“GEO” doesn’t replace SEO, but it represents an upcoming shift in online marketing for your business.
As millions of your potential prospects, patients, clients or customers switch to AI-assisted search, GEO (pronounced G-E-O) will help prevent your product, brand, or business from disappearing into the depths of the web.
GEO does this by making your website and the rest of the entire online footprint you’re in control of, easier for generative engines to recognize, interpret, and rely on as data sets.
High Level: What Matters in AI SEO (GEO)
We’ll dive right into details, examples and action items below, but our most important takeaways are:
- There are ways to enhance your GEO and they’re worthwhile to your business and revenue.
- All roads always have and still should lead to building yourself, your brand, and your business into an Entity—you and your brand becoming “proper nouns,” separate and distinguished from others in your vertical.
Search Engines vs Generative Engines
Put simply:
Search Engines point users to places where their answers can be found, while Generative Engines generate and then present answers directly to users.
That means that generative engines—like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Microsoft Bing’s CoPilot—seek to collect, condense, and corroborate online information in order to directly answer users’ questions.
Instead of the “10 blue links” we’ve seen in search for three decades, GEs generate answers immediately, based on a number of sources it considers reliable.
Yep, some of those AI answers have been hilariously wrong.
But don’t let that distract you from what matters:
SkyNet AI is here, it’s only getting better, and it’s being integrated into more products, and adopted more widely.
Hello GEO
Generative Engine Optimization, or “GEO,” is all about optimizing your online presence so that you and your brand appear prominently across generative engines.
Good GEO will make your website relevant, authoritative and trustworthy enough to be a reliable resource for GEs to cite as sources and refer users to.
GEO also includes offsite work and IRL (in real life) changes you can make to your marketing.
What GEO Isn’t, and What Not to Do
GEO is SEO 2.0, now that AI has arrived.
It doesn’t replace SEO, but expands upon it, and what’s done for each affects the other.
GEO also isn't about using AI tools to do your marketing, nor using AI article generators to write for your website.
Yes, AI tools can be cautiously used to improve your content creation, but that just isn’t what GEO is or refers to.
Lastly, we recommend a cautious, conservative, and closely monitored approach to GEO, because AI is in its earliest stages, has been met with low voluntary adoption, and investors are concerned about its future.
How To Do GEO
With caveats out of the way, let’s cover how you should do GEO, as of August 2024.
Suggestions 1 through 5 are based on a 28 June thesis by Pranjal Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,” which is currently the most comprehensive study on GEO ranking factors.
Aggarwal et al, (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi), proposed and tested 9 ways to optimize content for generative engines.
Two techniques they tested didn’t work (Keyword Stuffing, and Unique Words), while 7 did, producing GEO improvements of up to 41%.
Study authors and our own internal testing suggest GEO techniques be used in combination, and here are the best of them:
1. Share statistics
Add numbers, percentages, and statistics throughout your key content or in support of your core claims.
2. Cite sources
Add and cite the sources of any key points or core claims you’re making, even if the sources are your own internal experts.
3. Include quotations
Incorporating relevant quotes from credible sources will improve your content for generative engines.
“We find that including citations, quotations from relevant sources, and statistics can significantly boost source visibility, with an increase of over 40% across various queries,” Pranjal Aggarwal, Senior Undergrad at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and lead author of “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,’” says.
4. Simplify site language
Write in clear and simple language. Relevant technical terms or scientific names can be enclosed in parentheses the first time they appear, but on the whole, your entire text should be straightforward and very simple.
A Flesch reading ease score of 60 or above is best, assuming your audience is non-technical.
Nerd note: Content written to sound "more authoritative" was also found to do well, but specifically in "debate-style questions" and "historical" queries, so for small business owners and service providers, we recommend focusing on simplifying site language and improving fluency, over and above authority.
5. Improve fluency
Fluency is improved not necessarily by adding text, but by revising existing text to flow smoothly and coherently.
To improve fluency, focus on continuity, which is defined as “uninterrupted connection, succession, or union.”
More simply stated, connect sources and statistics to your suggestions, and include the logic or reasoning behind your statements: “Do this because…” “Since X study shows Y, we recommend Z…”
6. Publish where you can
Authoritative and well-established websites are your best option, but the key here is to publish on multiple channels. Why? Because GEs cite sources once per answer, so the more different sources you’re on, the higher your chances are of appearing multiple times per query.
The best websites to publish on are social media sites, followed by industry leading publications and your own website.
Of course it goes without saying that content should always be unique, original and as helpful and high quality as possible.
7. Appear IRL, and in Bold!
Look, SkyNet AI really is here, and it matters whether or not (or how often and in what context) your brand, products, logo, name and address are seen and used IRL (in real life.)
That makes things like print ads, billboards, business cards, books and ebooks, study authorship, citations, and your full online and social footprint more important and worth investing in than ever.
The more of a distinct entity you can build yourself and your company out to be, the better your rankings and relevance will be in both search engines and generative engines.
This is where SEO ties right into GEO, and where backlinks, directories, media mentions, and so much more become even more relevant.
And one of the easiest ways you can do this, is to simply start writing about your experts and your company: what it does, what certifications you hold, what awards you’ve been given, etc.
And then, produce video after video after video on that.
Because each of the above helps create a distinct entity and strong brand.
Summary
GEO isn’t the end of SEO, but the start of a new and specialized approach to it.
SEO affects GEO, and vice versa.
And right now—while generative engines are in their earliest stages of development and adoption—is a great time for you to be doing it.
