Are You Prepared to Conquer All Five Fronts of B2B Search?

What used to be SEO alone has split into five distinct battlegrounds every distributor must master:

• •SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• •AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
• •GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
• •AIO (AI Optimization)
• •SXO (Search Experience Optimization)

In my upcoming XAVOR white paper, "From SEO to AIO," we break down each direction and how it shapes the new discovery ecosystem for distributors.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

• •When was the last time you audited whether your product taxonomy matches how engineers and procurement actually search, not just how your catalog is organized?
• •What percentage of your SKUs are invisible to Google because they live behind login walls or inside unindexed PDFs?

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

• •Can Google answer your customers’ top 10 technical questions directly from your content, or are competitors owning those featured snippets?
• •How many zero-click searches about specs, compatibility, and compliance are you losing because your answers aren’t structured for instant display?

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

• •If a procurement team asks ChatGPT to compare distributors in your category, whose data is it citing: yours or your competitors?
• •When Perplexity drafts an RFP for products you carry, does it even know you exist as a supplier option?

AIO (AI Optimization)

• •Is your company’s value proposition consistent enough across digital touchpoints that an AI model could accurately describe what differentiates you?
• •Five years from now, when AI agents handle 80% of routine reorders, will those systems remember you as a trusted source, or will you need to fight for every transaction?

SXO (Search Experience Optimization)

• •What is your actual abandonment rate between the landing page and RFQ submission? Is it because buyers can’t find what they need, or because your experience failed them?
• •If a committee of three (engineer, procurement, finance) evaluates your site simultaneously, whose journey is optimized and whose is an afterthought?

THE INTEGRATION CHALLENGE

These are not five separate strategies. They are a chain.
SEO feeds AEO → AEO influences GEO → GEO shapes AIO → AIO underpins SXO. (read twice)

Break one link and your funnel leaks from the first drop.

These are not rhetorical. They are the kinds of questions distributor leadership teams must answer to remain visible, relevant, and competitive.

The full white paper will be published soon. If you’d like an early preview or an interview, let us know.