, social platforms, and industry publications.

If your competitors are being mentioned in AI-generated answers and you aren’t, the issue may not be your blog. It may be that the broader internet has more clear, consistent, and authoritative information about the other guys than it does about you. 

What to do instead:

Audit where your brand appears across the web. Make sure your company descriptions are consistent and up-to-date. Build credible third-party mentions, keep review profiles current, and get included in relevant lists, reports, communities, and category pages.

Mistake 3: Chasing citations without understanding the context

Being cited by an AI answer engine isn’t enough. Your brand may be cited but not recommended. Your product may be included in an answer for the wrong use case. Potentially worst of all, you may be mentioned, but misrepresented. 

What to do instead:

Track not just whether your brand appears, but how it appears. Ask:

• Do AI engines recommend us?
• Are we mentioned alongside the right competitors?
• Are we associated with the right category?
• Is the answer accurate?
• Is the sentiment positive, neutral, or negative?
• Are the cited sources credible?

Mistake 4: Ignoring existing content

New content gets all the attention, but old pieces are still shaping AI-generated answers. If it’s outdated, unclear, or off-brand, it can work against you.

AI answer engines may pull from pages you published months or even years ago, including blog posts, help articles, product updates, and landing pages you forgot existed. If that content is inaccurate or off-brand, it can negatively shape AI-generated answers.

What to do instead:

Audit your existing content before you focus on creating more. Look for pages that:

• Describe your product or category inaccurately
• Reference outdated features, pricing, or use cases
• Use old messaging or positioning
• Compete with newer, stronger pages
• Rank well but fail to reflect your current point of view

Update, consolidate, redirect, or remove content that no longer serves you. Your archive is an important part of your AI visibility footprint.

Mistake 5: Ignoring content quality because “AI will summarize it anyway”

Please do not feed the machines a buffet of slop.

AI answer engines are only as useful as the information they can access and interpret. Poorly written, outdated, or generic content is unlikely to help your brand stand out. This matters even more now, because AI tools can generate average content at scale. 

Vague content that sounds like everything else on the internet gives answer engines no reason to trust or cite you. If a reader wouldn’t find it unique, interesting, or useful, an answer engine probably won’t, either. On the other hand, if your content is overly clever or stuffed with keywords and jargon, AI systems may struggle to understand where you fit. So will humans, by the way. 

What to do instead:

Prioritize content that has a point of view. Add original data, expert input, customer examples, product knowledge, and practical frameworks. Make your content clear, accurate, current, and genuinely helpful.

At Markup AI, we think a lot about what makes content worth publishing. The bar is not “Can this exist?” The bar is “Should this exist, and will someone be glad they read it?”

Mistake 6: Putting all your eggs in one AI basket

For most companies, traditional search still drives much more traffic and conversions than AI answer engines. Several new studies summarized in Search Engine Roundtable confirm this. Yes, AI search visitors may convert at a higher rate in some cases, especially when they arrive with strong intent. And yes, early visibility in AI-generated answers can shape brand awareness, trust, and competitive positioning. But that doesn’t mean you should toss other strategies out the window. 

Content fundamentals like SEO are still extremely relevant. In fact, SEO Works found that “AI visibility and organic performance move together. The websites gaining AI traffic were the same ones whose organic search was improving.” Strategies that optimize AI search also benefit organic search, and vice versa.

AEO and GEO should expand your search strategy, not replace it. The goal is to make your brand discoverable wherever your audience is looking for answers, and that includes traditional channels.

What to do instead:

Keep humans and AI engines in mind when you write. Continue investing in SEO fundamentals, high-quality content, and channels that already drive business results, while also adapting your content for AI discovery.

That means:

• Answering real audience questions clearly
• Maintaining strong technical SEO
• Updating and improving existing content
• Building credible third-party authority
• Tracking performance across both traditional search and AI platforms
• Measuring impact against traffic, conversions, and brand visibility

The best content is still written for humans. If it’s clear, accurate, useful, and worth reading, it has a better chance of performing across Google, AI answer engines, and whatever search interface appears next. 

The big takeaway

The biggest AEO and GEO mistake is thinking there is one magic trick. No single piece of content can carry your entire strategy on its back.

The real work is more practical: Be clear. Be useful. Be credible. Be consistent. Show up wherever your audience and the answer engines are looking. 

At the end of the day, publishing valuable content will help your brand perform better across channels. It doesn’t sound as exciting as “hacking the algorithm,” but it is a much better strategy.