GEO: Same Foundations; Evolved Retrieval Layer
Over the last 18 months, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) has been positioned by some as the next big thing > the successor to SEO > a completely new discipline.
Googles guidance suggests that the content > technical practices that help search engines understand content remain crucial for AI Overviews and AI Mode experiences. I’d agree, though there are nuances + the retrieval layer has definitely evolved. Traditional SEO was more asking “Which web pages should rank for this query?” Vs GEO is asking “Which information should be extracted to construct an answer?”
5(Tips):
1/ Strong SEO moved past over optimised meta & keyword density years ago. GEO pushes this further; optimisation isn’t about repeating terms on a page. It’s about making the underlying relationships between products, technical attributes, compatibility standards, use cases, etc machine readable.
2/ AI citation patterns are ↑% aided by community generated content sources like Reddit, LinkedIn, specialist forums, etc than traditional SEO results have historically been. Gaming forum discussions only makes sense if you have “domains to burn” and are playing the £short game hence my recommendation is “white hat GEO”.
3/ E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) remains the grounding layer. Competitive advantage relies on unique information gain: proprietary data, original research, first hand experience, engineering expertise + other difficult to replicate insights. Standard content (e.g guides repeating what 500+ other sites say) will increasingly add ↓% value.
4/ Handling complex prompts requires clean digital infrastructure. Consistent entity relationships, structured product data, logical HTML hierarchies, fast rendering pages, precise schema markup, etc = make content easier to interpret & cite.
5/ Generally I wouldn’t recommend the creation of a separate siloed GEO team to determine focus. View discovery holistically; clearly you need to track specific prompt visibility, citation share, LLM brand sentiment, etc however traditional SEO (+ PPC that ‘funnily enough’ increasingly relies upon ai) still delivers the vast majority of enterprise traffic > conversions and will do so for the foreseeable.
…Be technically accessible > encourage “conversation” > think E-E-A-T > Structure your data clearly.