For a long time now, if you wanted to improve the visibility of your website’s page rankings on Google, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was where you’d place most of your focus.
By following certain best practices, you could establish an optimal on-page and off-page strategy for helping search engine crawlers crawl your content, index it more efficiently, and reference your content’s keywords to help match your site information with user inquiries.
However, times have changed, and SEO isn’t the only important factor for improving online visibility. Today, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) has become another critical element for getting a brand’s products and services in front of the eyes of more consumers.
In this article, we’ll break down the differences between both optimization methods and where and how they’re effective when used in search engine marketing campaigns.
What is SEO?
SEO involves using various tools and best practices to make a website more visible on search engines like Google. The better a website is able to “rank” its web pages on search engine results pages (SERPs), the higher the likelihood that users will click on links and be redirected to a site.
How SEO Works
Most SEO campaigns start by conducting keyword research to identify the most frequently used words or phrases that individuals use to find information on a particular topic. After these terms are identified, SEO works by incorporating various optimizations on and off the site so that search engine crawlers link those terms to specific content pages.
Key Elements of SEO
For SEO initiatives to be successful, there are a number of key elements that should be incorporated into marketing campaigns. This includes:
- Keyword Analysis - This helps you to not only discover commonly used keywords and phrases, but also helps to understand how much relative search volume those terms create a month and how difficult they can be to rank your pages for.
- Competitor Research - This analyzes the number of competitors also targeting your chosen keywords on their sites while also evaluating their SEO performance to compare against your own.
- On-Page Optimizations - These include several front-facing site elements, including the creation of relevant meta titles and descriptions, structuring content with appropriate headers (H1-H4), and incorporating keywords onto relevant site pages.
- Off-Page Optimizations - These optimizations focus on improving external signals that improve your site’s authority, such as building credible links hosted on other websites and blogs that point back to your own.
- Technical Site Assessments - This ensures that your site performs the way it should for your users, looking specifically at elements such as loading speeds, mobile responsiveness, and crawlability.
What is GEO?
While traditional SEO focuses on gaining more site visibility on search engines, GEO concentrates on structuring web content so it’s easier to find and reference on AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT or Gemini.
The primary goal of GEO initiatives is to ensure that content contains sufficient ideas, facts, or direct answers, making it easier for AI systems to extract short snippets and use them to provide responses to users.
How GEO Works
GEO works by helping to position content so that AI models can easily digest and reference it. To achieve this, content is structured using clear, direct language, just as if the content creator were speaking to someone in person. This also means reformatting information on a site so that it uses logical headings and subheadings and answers common questions fast and effectively.
Key Elements of GEO
Just like traditional SEO, GEO has foundational elements for successful application. These include:
- Semantic Analysis - This is used to uncover the actual search intent of users when they enter queries into search, ensuring that the context is prioritized over exact keyword matches. This ensures that relevant information is found even when users search for it in different ways.
- Citation Relevance - This helps to build content so that it’s considered higher quality by AI search algorithms and looks to come from a credible, trustworthy source, so that it’s more likely to be used in generative search results.
- Statistical Context - This ensures information contained on your site contains proven statistics, facts, and verifiable data that’s likely to be viewed as a valuable reference for AI tools.
- Clear, Concise Language - This helps businesses develop content outlines designed to provide direct answers to common questions. This is often achieved by publishing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) at the end of articles and blogs to help summarize key points while using natural language.
SEO vs GEO: Key Differences
Feature | SEO | GEO |
Target Platforms | Primarily used for added visibility on traditional search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo | Focuses on creating more visibility across AI-powered answer engines and large language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Claude |
Ranking & Optimization Methods | Uses factors like keyword density, on-page / off-page search optimization, and link building to create better user experiences and more site authority to help rank pages higher on SERPs | Places importance on the relevance of citations and semantic language use to create easily referenceable and trustworthy information when generating direct responses to users |
Content & User Experience | Focuses on creating content designed to increase click-through rates and to attract users who have multiple options to choose from when selecting site links after a search is completed | Prioritizes the use of content that is easily citable by AI tools and can be easily summarized into accurate, concise answers based on the context of queries |
Metrics & Measurement | Success is measured by metrics like Click-Through Rates (CTR), dynamic keyword rankings, site bounce rates, or time on page. | Success is gauged by the number of times a website’s content is referenced as a source in AI-generated answers. |
How SEO and GEO Work Together
Shared Foundations
While SEO and GEO have their own primary objectives, they both focus on creating high-quality content for users. This means both strategies will rely on ensuring the information you provide on your site is accurate, provides tangible value, and is supported by facts.
Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) comes into play considerably when developing site content that not only ranks well on SERPs but also gets displayed in AI-powered answer engines. It’s important to stick with topics and subtopics that can be developed using unique business perspectives and highly original talking points.
Focusing on incorporating each of these principles into every piece of content you write will go a long way in showcasing thought leadership and ensuring the site is referenced more often as a helpful industry resource.
Practical Content Tactics
Many practical content tactics provide value for both SEO and GEO initiatives. For example, the use of structured data helps websites to potentially gain more high-value real estate on SERPs when getting content to show up on Google’s rich snippets.
However, while this position in itself is helpful and easy to find for individuals using traditional search methods, these rich snippets are also often used in AI-generated responses. Another area that’s helpful is to connect your research data more closely with the content you created.
By including citable statistics that support your topic coverage, you can establish a regular source that AI tools can pool information from, adding even more visibility to your site and increasing referral traffic.
Strategic Content Auditing
To ensure content is optimized for both search engines and AI tools, it’s essential to conduct regular content audits. This involves combing through every page of your site, especially blogs and articles, to identify areas of improvement or update/remove pages as needed.
However, auditing content shouldn’t be restricted to just keyword changes. It’s also important to evaluate the effectiveness of the content structure itself and its ability to answer questions in a clear and easy-to-understand manner.
Benefits and Drawbacks of GEO
Benefits
- Scalable content creation - GEO helps site owners to create more efficient content calendars by identifying the most relevant topics and subtopics to discuss while also focusing on the important points most AI users commonly search for.
- Personalization and improved targeting - Generative AI can understand user intent much more accurately than traditional search algorithms. Optimizing site content with GEO best practices means the information will be referenced on AI tools more often.
Challenges
- Quality control and originality - A significant challenge with AI-assisted content creation is maintaining accuracy. There's always a risk of producing generic or incorrect information if not carefully reviewed and edited by content teams.
- Potential SEO risks from over-automation - Relying too heavily on automated content generation without proper human oversight can lead to issues that negatively impact traditional SEO, such as duplicate content, poor readability, or unhelpful content.
FAQs
What is the difference between GEO and SEO?
SEO focuses on helping a website rank higher on search engines like Google, while GEO focuses on improving content visibility on AI-powered answer engines and generative AI tools.
Can GEO replace traditional SEO?
No, they are designed to work seamlessly together as part of a holistic strategy for improving online visibility.
How does GEO impact current SEO practices?
GEO encourages SEO professionals to double down on what already works best - writing with more clarity, using structured data, and creating content that’s worth citing.
What are the benefits of implementing GEO?
The primary benefits include appearing directly in AI-generated answers, being viewed as highly relevant to direct user questions, and positioning a brand as a trusted authority.
How can I measure GEO success?
Success is measured by tracking how often AI models cite a brand or its content, its general visibility within AI-generated answers, and whether the information is being presented accurately.
Is GEO right for my business?
If your audience is regularly using AI tools for answers, or if your brand’s reputation is built on being a trusted authority in your field, then incorporating GEO into your digital strategy is a smart move as you grow.