SEO vs GEO – what businesses should focus on

Understanding the difference between SEO and GEO

If you have a website, you will know how important SEO is to your business, especially when it comes to helping more people find your business online organically. 

With the rise of AI Search, you may have heard about Generative Engine Optimisation – GEO – and wonder what it means to your business and how you can optimise website content for AI. 

So let’s explore the difference between SEO and GEO and why it’s important to futureproof your content marketing strategy.

What is SEO?

Traditional SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and the practice of improving website copy to improve your website’s organic positioning on a search engine results page (SERPs). 

By optimising your website with relevant keywords and search terms to your industry and customers, you improve impressions and reach, which in turn drives more web traffic and leads. 

People rarely click through multiple search engine results pages, when people search for something, they want to see relevant results instantly, that’s why SEO matters. 

What is GEO?

While SEO focuses on appealing to search engines, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) focuses on appealing to AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude.

With features including AI search, rich snippet results, such as ‘People also ask’, and sponsored content, organic results are being driven further down the page. 

So by creating content that can be cited in AI answers, you help to improve brand trust and credibility if you’re quoted as a source, which can help improve brand awareness and drive more traffic to your website. 

How to rank in AI Search 

Unlike SEO where you hope to rank number 1 for a search term, AI search focuses on helping the end user find the most relevant answers for their questions. 

With the rise of voice search, people are looking for information differently. People are more likely to ask specific questions or to help with an immediate problem. 

Using more specific Q & A formats on web pages helps AI to extract answers from your website quickly. 

In traditional SEO, long-form content helps to build relevance so that when pages are indexed, search engines know exactly what your website is about and what type of audience it is most suitable for. 

To appeal to AI bots, you need to ensure you structure content in a way that is easy to analyse, so our top tips for writing GEO content are to: 

• Use clear headings – be specific
• Include bullet points to make content highlights easy to scan read 
• Incorporate tables with structured data to clearly display information 
• Write detailed and informative FAQs – tap into customer need states

SEO and GEO work together 

If you want to build relevance in your industry and position your business as a leader in a particular product or service, you need to ensure your website is rich with these keywords and terms. 

For example, one blog in your key topic simply won’t cut it. To demonstrate your authority in your key topic, you need to create content that people will be interested in, for example, user guides, how-to guides, case studies with data and insights, and customer reviews. This variety in content helps to inform audiences, and it shows search engines that you’re an expert in your field.

SEO helps you to build out a content marketing approach that taps into user need states, and it’s this insight and analysis that you can use to create content that’s more aligned to GEO.    

Essentially, SEO and GEO work hand-in-hand to help users find the answers that best align with their search enquiries.

How to get cited by AI Search

AI Search doesn’t value generic articles as much as original, highly detailed content. 

So if you want to get cited in AI discovery channels such as ChatGPT

Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot consider including original research, survey-driven content, case studies and expert opinion pieces in your overall content marketing strategy.

A simple GEO framework that your business can adopt today 

1. Create content that aims to answer a specific question – tap into need states.
2. Provide the answer immediately rather than making people search the text – it’s about clarity rather than keyword stuffing.
3. Include original insights or data – this content is more likely to be cited as a source.
4. Use clear headings and structure – make text skimmable and easy to understand. 
5. Cover related questions – think like a customer, what do they want to know?
6. Demonstrate expertise with examples – show the benefit of your products and services.
7. Update the content regularly – update evergreen content to keep it relevant to the end-user.
8. Promote it so others mention and reference it – post on socials, share in emails and promote through digital link building. 

GEO is the dominant feature on search engine result pages and it’s here to stay. Invest in your content marketing strategy to stay relevant in an ever-evolving digital landscape.  

How you can make your website GEO-friendly today

There are small changes you can make right now that will impact GEO search results. Simply invest time into expanding on-page content and your content marketing plan to impact search results. 

Expand on-page FAQs: Review each page on your website and add relevant, original FAQs to each page. Don’t repeat generic FAQs. Think about the incoming enquiries from your customers to answer questions they have about your products and services. Ask your sales and customer service teams, research online as a customer would to ensure you’re telling them what they need and include insights and data to help customers make informed decisions. 

Schema mark up: Is your structured web data up-to-date? Schema markup is a specific bit of code that’s added to the back end of your website and it helps search engines to better understand what your content means.  

SEO insights and analysis: When was the last time you measured how your website was performing organically and how it compared to your market competitors? An in-depth SEO review can help you spot gaps in the market and see where you can expand your content marketing strategy based on how potential customers are actually searching.

Create content using original data: You may have your own insights and data to communicate to your audience or you can enlist the support of a third-party data providers who can help you create interesting hooks and insights for news stories. 

Write for voice search: When you use voice commands on Google, Siri or Alexa, think of the questions you ask. Now, put that into the context of your industry or customers, and what would you ask? Taking this natural approach to content creation helps you to create content that’s more aligned with human search intent, rather than writing for search engines and overly-specific keywords. 

Update content: No one will rely on outdated content. Stay relevant and ensure your content keeps up with evolving market trends. 

This activity is how we have helped our customers future-proof their websites for AI search. 

Take a look at our Case Study for Road and Race Restorations, a leading specialist in the repair of prestige vehicles.  The brand found that they were being out-ranked by competitors for core manufacturer terms, so they came to us for an SEO strategy that would strengthen performance and drive their organic rankings forward. 

Not only did we improve organic rankings to position 1-4 in Google for all manufacturers, but in a matter of weeks we were able to increase AI-generated traffic by 450%! 

If you need immediate support that will drive real change in organic and AI search, get in touch and see how we can help you maximise performance.