Over the past couple of years, a growing share of your potential customers have stopped typing searches into Google — they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini directly instead. If your site is only optimized for Google, you become invisible to that share of traffic, even if you rank well in traditional search results.

That's where GEO comes in.

SEO: optimizing for search engines

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the discipline everyone already knows: structuring your site, its tags, content and links so it appears near the top of Google's results. It's foundational work that takes time, but its rules have been broadly stable for the past 20 years.

GEO: optimizing for generative AI

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the equivalent of SEO, but for generative AI. The goal is no longer to appear in a list of blue links — it's to be cited as a source when an AI answers a question, for example "which agency should I choose to build my website?"

In practice, GEO calls for:

  • Clear, well-structured content that directly answers specific questions (AI tools favor crisp answers, not marketing fluff)
  • Structured data (schema.org) that helps AI understand exactly what your page says
  • Factual, verifiable information — exact prices, clear guarantees — rather than vague claims
  • Being mentioned on other sites, similar to inbound links in classic SEO

Why you need both

SEO and GEO aren't at odds — they complement each other. Content that's well-structured, factual and honest serves both goals at once: it appeals to Google and it's easy for an AI to understand and cite. Conversely, vague or overly "sales-y" content hurts both.

In short: stop thinking "I have to choose between SEO and GEO." Good content that's structured, honest and precise checks both boxes at once. It's how you write that matters, not which tool you're targeting.

What this means in practice for a business website

On a company website, this translates into simple things: prices shown clearly instead of "quote on request" everywhere, an FAQ that genuinely answers the questions people actually have, pages that focus on one clear topic instead of mixing everything together, and technical tags (like structured data) set up correctly from the moment the site is built — not bolted on afterward.

This is still a young field, and no one has a guaranteed magic formula. But the basics — structure, clarity, honest content — never go out of style, whether you're writing for a human, a search engine, or an AI.