GEO vs. SEO Explained: Which Strategy Should Your Business Focus On?
Customers find your business in multiple ways. Large language model (LLM) platforms and AI-generated responses are one of the sources that direct traffic to your website.
A significant 68% of online users rely on LLMs for gathering information and researching. Approximately 48% of online users also use LLMs for understanding news, while 42% use them for shopping recommendations. Knowing how to get noticed and quoted on these generative AI engines will provide a massive advantage as user behaviors pivot from traditional search engines.
AI has reshaped search — and businesses need generative engine optimization services to keep up. This guide covers what you need to know regarding SEO versus GEO, and which one matters for your brand.
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEOis the process of optimizing your website to improve rankings on traditional search engine results pages (SERPs), such as Google or Bing. Traditional SEO is a well-known method that includes various strategies to drive organic traffic to your website. You want busy traffic, but more importantly, traffic that engages and converts.
The Core Focus Areas of SEO
SEO is all about ranking on the first page of their search results. Here are four areas that, when improved, result in better rankings:
- Keywords: Research supports keyword-optimized content. It targets what users are searching for and the words (keywords) they’re using. If someone is looking for a doctor in their area, the relevant keyword might be “doctor in New York for joint pain.” Keywords need to be present in content headings, body copy, meta descriptions, and landing pages to show up in SERPs.
- Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to your business page. SERPs see these outgoing links as a validation of your content’s reliability, accuracy, and excellence. Backlinks need to come from other reputable, authoritative, and respected websites.
- Mobile responsiveness: Mobile devices account for 62.54% of global search traffic. When you optimize your website for various mobile screens and devices, you’ll rank higher and suit user demands.
- Page loading speeds: Aim for a page download speed of under 2.5 seconds to meet the expectations of your website visitors. Technical adjustments for SEO reduce bounce rates, which occur when people prematurely leave your website and move on to another site.
Google’s SEO standards determine who ranks highest, within the Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) guidelines. Your pages must meet these Google benchmarks for users to trust your content and business offerings. Good SEO-optimized content serves a purpose, is accurate, written for people rather than algorithms, and supported by an authoritative author.
What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
GEO is the practice of structuring and optimizing your online presence so AI models can easily interpret, contextualize, and cite your content. The purpose is to increase your visibility and citations in AI-driven recommendations from:
- ChatGPT
- Microsoft Copilot
- Gemini
- Claude
- Google AI Overviews
- Perplexity
Generative AI SEO focuses on optimizing content for AI-driven search. GEO tactics are an affordable way to increase the likelihood of AI-responses quoting you when prospective customers search for shopping recommendations, tech advice, or business opinions.
Generative engine optimization requires an alternative, but not vastly different, approach to SEO. The traditional methods still apply — keywords, backlinks, and speed. Consider strategies for AI platforms as a means of providing direct snippets of information.
Key Techniques in GEO
Optimizing for GEO means implementing new marketing solutions. Here are four strategies when adapting your website for LLMs:
- Create quality content: Relevant content with long-tail keywords meets AI search criteria for informative, to-the-point answers. For quality content, write in a natural human voice, and ensure its readability. Readers search for answers everywhere. You can help them find your business by sharing a diverse range of content types, from whitepapers to videos and infographics.
- Structure for easy AI use: Clear headings, FAQ sections, and lists are simpler for LLMs to comprehend. Content sections should stand out of context and still make sense.
- Maintain credibility standards: E-E-A-T matters more than ever with SEO and generative AI. Verified sources, statistics, and social evidence display credibility. These elements increase the likelihood of search engine AI summaries, ‘People also ask’ sections, and AI chatbot responses using your content.
- Technical aspects: Speed, sites that are easy to navigate, and structured data — or schema markups — help AI to make sense of your website.
Present your business voice across multiple channels in a clear, concise, and accurate manner. GEO goes beyond rankings, focusing on creating comprehensive content that directly answers user questions on AI search.
Key Differences Between GEO and SEO
Generative AI and SEO blur into one another. The primary goal for both is to produce high-quality content. Here are some other differences and similarities:
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) | Both SEO and GEO | |
| Primary Goal | Improve rankings on SERPs and increase organic traffic. | Optimize content for natural language processing of AI-powered generative search to enhance visibility. | Boost visibility and organic traffic to your website. |
| Targeted Areas | Traditional search engines like Google or Bing | AI-driven search engines, such as large language models that generate responses: ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. | Find users at their point of research. |
| Content Structure | Structured around keyword density, meta information, and backlinks. | Aligned with user queries by offering statistical integration, natural language keywords in context, and citations from authoritative sources. | Both require smart keyword placement and clear, easy-to-understand content, complemented by multimedia for enhanced appeal. |
| User Experience | Site speed, mobile adaptation, and an optimized website for navigation ease. | Authority, clarity, and precision must be present in answers to user questions. | User experience is a priority, from website navigation to sourcing accurate information. |
| Success Indicators | Measured through click-through rates, bounce rates, and time on page. | Assessed by impressions, frequency, and relevance of website content in AI-generated responses. | Improved traffic and engagement on your business website |
Knowing these targeted areas and intersections is key to understanding the purpose of both SEO and GEO.
Search Engines Versus AI-Driven Platforms
Google dominates nearly 90% of global search queries. AI search is gaining traction, but is still far from achieving this level of dominance. You may wonder why GEO matters then. Search traffic is expected to decline by around 25% by 2026, as people turn to AI chatbots and virtual agents.
Google search remains a prominent option while AI search is predicted to become more mainstream. LLM recommendations and SERPs both matter, so optimizing your content for SEO and SEO should remain a key part of your strategy.
The table below summarizes differences between search engines and AI-driven platforms to optimize your website presence for both:
| Traditional Search Engines | AI-Driven Platforms | |
| How They Find Information | Search engines, like Google and Bing, crawl the web using bots, build an index, and rank pages based on relevance, links, user signals, and more. Algorithms evaluate the index and match queries to pages. | AI search engines, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, often use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to gather data from sources. The model’s internal knowledge then generates answers. |
| Ranking Criteria (Simplified) | Relevance: Matches keywords in the query to indexed content. Authority: Evaluated through backlinks, domain quality, and E-E-A-T. User signals: Includes factors like click-through rate, bounce rate, and time spent on page. Freshness: Gives preference to recently updated content for trending or time-sensitive topics. Technical SEO: Includes site speed, mobile friendliness, and structured data markup. | Relevance: Considers strength of association between your brand/content and the query topic in the model’s knowledge graph. Authority: Prefers inclusion of high-quality, third-party, and well-cited sources. Clarity and structure: Favors Q&A formats, FAQs, bulleted lists, and schema that make content easier for AI to parse. Consistency and credibility: Looks at signals like reviews, awards, accreditations, and mentions that reinforce trust. Prompt sensitivity: Yields different answers depending on phrasing of the same queries, which impacts source selection. |
| Timing Impact / Freshness | Google periodically recrawls sites — changes don’t always show instantly. | Most AI engines pull more recent, real-time data. Freshness lags, and hallucinations or outdated facts sometimes appear. |
| Role of Algorithms | Google uses complex ranking algorithms with hundreds of signals, including page authority, links, content relevance, user behavior. It also uses AI elements to enhance its understanding of queries. | AI search uses large language models to interpret queries, generate natural language responses, and integrate retrieved facts. They use semantic matching and prompt engineering. |
| Type of Output | Primarily a list of linked results, featured snippets, and knowledge panels. Users click through to sources. | Direct answers, summaries, conversational responses. Some with citations or links to sources. Fewer links as output is synthesized. |
| Source Transparency | Users see exactly which website they land on. Attribution is clear — URL, domain. | Sometimes the source isn’t transparent, or AI may summarize content without exact attribution. |
| Strengths | Reliable for discovery, high coverage, and known authority signals. | Conversational, contextual, and synthesized across many sources. |
| Weaknesses | May surface outdated or irrelevant pages. Poor handling of conversational or nuanced queries. | Sometimes outputs incorrect or invented facts, called hallucinations, which lowers transparency, and reduces retrieval quality. |
Optimizing for AI search engines and Google both require producing high-quality content that humans create. Using automation to generate content for the purpose of manipulating rankings and visibility is a violation of Google’s spam policies.
Which Strategy Should Businesses Prioritize?
Distinct differences for each search engine type present your business with unique responsibility and strategy challenges.
Thankfully, SEO and generative AI work hand-in-hand. LLMs quote websites even if they rank low on Google search results. SEO best practices and SERP rankings increase your chances of AI search engines quoting you. Adopting both strategies for your business ensures maximum visibility.
SEO Value in Your Marketing Strategy
SEO remains the key focus to ensure your business is highly indexed by Google. An SEO agency assists with developing your digital strategy as part of your digital marketing plan.
Here are the top reasons why SEO should still be a part of your marketing budget:
- Delivers traffic and clicks to your website organically
- Optimizes your website for mobile users
- Improves customer experience on your webpage through navigation and speed
- Builds a positive reputation and builds brand awareness for your business
- Delivers high return on investment (ROI)
- Pairs well with paid search advertising
Bella+Canvas, a fashion company that partnered with Digital Authority Partners (DAP), saw a 43% increase in organic traffic when compared to competitors. The impact was due to an improvement in their SEO approach, which DAP tailored to client’s needs.
GEO Digital Marketing Value
An impressive 83% of users prefer generative AI engines over traditional search. The value of GEO is expected to grow as more people use verbal and written prompts on LLMs to find answers to their questions.
The digital marketing value in GEO is that it does the following:
- Increases organic visibility through quotes and recommendations made by AI tools
- Applifies trust and authority when your citations and quotes end up in AI responses
- Reduce reliance on paid advertising by prioritizing structured, high-quality content
- Future-proofs your brand as AI-search increases
- Adds a competitive advantage with early adoption
- Reinforces consistent brand representation across both traditional and AI-driven platforms
Content optimization should offer search engine ranking and provide value by directly answering user questions. Your content needs to be human-made, supported by social proof or statistics, and deliver relevant responses for readers.
Adopting Local SEO Strategies for AI Platforms
Local SEO strategies use keywords to target specific areas. Businesses with brick-and-mortar stores adopt local SEO strategies to improve their local search engine rankings. Users who search with a city or neighborhood name trigger geotargeting functions in search engines and pull results for local business pages.
Your local context matters in GEO to help generative AI prioritize reviews, answer local-specific questions, and provide information tailored to your geographic location.
10 Tips for Applying Local Optimization to AI-driven Search
Adopting local SEO tips for AI increases your area visibility. Here are ten practical ways to make sure you’re mentioned in area-specific searches:
- List your business on local online directories like Yelp, Bing Places, and Better Business Bureau.
- Manage your Google Business Profile with up-to-date information and images
- Encourage customers to review your business
- Use local keywords in headings and descriptions
- Create location-specific landing pages on your website
- Optimize for voice search with clarity and conversational language
- Build local backlinks from neighboring, authoritative businesses
- Participate in local events
- Respond to forums specific to your area
- Ensure NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) consistency across all profiles and directories.
Continuously learning about the latest trends in local search helps you optimize your website and business visibility across both traditional SEO and AI-driven search — ensuring your brand stays competitive and discoverable as search technology evolves.
Future-Proof Your Marketing Strategy with GEO and SEO
SEO and GEO share the same goal: to drive visibility and trust through high-quality content. The difference is where they optimize — SEO for traditional search engines and GEO for AI-driven platforms.
A balanced SEO and GEO marketing strategy ensures marketing materials that display expertise, trustworthiness, and authority. These complementary approaches work together to strengthen your authority, requiring excellence, transparency, and agility as the landscape continues to evolve.
Digital Authority Partners help clients realize higher ROI through SEO and GEO. Connect with our expert team for guidance in digital marketing with AI.
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