AI-Powered SEO: The Rise of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

1 What is GEO[Generative Engine optimization]

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is content optimization to be better cited or employed by generative AI search engines / large language model (LLM)-based answer engines (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google SGE, etc.).

GEO has been formalized through research (such as in GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal et al., 2023) where it has been demonstrated that things such as GEO-Bench, a set of queries and sources to evaluate content performance in generative search.

Why GEO is Gaining Importance Now

• Zero- or low- click searches: It does not direct visitors to the websites, therefore more and more queries lead to the answers being given by AI or as summaries. This reduces traffic even in pages that have a high rating.
• AI Summaries and Overviews: Synthesized overviews that are based on multiple sources are being increasingly shown by search engines (such as Google) and can render individual sites less visible. The worth of being recognized in such summations is boosted.
• User behavior change: The users are no longer willing to spend time scrolling through a series of pages on the internet and are more than prepared to receive immediate and comprehensive answers, believing in AI, or directly requiring it.
• The first companies to adopt the best practices will also be most likely to rank high not only in SERP but also in AI responses because GEO is yet to be embraced with a lot of enthusiasm.

Best Practices for GEO

The following are some of the strategies that can be used to optimize towards GEO paradigm:

1 Create structured, semantically rich content

• Have well defined entities, relationships and context.
• Come up with headings, bullet points, FAQs etc. so that AI is able to extract discrete, useful bits.

2 Authority building

• Be mentioned in other reliable sources / media. Earned media helps.
• Utilize outbound authoritative links, authoritative sources and references.

3 Speaking & questioning comprehension.

• Think not only in terms of key-words, but in terms of how people ask questions (prompts).
• Customize content in order to respond to conversational questions completely.

4 Diversify content formats

• Varied forms: text, video, pictures, infographics, and so on.
• Think of multimodal abilities of the AI engines.

Key Difference Between SEO & GEO