The 'AI SEO' industry is mostly repackaged SEO — here's what's actually different

There's a growing industry of agencies and consultants selling "AI SEO" or "AI visibility optimisation" services. A lot of it is repackaged traditional SEO with new terminology. We want to be honest about what's actually different and what isn't. **What's genuinely different about AI visibility** AI systems that answer questions don't rank pages — they synthesise answers from multiple sources. This means the goal is not to rank #1 for a query; it's to be one of the sources an AI draws on when answering that query. The mechanism is different even if some of the underlying work (structured data, authoritative content, consistent NAP) overlaps. Machine-readable identity data matters more for AI systems than for traditional search. Traditional search engines primarily care about content relevance. AI systems also care about entity recognition — can they identify your business as a specific, verifiable entity? This is where Organisation schema, `sameAs` links, and domain verification do work that traditional SEO doesn't cover. **What's the same** Content quality is still the primary lever. AI systems cite authoritative, specific, well-written content. The businesses that appear in AI answers are the same businesses that tend to rank well in traditional search — not because the algorithms are the same, but because the underlying quality signals are the same. Link building still matters, but for different reasons. In traditional SEO, links are a ranking signal. For AI visibility, links from authoritative sources (press coverage, industry directories, Wikipedia) are signals that help AI systems identify your business as a legitimate entity worth citing. **The honest test** If an agency is pitching you "AI SEO" and their deliverables are indistinguishable from a standard SEO audit — keyword research, on-page optimisation, link building — you're buying repackaged SEO. The genuinely new work in AI visibility is: entity recognition (Organisation schema, `sameAs`, domain verification), machine-readable identity records (what we do), and content structured for synthesis rather than ranking. If those aren't in the deliverables, the "AI" prefix is marketing.