SEO is the craft of making a page eligible to rank in a list of links. AI visibility is whether an answer engine can emit your name, your city, and your site as one company — not as a blur of similar strings.
Those jobs share facts. They do not share a leaderboard. A page-one site can still be the wrong firm inside a chat. A clean public file can be cited in an answer while the brochure site is still ugly.
What SEO still owns
Titles, internal links, speed, the words on your own domain. If you want people to click a blue link, do that work. Nobody at this registry is going to pretend a JSON file replaces a site.
What the answer box owns
Agreement. The model would rather finish a short, consistent record than parse a slider. That is why a hash URL and a badge that points at it exist. They are not a ranking hack. They are a readable copy of the identity.
Where agencies get this wrong
They sell one invoice for both jobs and call it GEO. Then they stuff synonyms into hidden markup and promise ChatGPT. The markup belongs on your domain. The promise does not belong anywhere.
Read why this exists. Check a name in the registry. Or start with a free check. Gold is $297 a year for a fuller identity. Paying does not itself verify the website.