SEO vs GEO: Boosting Visibility in the Age of AI
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: SEO is changing…again.
Visibility has always been the name of the game. But with the rise in AI agents, chatbots, and other non-search tools, how you achieve that visibility has changed. In 2024, Google introduced AI Overviews, and suddenly users started getting answers without ever clicking a website. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even Siri are doing the same—delivering answers, not just links. That means fewer clicks, but not fewer opportunities.
That shift has introduced a new kind of optimization, known by many names, that marketers should know: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO, or AISEO, AEO, LLMO, etc). GEO helps your brand stay visible in these “zero-click” environments, where users get answers without visiting a website. Regardless of how you feel about ChatGPT and other Language Models as a trend or revolution, they’re becoming key to building long-term brand awareness and trust in the age of AI.
If traditional SEO is about ranking in search results, GEO is about being quoted by AI. And while they overlap in a lot of ways, these complementary practices aren’t the same. Here’s what you need to know about SEO, GEO, and how to build a strategy that suits both.
What’s the Difference Between SEO and GEO?
SEO helps your content show up in search engine results. You optimize your site structure, keywords, backlinks, and content to move up the rankings and earn traffic. That’s still important, and still very effective.
GEO is newer. It focuses on how content is interpreted, cited, or summarized by AI tools. Chatbots and AI search assistants don’t “rank” websites. They pull in snippets of information they can easily parse, understand, and trust, providing it to searchers or AI model users in summary or directly, with a citation.
While SEO relies on getting searchers to your website to convert them, GEO ensures the valuable information they’ve been served has your brand or website attached. That way, you’ll build trust, increase branded visibility, and reach users, even if they never visit your site.
So, How Do You Improve Both SEO and GEO?
The good news is you don’t need two separate content strategies. You just need to make some smart adjustments.
1. Write Clearly, Structure Smartly
AI models love structured content, like headings, summaries, and concise answers. The easier your content is to break apart and understand, the more likely it is to be quoted. Use intros, subheadings, and simple takeaways. Think of each section as something that could stand on its own in an AI response. Use short paragraphs, clean subheadings, and summaries AI can lift directly. If it reads well aloud, it probably reads well to a machine, too.
2. Prioritize Originality and Firsthand Insight
Generative engines favor unique, verifiable content, similar to Google’s EEAT policy. GEO rewards original thought more than rehashed keywords, so don’t just throw your draft (or even worse, generate the entire draft) in Surfer SEO and call it a day.
Share proprietary data, firsthand experiences, expert quotes, or anything that sets your page apart from regurgitated blog filler. That way, it’s memorable and link-worthy, helping to increase your reach and backlink profile.
3. Increase Your Discoverability Across Platforms
AI tools often pull from Reddit, Quora, YouTube, news articles, and interviews, not just your website. If your brand is active in those spaces, it adds credibility and expands the surface area where AI might find and reference your expertise. If possible, consider becoming active on platforms your audience uses. It’ll help you reach more customers and add more surface area for AI to rope in your brand.
4. Keep Doing the SEO Work
Backlinks, page speed, schema, internal linking, and all the usual SEO best practices are still 100% necessary. In fact, many generative engines weigh high-ranking pages more heavily when deciding what to pull in. By maintaining your traditional SEO work, you make your content more discoverable for humans and bots. After all, reaching a top position usually means you’ve earned some trust with searchers. Think of SEO as your foundation and GEO as your amplification. Together, they ensure your content ranks and resonates.
The Importance of Staying Up To Date With Search
The role of SEO has shifted from simply driving clicks to building lasting trust and visibility across every channel where your audience searches. Today, showing up in AI answers matters just as much as ranking in traditional SERPs. The more often your content appears—whether in a Google result, a chatbot summary, or a voice assistant reply—the more authority your brand earns. Even without a click, you’re making an impression that compounds over time.
When done right, SEO and GEO work together. Strong rankings build credibility, and that credibility increases your chances of being cited by AI. It’s a feedback loop that makes your brand easier to find and easier to trust. And best of all, it doesn’t take that much work to adapt your SEO strategy to become GEO-friendly.
Ready to build a strategy that performs in both search engines and AI assistants? At Watt Media, we help brands future-proof their visibility: on the page, in the prompt, and everywhere your audience is looking.