How many times have you been told to forget everything you thought you knew about SEO? Probably more than once since 2020.
As AI redefines the way we live and work, it’s also reshaping our searches. Type any question into Google today. At the top of the results page, you’ll see a response generated by Gemini, Google’s AI model.
Like traditional search crawlers, these models are trained on massive datasets from every corner of the internet. This has created a new frontier for content visibility: Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
GEO refers to the process of optimising website copy to boost its visibility to AI-driven platforms. These include the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Tools that use learning language models (LLMs). They’re functionally search engines with conversational capabilities.
If a user’s query relates to your area of expertise, GEO can position your copy as a resource.
As chatbots become more ubiquitous, they have come to occupy the same space as search engines. This shift has prompted brands to consider how their content appears in AI-generated responses.
GEO can provide additional benefits that you won’t get with SEO.
Rather than just being seen, GEO allows brands to engage prospects in more meaningful ways. AI can refine branded copy to better match user queries and improve relevance. This can create a positive impression, laying the foundations for more targeted traffic and increased loyalty.
Think of SEO and GEO as fighting the same battle, with similar weapons, on different fronts.
While SEO still shapes brand visibility in results pages, GEO influences how brands appear on AI platforms. SEO and GEO are aligned in some ways, but diverge in others.
Similarities include:
There are also, however, some fundamental differences:
While GEO and AEO are sometimes used interchangeably, there are some key differences. Both are AI searches and use largely the same data. However, AEO is Answer Engine Optimisation.
AEO focuses more on the featured snippets and direct answer boxes that top conventional searches. GEO is more about making your content visible in the broader AI ecosystem across multiple platforms.
Since they rely on similar data, brands can address both forms of AI in their content strategy.
Search engine providers constantly grapple with ways to provide high-quality and relevant content to users. GenAI has just hastened changes to online searches that were already coming.
Generative AI platforms are far from supplanting conventional search engines. Nonetheless, they play an increasingly prominent role in digital searches.
The GenAI market is on the rise, with an estimated 41.53% CAGR from 2025-2030. Google processes 6.9 billion searches every day – many now supported by Gemini. Google just about anything and you’ll probably see Gemini’s contributions at the top of your results page.
It’s a big reason why Gartner predicts a 25% decline in traditional searches by 2026. Organic search traffic is expected to drop by over 50% as users adjust to AI-powered searches. Moreover, 70% of current users trust GenAI search results.
The integration of GenAI into searches is not an anomaly. It matches with existing trends in search engine performance.
Entities (people, places, objects or topics) have long shaped how search engines measure content’s relevance to searches. For over a decade, they’ve relied on entities and their relationships via structured knowledge networks. When Google unveiled its knowledge graph in 2012 it marked a shift to ‘things, not strings’.
GenAI represents the evolution of this trend. Entities shape AI’s conception of what things are. It uses the relationships between them to link concepts and determine their relevance to searches.
Take a sports brand like Nike. As an entity, it isn’t just linked to “trainers”. AI connects the Nike brand with concepts like sport, performance, certain athletes or lifestyle. These relationships help generative models decide when Nike content is relevant to a query.
Entities also underpin experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EEAT). This brings us to your brand and why GEO matters to it. GenAI recognises brands as entities. As such, their authority and trustworthiness directly influence their visibility to AI algorithms.
By posting knowledgeable, useful, authoritative content, brands can become the resources GenAI relies upon.
This can enhance the brand’s authority, visibility and added value.
As GenAI reshapes organic search habits, brands need to re-evaluate their marketing strategies to accommodate it. But fear not. This doesn’t mean tearing down your existing strategy and starting again from scratch. Instead, brands can integrate GEO into their existing SEO strategy. Remember, there’s a lot of overlap between SEO and GEO.
Integrating the latter just adds an extra string to your bow.
A technically sound website is one of the cornerstones of SEO. Because GenAI measures authority in similar ways, it is also useful for GEO.
Relatively small tweaks to existing technical SEO practices can positively influence GEO. Consider how your data structuring aids AI parsing alongside mobile friendliness and page load speeds. Keeping written content conducive to natural language processing is also useful.
Brands can do this by:
Keyword research is fundamental to good SEO. Making your content more GenAI friendly is simply an extension of this. Think about the questions users might ask GenAI as well as those they might ask search engines. Consider these as conversational queries as well as search prompts and long tail keywords.
Staying visible requires brands to track changes in both SEO and GEO and adapt their strategies accordingly. With each new algorithm and iteration there are new challenges and opportunities.
As in most aspects of business today, a data-driven approach to decision making can improve your GEO. Key metrics to leverage might include:
There are no shortcuts. No quick fixes. If you want your brand to get noticed, you need to produce quality content. Content that showcases your EEAT. Align this with the kind of questions users will ask both search engines and GenAI platforms. This will help you to ensure relevance while further cementing your brand’s reputation as a useful resource.
All of the above can help your content get GenAI’s attention. If your goal is for that content to feature in Gemini results, you need to structure it accordingly. It needs a clear focus on answering questions succinctly.
This means:
The rise of AI searches doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. A good SEO strategy lays a strong foundation for GEO and AEO.
The same practices that get you noticed by search crawlers can also get you noticed by GenAI. With a few technical tweaks and a great content strategy, your brand can remain visible and relevant.
Not sure how to create a content strategy?
Then we should talk.
