SEO vs GEO – What’s Changed, What Hasn’t and Why SEO Still Matters

It goes without saying that AI has made a dramatic impact on the SEO world, and also the marketing world. I would also go as far as saying that it’s made a massive impact on the world. Although the AI most people use is just generally ChatGPT, there’s obviously a wider conversation that we’re not gonna cover here. But we’re specifically going to be looking at the impact on your business, mostly your website, because of AI tools.  

SEO vs GEO – What’s Changed, What Hasn’t and Why SEO Still Matters  

The rise of AI has been incredibly fast, and I believe this is because it is so brilliant to use, and so simple and effective. Also, the rise of Google took a lot longer to get mainstream. AI has come now with the ability to capitalise on a Google-friendly world, where people are used to searching the internet for their answers on very fast mobile and widespread internet.  

Of course, when AI arrived, everyone was affected, and the conversation about SEO being dead has been talked about for a very long time, but this is a misconception. In fact, SEO very much plays into the playbook of GEO, which is generative engine optimisation. GEO uses the foundational set of principles that SEO has used for many, many years. Therefore, they are closely linked. We know this because clients that have been having SEO with us for many years are already in the AI summaries and are already getting links and enquiries from AI tools.   

There are obviously some adaptations and some changes that you need to make, and we’re gonna leave these out below, but first let’s look at what is similar.  

What is SEO and what is GEO?  

Simply, SEO is Search Engine Optimisation. This is the practice of optimising your website for search. So, in simple terms, if you want to get found higher up on Google, where most of the clicks happen, then you need to work on your SEO. SEO has long been seen as a dark art, but it doesn’t need to be. If you look at it like this, then it becomes clear: for Google to rank your website higher up the results, you need to have a great website with great content and show that you have trust from other websites and human beings.  

GEO, which is Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of optimising your website and content for search engines on AI tools. So, if you want to appear higher, or appear at all, in the AI summaries or within tools like ChatGPT, then GEO is what you need to look at. But as I’ve said above, if you’ve already been doing a good job in your SEO, you’re probably fine. You’re already quite high in these AI summaries.  

The clear difference with GEO is you are optimising for more conversational language because the way people search on AI is very much how they speak. In fact, many people actually just speak into ChatGPT. They will have long conversations with ChatGPT about things. They will share pictures, videos, articles, links, and just have conversations with their robot. This means that the search results that they are shared with them are usually more conversational and obviously answer the very things that they are asking. So, we need to consider the conversation and how our content answers those questions from those conversations.  

Why SEO and GEO are more similar than different 

SEO and GEO are still very similar, and below are some of the areas of SEO and GEO that are basically the same. AI tools after all, have simply copied what’s already working for Google and Bing. Why wouldn’t they?  

Most of what works for SEO also works for GEO because both rely on machines understanding, trusting and using your content. 

Shared foundations between SEO and GEO  

Crawlability & Indexability  

• Clean site architecture - this has always been important but it’s especially important for AI tools. Having a nice, clean, structured layout of your website can make all the difference.  
• Logical internal linking – something we’re working on with clients right now is making sure that your content is internally linked to its own pages, especially the relevant pages on your website. Having a clear map of internal links on your website can send the correct and strongest signals to AI and search engines.  
• No blocked or orphaned content - making sure you don’t have pages that are not added to the sitemap or linked from any other pages. An orphan page is not something you want to have where possible. It’s also worth checking for things like 404s and errors on your website.  
• Why AI systems still depend on accessible, indexable content - AI systems use a very logical information retrieval process, so having your content and pages laid out in a structured and logical way can really help. It doesn’t mean you need to lose all of the branding and human content from your site, far from it. It just means you need to think about a machine crawling through your website and having the pages laid out in a logical fashion that makes sense.  

Structured Data & Schema Markup  

• Helps Google and AI systems understand context – something often skipped by web developers and by business owners is structured data and schema markup. This is very easy to do and most themed websites like WordPress will give you the opportunity to add this in. It simply describes the page in a very top-level fashion, and this is incredibly useful for AI.  
• Article, FAQ, Organization and How-to schema - this goes for all of your pages, including articles, FAQs and describing your organisation. When you think about how people use AI, it’s been very important to make sure that you add How-to schema to your How-to guides, blogs, white papers, etc.  
• Improves eligibility for AI summaries and references – and the result of this is, hopefully, you will appear higher up in the AI summaries, as you’re making the job very easy for the machines to read your content.  

Content Depth & Usefulness  

• Comprehensive coverage of a topic – absolutely something that has not changed is creating content that is comprehensive and covers a topic where you leave no stone unturned. Blog posts with 300 words, or even landing pages with very little content, should be avoided at all costs.  
• Clear answers to real questions - and make sure you do your research. What are people actually asking AI and search engines? One of the main questions people are asking of the web is: are you answering those? And are the answers clear and easy to understand for AI, and of course for humans when they eventually get there?  
• Demonstrated expertise - SEO tools and AI tools very much follow E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trust) and demonstrating your expertise is very important. This could come in the form of sharing content that shows your knowledge and expertise but of course this also plays out onto other websites and other content on the web where you are an authority. For example, being a speaker at a local event with a link to your website shows that you are an authority and you can demonstrate your expertise.  
• Why thin content fails in both SEO and AI search - as outlined above, thin content really will fail. AI tools read phenomenal amounts of content in seconds; it doesn’t struggle to read long-form content and SEO has always been about long-form content. It’s very easy to create short, sharp blog posts – that’s easy to do – but even now with AI it’s actually quite hard to create long-form content, because if you just create the content with AI, that won’t index anywhere near as well as content written by yourself. It’s worth pointing out here that your content should be unique and not just created by AI. That’s not really what AI wants, as it doesn’t want to eat itself, which is an analogy you’ll hear more over the future months and years.  

Proper Content Hierarchy  

• Logical H1, H2, H3 structure - this is really simple, but so many people get it wrong. Making sure that your page follows a logical hierarchy of H1, H2, and H3 (Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3). This logical structure shows the importance of the page and flows numerically down the page. In an ideal world, put the keywords for the topic you’re talking about into those H tags (H1/H2/H3) in a natural language way – not stuffing the keywords in for the sake of it.
• Clear topical sections - these tags can also then form the clear topical sections, so you’re highlighting exactly what you’re writing about. It makes it very easy for people to skim the pages, and it makes it very easy for AI to grab sections of your website and use that in its answers to the human being. You’re literally feeding the machines and then in payback they will recommend you more often.  
• Scannability for humans and machines – and then just making sure you’ve got simple things like a crawlable sitemap. Submitting your sitemap to tools like Search Console is still important and still worth doing. Most websites come out of the box with sitemaps, but it is worth checking that these are working and structured well. These are obviously based on how you laid out your website, so if you lay it out like a dogs’ dinner, your sitemaps are going to be the same.  

Bullet Points, Lists, and Clear Formatting  

• Easy extraction for AI answers - I’ve been a fan of having clear bullet-pointed lists, whether numbered or regular bullet points and clear formatting of content. You can probably see it from this blog. I think it makes it easier to read and it turns out that AI loves it as well, so keep using formatted and structured content on your website. You’ll often see this content used in AI summaries, and when you Google things and click through to the website, you’ll see structured bullet points and similar highlighted and this is why they are important.  
• Improves readability and summarisation - as I’ve said above, it improves readability and helps people summarise the content. That helps AI summarise content, but it also helps people who can’t be bothered to read it all get the bit they’re interested in.  
• Mirrors how AI presents information - and a simple way to remember it is: it mirrors how AI presents information. Think about how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity show content, then make sure it looks like that on your website. Make it easy for them – why wouldn’t you?  

Website Usability & Performance  

• Page speed - really simply put, tools like ChatGPT read at a phenomenal rate. Do you really think they’re gonna wait for your slow website?  
• Mobile usability - goes without saying, your website needs to look good on a mobile.  
• Clean UX - you need a clean UX. Just like with a site structure, having a good UX (user experience) on your website is key to getting AI and search engines to read your site. But ultimately, when someone gets there, they will enjoy being there as well.  
• Why poor UX limits trust signals for both Google and AI – trust signals are created by the users, and poor UX limits trust signals for both Google and AI because people will arrive on your website, struggle with the content and leave immediately if the UX is poor. Some of the feedback we’ve seen on some of our TikTok content about the benefit of using AI is that people don’t have to go to websites in the first place. It turns out that people don’t like going to websites because they’re full of pop-up banners, cookies and all sorts of other junk that appears on the page (‘please send it to our emails’) – and yes, we are guilty of this as well. Making it clean, simple and easy to use sends the right signals back to the tools in the first place, so you’re more likely to be recommended in the future.  

Where GEO starts to diverge from traditional SEO 

AI search behaves differently than Google search 

• Google: keyword-based intent matching - keywords and the intention of what people are looking for is the easy way to think about this. How are people searching and why are they searching? What’s the intention behind the search? If you really understand what people are looking for from your business, then you’ll do a really great job of creating content that matches this.  
• AI: conversational and contextual understanding – conversational and contextual understanding is one of the key attractions of AI. Making sure that the content on your website is easy to read and follows a conversational tone is important. It feels honest and open to tell you this but I dictated this entire blog after creating the structure with a particular GPT I’ve been training for months. This means that this blog was actually spoken, not written and I’ve done this a lot since AI has come along because it makes my content more conversational because it’s literally coming out of my mouth.  
• Fewer short keywords, more complex queries - and also keep things short, sweet, and to the point.  

The rise of human, conversational language 

• Natural phrasing over keyword stuffing – ultimately, you don’t want to trick anything. You want to speak on your website like you would speak in real life. You want to create content online that sounds like you would say it out loud because these AI tools are very much like another person speaking. They can read your content after someone has spoken to them and look for this content. So, this is something to bear in mind when you’re creating content: don’t get too complicated and create content that would be easily spoken out loud.  
• Writing how people speak and ask questions – people speak to AI and ask questions with their own voice, so your content needs to match it in a similar tone.  
• Benefits for ChatGPT, Gemini and AI assistants - as AI evolves into everyday life, more and more people are going to use these tools to ask simple or complicated questions. So, matching this tone, matching this change, is going to be a key change in your content creation and website building.  

Long and complex queries are the new norm 

• Users ask multi-part questions – when you think about how people search AI, they’re not asking a couple of keywords. Remember when we had to Google a certain way and we actually needed to limit the words we put into Google? Then it got a little bit more intelligent, but in recent times we’ve used Google’s autocomplete and “People also ask”. This has meant that the searches people put into Google are often very short. This is the complete opposite over on tools like Gemini, where people are using long-form (often spoken) questions, prompts and even conversations. It’s not unusual for someone to spend half an hour researching something with AI, speaking to it, walking around, even using it in a car – like I do – which is completely legal through things like CarPlay.  
• Context matters more than exact phrasing - SEO is all about matching the phrases people talked about online because this was fairly limited compared to how people use AI now. It’s wide open. How people search, and the context around the content that you’re creating, really, really matters. It’s not about finding the perfect exact phrase match and optimising for that anymore. Now it’s about picking the topic that you know people want answers to and going deep on the explanation of that – hopefully like I’ve done on this blog.  
• Content must anticipate follow-up questions - your content must also anticipate follow-up questions because of course this is exactly what happens on AI. In fact, one of the great benefits of AI is that it’s constantly trying to predict and anticipate what you’re gonna ask it next, which is why it’s so quick to respond. Have you ever noticed how fast the answers come back even though they’ve come from the web? It’s because it’s already planned and guessing ahead of time what you’re going to ask, because of course it’s having trillions of conversations all the time and therefore it has a pretty good idea what you’re going to ask. You might think that you’re unique but I’m afraid you are not. We’re all very similar in the way that we ask questions.  

Why FAQs and knowledge banks are critical for GEO  

Something I’ve been majoring on for quite some time is creating knowledge banks on websites. Many, many years ago I actually answered the top 100 SEO questions for an SEO agency. The whole purpose of this was to create a knowledge bank for the top 100 questions asked in AI, to help that website rank for SEO.  

Your website should be a knowledge bank. Think of it like the Wikipedia of what you do. What are all the questions people ask you all the time? Think of those questions you get asked in sales calls, on your website, on social media. If you run events like we do, then what do people always ask at the end of those events? What are the things people really want to know? Make sure you’ve answered all of those questions on your website and in your content.  

How AI uses FAQs 

• AI pulls direct answers from structured Q&A content - more often than not, AI will pull directly from structured Q&A content, so creating Q&A content on your website just makes it so much easier for it to crawl you and for you to appear in its results.  
• FAQs mirror AI query patterns – why wouldn’t you want to match how AI shares its results? It still helps your SEO and everything that I’ve mentioned here about optimising for GEO will definitely help your SEO as well, because at the end of the day SEO is still the big player in the game here. GEO is still very new and only takes up a small percentage of the search results – for now anyway.  
• Higher likelihood of being referenced in AI outputs - having good FAQs on your website will increase your likelihood of being seen in ChatGPT and Gemini purely because that’s the type of content it goes to. That’s its bread-and-butter content. That’s what it likes to read and that’s what it likes to share. Make it easy for the tools to share.  

Building large, structured knowledge banks 

• Topic-based FAQ hubs - we’re working on client content at the moment based around content pillars and then clusters of content linked with massive internal links to content on the website. What this does is create a huge knowledge base, all linked together with intricate (but positive) signals. That is a positive signal for both SEO and GEO. If an AI reads your website and can easily follow these links, daisy-chaining pieces of content together all around the same topics, then it will know that not only are you an expert, but it can easily find the answer to things, which makes it easier for it to predict the answers it needs for people asking questions.  
• Internal linking between related questions – and I said about making sure that you’ve got internal links, which is essentially a hyperlink for some chosen words on your website page to another page. This gives a positive signal that what you’re talking about here relates to another page on your website. The best example of this is Wikipedia. If you go to a Wikipedia page, all of the hyperlinks link to relevant pieces of content on Wikipedia. This is probably the best example of internal linking I can think of.  
• Continuous expansion based on user behaviour – keep your finger on the pulse. How are people using AI? What are people using it for? Do you need more video content on YouTube? Do you need more visual input on your website? Do you need more knowledge base? Do you need to be more structured or less structured? This is a constantly evolving platform and we need to keep our eye on it.  

Real world observation 

• FAQs frequently cited in ChatGPT and Gemini responses - you’ve probably seen this in Google as well as things like ChatGPT and Gemini, but FAQs are often cited word-for-word in responses, including the AI summary.  
• Reinforces authority and trust – having a good knowledge base clearly reinforces authority and trust, which follows on from the E-E-A-T analogy.  
• Positions brands as ‘go-to’ sources for answers - and clearly having all the answers to all of the frequently asked questions really does set you apart as the go-to business for your brand.  

Entity clarity and context  

• Consistent terminology - one of the things to think about with signals is to keep these things consistent as that makes the signal stronger when you think about it. This is what brand awareness is about: the same message is shared over and over and over until you are aware of the brand and what that brand stands for. Think about this with the terminology in the content you put on your website. It needs to be consistent.  
• Clear definitions – it’s also important to make sure that you have clear and contextual definitions across your website wherever you can.  
• Explicit relationships between concepts – and then making sure you have clear relationships between the concepts you’re sharing on your website. Internal linking is a great way to do this, as is the site structure so that you have child pages and a parent page, making it really obvious where content sits and what it belongs to.  

Content freshness and updates 

• Regular updates signal relevance – I deliberated whether to leave this in here or not but the fact is that search volumes and the way people use AI is changing so quickly, you really do need to keep up with the content on your website and regular updates can really help with this. Obviously in SEO terms, having relevant, recent content can really help, but I think it’s more important in AI search and especially important for AI summaries that prioritise accuracy.  

SEO isn’t being replaced – it’s being extended 

Hopefully I’ve been careful in this content to make sure you understand that you shouldn’t just ditch all of your SEO and all the SEO you’ve done in the past – it’s not wasted. This is an extension and an improvement, not a replacement at all. So much of the foundation of GEO has been taken from the foundation of SEO, so what’s worked well in your SEO can really, really help you be found in AI. But there are some clear things to change your mindset and shift your content towards.  

• SEO fundamentals are still the foundation - so keep doing what you’ve always done with good content, fresh content, fast websites, easy to navigate and of course having a healthy and high-authority backlink profile. Also making sure that you have good local SEO and focusing on tools like Google My Business makes a massive difference.  
• GEO rewards sites that already ‘did SEO right’ – so if you didn’t already do it right, now is the time to catch up.  
• AI search accelerates the value of good SEO, not eliminates it – if you’ve already got a good SEO foundation, don’t you worry, you’re in a good place. So, it’s certainly not replacing it. In fact, it’s probably rewarding past good behaviour on SEO.  

The future of search – why AI adoption will outpace Google 

It’s long been my prediction that the Google search results will go away one day. The traditional list of links and website listings on Google will not be there – or at least for the masses anyway. The AI summary at the top of Google, which of course is Google Gemini, I think will ultimately replace the regular use of Google.  

It’s far easier, of course, to speak to search results and speak to an AI, and find out conversations, content, articles, news and information, than it is to research yourself. It’s far more efficient. It’s faster, and this plays perfectly into the playbook of humanity. We’ve always loved a shortcut. We’ve always loved something that gives us what we want quicker. You only have to look at short-form content on social media and weight loss drugs to see this. 

I’m basing my opinion on the below.  

Lower Barrier to Entry  

• No need to understand search operators – you don’t need any particular skills to use AI and you really don’t need any particular skill set to appear either if you follow the steps above.  
• No scrolling through results - it’s a massive time-saving thing. Not scrolling through results gives people their time back, which is of course the most valuable resource in the universe.  
• One interface, immediate answers – now you don’t need to go to hundreds of websites with all sorts of different pop-ups, different navigation, complicated banners and cookies. Now you just use one interface – be that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini or whatever you choose to use – and get all of your information from one place. It’s more familiar. It’s faster. It’s quicker. And more importantly it’s usually free.  

AI Is Becoming the Default Tool  

• Used for learning, research, planning, decisions – students, workers, researchers, even readers are now using AI as a default for research and learning. So many things now have AI within them as well. It’s just becoming so normal and useful to use AI. Even shopping carts and social media now have AI summaries, and your smartphone will even summarise the notifications you have on your phone. AI is becoming the normal.  
• Faster and more intuitive than traditional search – and we just can’t deny that it’s faster and more intuitive than the old way. When you look at Google now, you can see how archaic it looks. There was a time when I thought Google wasn’t catching up but then they added Gemini to this AI overview, and since then I’ve actually been using Gemini as my go-to AI. It’s really, really good, but I think it will also be the outright winner in the end.  

What This Means for Brands  

• Visibility = being referenced, not just ranked - the big change here is that the more you’ve spoken about online, including on social media, will matter. Being brand-first is huge. If you’re all about keywords and optimisation and link building and not about your brand, then you’re going to miss out over the coming years.  
• Content must be answer-ready - the content you create must answer questions. This is literally what people are using ChatGPT for and it’s always been the use of Google. Creating content that is answer-ready should be first and foremost in your content marketing strategy.  
• SEO + GEO together is the winning strategy – and as I’ve said throughout this blog, do not ignore SEO. SEO is still 80 to 90% of all the search results – or at least that’s how you appear in the search results. Combine them together, adapt for the future, consider your content for AI, but stay rooted in the foundation that has made SEO work. And as I also said above, if you’ve been lazy and slept on SEO, now is the time to get on board with it, because without good SEO, you will never appear in the AI search results.  

Conclusion: the real opportunity 

• SEO and GEO are deeply connected - there’s lots of crossovers, as I’ve highlighted above. It’s sometimes difficult to decide whether it’s a GEO or an SEO tactic.  
• Brands that invested in proper SEO are already ahead – so if you’re not ahead because you’ve slept on SEO, or you’ve been a little bit slack in this area, now is the time to get on the case.  
• The next step is adapting tone, structure, and knowledge depth - the next move for all businesses should be to adapt the tone, structure and knowledge, and make sure that the content is contextual and conversational in tone, because this is how people are searching and this is how the AI tools deliver the content back. Make the job for these tools easier and it will reward you over and over again.  
• Those who evolve now will dominate both search engines and AI answers.  

Still getting to grips with AI, SEO, GEO and a thousand other acronyms?  We can help!  

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