As search evolves, marketers must adapt. Traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) focuses on increasing a website’s rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) by optimising content with keywords, backlinks, technical performance, and user experience. Success is measured by click-through rates, time on page, bounce rates and metrics about attracting and converting users via organic traffic.
In contrast, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) has emerged to optimise for AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s generative overview panels, Microsoft’s Copilot, and others. Instead of aiming for clicks, GEO’s objective is to ensure content is cited or directly incorporated by generative AI when providing answers so here, visibility means appearing within AI-generated responses, not merely ranking in a list.
What Makes GEO Different?
Target Platform
- SEO targets traditional engines (Google, Bing).
- GEO targets generative AI engines that synthesize answers.
Content Strategy
- SEO prioritises keywords and content, meta tags, backlinks and link-building to boost rankings.
- GEO emphasises structured content, authoritative citations, clear factual statements, context-rich and semantically precise writing, crafted to be easily parsed and cited by AI.
Success Metrics
- SEO tracks rankings, organic clicks, engagement metrics.
- GEO tracks how often content is referenced in AI answers i.e. the “citation frequency” in AI outputs.
Relevance and Structure
GEO expects more holistic alignment with user intent, offering logical flow, structured headings, summaries, stats and authoritative backing, so AI can readily use it.
Why GEO Matters Now
With AI chatbots and generative search becoming mainstream, brands risk losing visibility if they rely solely on traditional SEO. GEO ensures content remains discoverable within AI-driven channels that many users now prefer.
Complementary Strategies: SEO + GEO
Rather than replacing SEO, GEO complements it. The best content strategies integrate both, creating content that ranks well in traditional search and also serves as high-quality, AI-friendly sources for generative responses.
Summary
SEO and GEO share the goal of visibility, but cater to different ecosystems. SEO seeks rankings on SERPs, while GEO strives to embed content within conversational, AI-generated answers. Marketers today benefit most from a hybrid strategy that balances both.
If you want to know more about how your business’s traditional SEO content strategy should now evolve to include GEO as an all-encompassing hybrid solution, please get in touch.