A survival guide for small businesses being drowned in acronyms
There was a time when SEO meant one thing. Search Engine Optimisation. Simple, useful, and slightly mysterious. The goal? Help people find you on Google. That was it.
Now?
We’ve entered the era of AEO, SXO, GEO, AIO and quite possibly UFO, if things keep heading the way they’re going.
It’s like SEO started seeing other acronyms behind our backs. And now they’ve all moved in, eaten the biscuits, rearranged the filing system, and told us we’re doing it wrong.
Naturally, this is when humans did what they do best: overcomplicate everything.
Ahh marketing agencies…some brilliant, others better suited to selling questionable hatchbacks- have figured out that complexity sells. They’ve wrapped up the basics in a tangle of jargon and called it innovation.
Suddenly, what used to be a focused strategy has become a full-blown glossary of capital letters.
Meanwhile, actual business owners are being handed reports that look more like coded messages from a distant galaxy.
So let’s pull the letters apart and see what’s really going on.
AIO – Artificial Intelligence Optimisation
Apparently this means using machine learning tools to improve your content. In reality, it often means someone got an AI to write your blog, ran spellcheck, and billed you for brilliance.
At Mad Scientist, we actually feed years of real-world data into our systems, then test the results. We don’t guess. And we don’t outsource your strategy to the nearest chatbot.
GEO – Geographic Engine Optimisation
This is local SEO with a new coat of paint.
If you’re a dentist in Darwin, we make sure people in Darwin find you. Obvious? Yes. Overcomplicated by many agencies? Also yes.
SXO – Search Experience Optimisation
User experience meets search. The idea is to create websites that are fast, intuitive, and not designed by someone who still thinks Comic Sans is charming.
In short: make your website helpful. Not just visible.
AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation
Search engines are starting to act more like question-and-answer services. This means your content needs to give direct, structured responses that make sense to both people and machines. Think FAQs, how-to guides, and content that knows what it’s talking about.
And then there’s F.E.A.R. – Fabricated Emergencies Amplifying Revenue
This one isn’t official, but it might as well be.
It’s the tool of choice for any agency that thrives on urgency and confusion. The more you panic, the more they invoice.
Where we stand
At Mad Scientist, we’ve been testing, poking, pulling apart and rebuilding SEO for over 15 years. We’ve run more experiments than we can count, and we know exactly which trends are useful and which ones are just noise.
Yes, AI is changing the landscape.
Yes, Google is evolving faster than ever.
But no, you don’t need to learn a new acronym every week just to survive.
What you need is clarity.
What you need is a strategy that actually helps people find YOU. And choose YOU.
That’s what we do.
So if your digital reports are starting to read like a secret code, or your last agency tried to explain their approach using a whiteboard and a look of mild panic, maybe it’s time for a different kind of conversation. We’ll translate.
We’ll simplify.
And we’ll get you results without the side order of alphabet soup.
