If SEO, GEO, AEO, AI-SEO, LLM optimisation confuses you, you’re not alone! David Nelkin clarifies what you should be focusing on.
If you’ve been anywhere near a marketing conversation recently, you’ll have noticed the acronyms multiplying at an alarming rate. SEO, GEO, AEO, AI-SEO, LLM optimisation – it can feel like the landscape is shifting under your feet every five minutes. And if you’re a busy practice owner trying to actually run a dental practice, that is understandably overwhelming.
So let me cut through it for you. The reality is simpler than the noise suggests and there are some genuinely important things you need to be doing right now that most practices simply aren’t.
Let’s start with what hasn’t changed
SEO (search engine optimisation) is still the foundation. That hasn’t gone away and it won’t.
Three questions are still at the heart of it all:
- Is your practice discoverable?
- Is the information about you understandable?
- And are you trustworthy?
Get those foundations right and everything else flows from them.
Think of the new acronyms as different outputs of the same foundations rather than entirely separate disciplines.
AEO – answer engine optimisation – is about appearing in direct answers rather than just a list of links. Featured snippets, AI overviews, ‘People also ask’ sections, voice search results – these are all AEO placements, and the goal is to be the answer, not just a result.
GEO – generative engine optimisation – takes this further. It’s about being cited inside AI-generated responses, whether that’s in Google’s AI overview, in ChatGPT or in Perplexity. Strong, well-structured SEO is what powers your ability to appear in all of these places.
Search didn’t die – it expanded
One of the most persistent myths doing the rounds is that search is dying. It absolutely isn’t.
People are now finding businesses through traditional search results, through maps, through their Google Business Profile, through social content, and through AI-generated answers.
The pie is bigger, and you need a presence across more of it.
Here’s a stat that should make you sit up: in 2025, around 60% of Google searches ended without anyone clicking through to a website.
If people are getting answers directly from Google without ever visiting your site, you need to be the source of those answers.
Your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your Q&A content matter enormously; in many cases, they’re the only thing a potential patient sees before deciding whether to call you.
Google still dominates with over 93% search market share in the UK, so don’t let anyone tell you to abandon it.
But ChatGPT has become the fifth most visited website in the world as of January 2026.
These AI tools are mainstream now, and your visibility within them is increasingly important.
Why your practice is already feeling the shift
Your rankings might look stable, but your website traffic is changing and the nature of your enquiries feels different. That’s not a coincidence.
Decisions are happening earlier in the patient journey now.
A potential patient might encounter your practice in an AI overview, check your Google Business Profile, read reviews across a couple of platforms and watch a short video – all before they ever visit your website.
The modern patient journey runs something like this: social media sparks curiosity, video does the research, reviews form opinions, Google validates the decision, and AI provides a summary.
You need to show up at multiple points along that path.
The three new things you must be doing
The SEO fundamentals we’ve always talked about still matter – your website, your local SEO, your Google Business Profile.
But there are now three additional activities that have a direct and proven correlation to your search visibility. And most practices are either not doing them at all or not doing them consistently enough.
1. Organise social media posts
Google now indexes social content directly. Your Instagram posts, in particular, are being pulled into search results – and Google appears to treat recent social activity as a freshness signal, factoring it into its algorithm.
An active, regularly updated social presence is no longer just about brand awareness; it is now part of your SEO strategy.
Post consistently, make your captions descriptive and relevant, and think about what questions your posts are answering for potential patients.
2. Video shorts across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok
Short-form video has its own dedicated tab in Google search results now, sitting ahead of traditional video results.
Google has also introduced a ‘What people are saying’ video carousel that surfaces user-generated video content alongside business content.
In 2016, visual content occupied just 2% of mobile search results – by 2024 that figure was 30%.
The direction of travel is clear. Short videos answering common patient questions, showcasing treatment outcomes or introducing your team are now appearing directly in Google searches.
You do not need a film crew or a big production budget – you need consistency and relevance.
3. Online reviews across multiple platforms
Reviews are now a live, active signal that directly influences where you appear, including in AI-generated responses.
Fresh, recent reviews across multiple platforms – Google, Trustpilot and Facebook at a minimum – tell AI and search engines that your practice is active, trusted and worth recommending.
A practice with reviews spread consistently across the last 12 months will outperform one with a larger but older bank of reviews.
Respond to every single one, positive and negative. And treat review generation as an ongoing system rather than something you push occasionally.
Write for conversations, not keywords
Alongside those three new priorities, the way you approach your website content needs to shift.
People and AI tools are now asking questions rather than typing keyword strings.
That means your content needs to answer real questions about cost, suitability, fear, outcomes and recovery – the things your team answers on the phone every single day.
Add FAQ sections to your key treatment pages, use subheadings phrased as questions, and write the way your patients actually talk.
Build a content ecosystem
The smart approach to all of this is to create once and distribute everywhere.
Write a strong blog post or film a strong video, then repurpose it across social, email, your Google Business Profile and beyond.
This is also what helps AI platforms build a consistent picture of your practice, making you more likely to be cited and recommended.
Stop obsessing with being number one
Chasing a number one Google ranking is not your goal in 2026 – and honestly, the concept is becoming increasingly meaningless.
Think about it: if a patient finds you through an AI-generated recommendation, where exactly does ‘number one’ fit into that?
If they discover you through your Google Business Profile, or a short video, or a review on Trustpilot, what does your organic ranking position even mean?
With so many different touch points now driving patient decisions – AI overviews, map packs, social content, reviews, featured snippets – the idea of a single number one position is an oversimplification that could actively distract you from what matters. And for what it’s worth, being position three with content that genuinely answers what someone is looking for will outperform a number one ranking on a page nobody’s engaging with.
Nearly 60% of searches end without a single click to any website.
The metrics that matter are enquiries, bookings, treatment starts and review momentum – not where you sit in a list.
Behaviour signals matter too
The signals Google and other platforms use to determine trust are increasingly behavioural.
How quickly you respond to enquiries, the recency and spread of your reviews, how fresh your content is, the engagement your posts receive – all of these matter.
There is also credible evidence that Google is now monitoring the sentiment and outcome of phone calls to businesses listed on Google Business Profile.
How your team handles inbound calls could directly influence your search visibility and needs to be taken seriously.
Bringing it all together
Good SEO in 2026 comes down to three things: be findable, be understandable, be trustworthy.
Your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your conversational content, your short-form video, your social presence and the way your team handles incoming enquiries all feed into those pillars.
At Xcelerator Dental, our whole approach is built around simplifying this for practices and taking the complexity of marketing off your plate, so you can focus on delivering exceptional patient care.
Our promote, convert, grow model is designed to make sure your practice is visible in the right places, that your website converts the traffic you generate, and that your team has the tools to turn enquiries into treatment starts.If you’d like to talk through where your practice currently sits with any of this, I’m always happy to have a conversation.
There are no quick fixes here – but there is a clear path, and the practices that start walking it now will be in a significantly stronger position by the end of the year.
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