GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

GEO and SEO: two complementary goals

SEO optimizes a site to rank in a list of clickable results. GEO optimizes content to get pulled, as is, into an answer generated by a large language model, with or without a click back to the source. Both rely on the same technical foundation: a fast, accessible, well structured, up to date site. They diverge on the end goal: SEO chases traffic, GEO chases citation and brand visibility inside the answer itself. A page can rank well on Google and still never get cited by an AI answer engine, because its wording does not lend itself to extraction. That extraction is the real target of GEO.

How to scope a GEO project

A GEO project starts with an audit of what AI answer engines already say about your company and your competitors. It continues with structuring existing content: direct answers near the top of the page, self contained definitions, verifiable facts, and structured data (schema.org) that states explicitly who you are and what you sell. A site with vague structure or fuzzy content has little chance of being cited, whatever its SEO ranking. If you are redesigning your corporate or marketing website, this is the moment to build these foundations in rather than bolt them on later, since retrofitting them onto a live site takes more work than building them in from the start.

The concrete levers of GEO

• Citable content: direct answers, self contained definitions, sourced figures, written to be lifted out of context.
• Structured data (schema.org): FAQ, HowTo, and Organization markup that states your business explicitly instead of implicitly.
• An llms.txt file: tells AI crawlers the site structure and which pages to prioritize for summaries.
• Content freshness: visible update dates, content that gets revised instead of sitting untouched for years, since answer engines tend to favor sources that show recent activity.