There is a lot of noise about search at the moment. New acronyms arrive every few months and every agency has a new service to sell. For a care marketer with two homes to fill and a limited budget, the question is simpler: where should the effort go?
SEO is still the foundation
Search Engine Optimisation is the work that gets your homes into the map results and onto the first page for local searches. Technical health, a page per home, Google Business Profiles, directory consistency and useful content. None of it is glamorous. All of it is necessary. Without it, nothing else works.
AEO is about answering questions
Answer Engine Optimisation means writing your pages so that a clear, accurate answer to a family's question sits at the top, ready to be lifted into a featured snippet or read out by a voice assistant. 'How much does residential care cost in Leeds?' deserves a plain answer, not a paragraph of reassurance followed by 'contact us'.
GEO is about what AI says about you
Generative Engine Optimisation is newer and less proven. AI tools now produce shortlists and summaries of care homes, drawing on your site, directories, reviews and news coverage. If that information is inconsistent or thin, so is their answer. The work is mostly good hygiene: consistent business details, clear service statements, credible evidence and genuine third-party mentions.
Where to spend
- Fix SEO foundations first. Profiles, per-home pages, directory consistency.
- Rewrite your most-visited pages to answer questions directly.
- Audit what AI tools say about your homes today, and correct the sources.
- Be sceptical of guarantees. Nobody can promise rankings, snippets or AI citations.
We explain each of these in more depth on our SEO, AEO and GEO pages, including how they fit together within the partnership.