Home / Blending GEO with SEO: A Necessity for Future-Proofing Your Online Visibility

Blending GEO with SEO: A Necessity for Future-Proofing Your Online Visibility

AI is changing how people search. Are you keeping up? Discover how to combine SEO and GEO to get your content ranked on Google and cited by AI platforms.

You type a quick question into Google and find an AI Overviews result at the top of the page. You open Bing and see a Copilot button next to the search bar. You log on to LinkedIn and encounter countless posts encouraging you to use ChatGPT to accomplish X, Y, and Z. 

Search is evolving, and AI-driven platforms are taking center stage. If your brand isn’t optimizing for both traditional search engines and AI-powered tools, you could be losing visibility — and potential customers — to competitors who adapt faster.

Why SEO Alone Is No Longer Enough

We’ve already come a long way since the days of 10 blue links on the Google results page. Paid search ads, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, local packs, product carousels, and other features slowly took over the SERP. But even with those changes, folks were still heading to Google for answers and clicking on links. 

Now, searchers are beginning to turn to other platforms. ChatGPT alone has an estimated 67.7 million monthly active users in the United States. Even for those who stay on Google, AI Overviews make it easier for searchers to get an in-depth answer without clicking off the SERP (just as Google wants). 

Ranking high on Google is no longer enough. You also need to be featured in AI Overviews and AI-generated responses on platforms like ChatGPT to build visibility, credibility, and trust — which means adding generative engine optimization to your organic strategy. 

What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

GEO is the process of optimizing content for AI-generated search results. It’s how you get your website recognized and cited by tools like Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and Chatgpt. 

Understanding GEO vs. SEO: What’s the Difference?

When optimizing for GEO and SEO, the goal is the same: to increase your brand’s online visibility, bring in traffic to your site, and generate conversions. With this shared goal, there are some common methodologies like strategic keyword placement, prioritizing engaging content, following E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness & trustworthiness) best practices, and establishing credibility and authority. 

But while SEO optimizes for ranked search results, GEO ensures Large Language Model platforms (like ChatGPT) and AI services (like Google’s AI Overviews) to synthesize and cite your content into direct responses. Because of this, there are a few key differences between SEO and GEO:

Contextualizing Content

  • SEO helps websites appear in search results by using keywords and meta tags.
  • GEO ensures content is easy for LLMs to read and incorporate into its answers.

How Information Is Displayed

  • SEO helps individual web pages rank based on how useful and trustworthy they are.
  • GEO helps LLMs pull information from multiple sources to give complete answers.

Understanding User Intent

  • SEO matches site content with keyword searches to drive clicks.
  • GEO ensures AI understands the intent of your site and content to provide contextually relevant responses.

Adapting to Algorithms

  • SEO aims to appeal to Google’s algorithm to generate and maintain rankings.
  • GEO ignores search rankings and algorithms and instead aims to make content easy for LLMs and AI programs to read, summarize, and cite.

Formatting Content

  • SEO focuses on a content hierarchy with an emphasis on headers, keywords, and descriptions to help search engines understand content.
  • GEO focuses on making sure content is accessible within the basic HTML and is organized using structured data and clear language so AI can easily read it.

Measuring Results

  • SEO tracks things like rankings, website visitors, search visibility, site indexation, and backlinks.
  • GEO tracks AI citations, referral traffic from AI platforms, and how content is summarized in AI-generated responses.

A Unified Approach: How to Optimize for SEO & GEO Together

While you should be optimizing for GEO, that doesn’t mean you can just abandon your SEO efforts. Despite the growing popularity of generative AI, Google still reigns supreme for online searches. In the U.S., Google processes approximately 16.4 billion searches per day (based on March 2025 data). Those estimated 67.7 million monthly ChatGPT users would each have to perform about 242 searches per day to reach that number. 

To maximize your online visibility, you want to continue ranking high on search engines like Google (SEO) while also expanding your reach on AI-driven platforms (GEO). This blended approach is how you can ensure your brand stays competitive as AI technology and searcher behavior evolve.  

But there’s good news: If you’re already optimizing for SEO, you have a solid foundation for GEO. A lot of optimizations for GEO are already optimizations for SEO. Here are some examples:

  • Clear content hierarchy with the most important information at the top
  • Well-structured HTML using semantic elements like <article>, <section>, and <nav>
  • Minimal reliance on JavaScript to ensure pages can fully load and function without requiring script execution
  • Essential SEO tags, heading tags (H1-H6), structured data (Schema.org JSON-LD), image alt attributes, anchor text for internal links, and optimized URL structures
  • Fast-loading pages that have efficient page speed
  • Optimized images with defined size attributes and descriptive alt text
  • Concise and readable URLs that accurately reflect the page content
  • Error-free content with no typos or formatting issues
  • Strong internal linking, ensuring logical navigation and content discoverability
  • Comprehensive schema markup applied to all (or at least key) content pages

Key Differences: Googlebot vs. AI Crawlers

While SEO and GEO share many optimization techniques, AI crawlers interact with content differently than Googlebot. Googlebot ranks and indexes pages for search results, and AI crawlers extract and summarize content for AI-generated answers. Here’s how their behaviors differ:

JavaScript Execution

  • Googlebot can process JavaScript if necessary for rendering critical content.
  • AI Crawlers ignore JavaScript entirely, extracting only raw text.

Page Speed & Core Web Vitals

  • Googlebot uses PageSpeed scores and UX factors for ranking.
  • AI Crawlers don’t rank pages but may skip slow-loading sites due to time-out limits.

Mobile-Friendliness & UX Design

  • Googlebot prioritizes mobile-first indexing.
  • AI Crawlers ignore UX and design, focusing only on text extraction.

Structured Data (Schema Markup)

  • Googlebot uses schema for rich search results.
  • AI Crawlers use structured data to better understand relationships between entities and topics.

GEO Optimization Checklist

In addition to your traditional SEO optimizations, you need to employ strategies for AI optimization. We made this quick checklist to help you get started:

  • Ensure Content Accessibility
    • Use clean HTML or Markdown for easy AI parsing
    • Structure content logically with clear headings and sections
  • Permit AI Crawlers Access
    • Update robots.txt and firewall settings to allow recognized AI crawlers (They can’t reference your site if they can’t access it!)
  • Optimize Content Delivery Speed
    • Improve server response times to ensure quick content retrieval
    • Place key information at the top of the HTML for immediate access
  • Implement Semantic Markup and Metadata
    • Apply OpenGraph tags to enhance how content appears in AI-powered social platform previews
    • Utilize Schema.org markup to help AI understand content relationships

The Future of Search and Gen AI

We’ll have to continue asking how AI will affect the future of SEO as AI technologies change daily. The key is staying current on industry changes and trends for both generative AI and traditional search. As soon as you know about an algorithm or technology update, realign your strategy to ensure your brand remains visible across all platforms. 

Stay Ahead of the Curve with GPO

Don’t let AI-driven search leave your brand behind. GPO specializes in organic search services that target both generative engine optimization and traditional SEO. Our holistic approach ensures your content excels in both arenas. Get in touch today to leverage the latest technology and maximize your search engine and generative AI visibility.

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