What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Much like SEO is optimizing your website for search engines like Google or Bing, generative SEO allows your brand appear, or rank, in answers by AI tools.

As these tools gain popularity among searchers online, the topic of Generative Engine Optimization has brands scratching their heads. If you are one of these brands, keep reading to learn how your brand can gain a competitive edge with GEO!

What is Generative Engine Optimization?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing your brand to be more visible in generative AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.

Many brands already have an edge as they’ve optimized their online visibility for as much reach as possible. However, the intricacies involved in GEO have presented many new opportunities (and challenges) to websites looking for new ways to capture additional their target audience.

For example, if you are Bose or Sony and you find that your customers are seeking information about “the best noise cancelling headphones for video editing” on AI tools like ChatGPT, you’d want your products to appear in the answers ChatGPT spits out.

Being referenced by the AI model or cited as a source of the information would be the equivalent of ranking on the top of the search results in traditional Google searches.

How is GEO different than SEO?

With traditional SEO, you have many chances to appear in the top search results. The classic ten blue links give you lots of opportunity to get you near the top and your brand visible to searchers in your marketing funnel.

On the other hand, generative AI has scoured the web for recommendations, blog posts, and detailed information to produce one answer for each user’s query. Depending on the depth of these answers, there may only be a handful of referenced citations or recommended solutions to the user’s query.

The AI produces a much more personalized answer which gives you limited chances to appear in the end result.

While some of the techniques for appearing in these answer may overlap with traditional SEO, Generative Engine Optimization presents a brand new “search engine” for results.

How Generative Engine Optimization Works

So you may be wondering, “Can I appear in AI results?”

Thankfully, as a state of the art SEO company, we’ve discovered the answer is yes! SEO has always been changing, so we’ve always been on our toes for new strategies that present opportunities for our clients. And we’re proud to say that GEO is absolutely a technique brands can adopt in their new digital marketing strategies.

Here’s how!

How to rank in generative AI engines

1. Produce high quality and well structured content

All the different LLMs value expert written content that is authoritative to the questions your customers have about your products and services. Are you just writing content just for content’s sake? Filler content like this isn’t going to make the cut as LLMs have trillions of reference points to weed out low quality content.

Similarly, high quality content typically breaks down a topic in a structured way. Use headings to break up large sections of text. Use an outline to start with your content creation to do this! You may even implement schema markup to help structure this data further if your website consists of highly structured content.

If you’re used to traditional SEO, this may sound familiar! Consider Google’s EEAT ranking factor and the age old recommendation of “Make good content.”

2. Be specific and answer questions directly

Many AI queries start as a question. Producing that question with a direct answer, like you would an FAQ section on your website, gives the LLM exactly what it needs.

Generative AI operates perfectly in the question and answer model. Providing a clear answer for them gives you the best chance of being used in the LLM’s response.

With regular SEO, you may have seen something like this before in featured snippets. Google has been trying very hard to produce zero-click results for users looking for quick answers. Optimizing your site for featured snippets gives you a similar advantage with Generative Engine Optimization.

3. Build up your brand across the web

High authority sites typically are referenced across the web outside of their own website. Much like backlinks are an important ranking signal to Google, being referenced around the web can give you an edge in GEO as well.

To take this further, you can test ChatGPT with a common question to see what sources they are pulling from. If they produce a list of recommendations from a particular source like Yelp or G2, you need to be on the pages the LLM has deemed a valid source for that information.

Examine their citations or anytime they say “According to…” and try your hardest to be a recommendation on that source.

To learn more about how artificial intelligence is transforming the broader field of digital marketing, see our guide on AI in digital marketing.

Benefits of GEO

If those recommendations above sounded familiar to you, that’s because it’s also foundational to SEO! The biggest difference is that it is a little more precise.

An early advantage we’ve identified to optimizing for GEO is that it aligns very well with SEO. When you optimize for GEO, you are optimizing for SEO.

When we see how Google has changed the rules of SEO over the last twenty years, it all comes back to high quality content that answers users’ questions and is identified as an authority across the web. Although there are many tactics and strategies for doing this, that is what it all boils down to. Generative engine optimization takes this to its truest form.

Capture more visibility for your brand with GEO

As the world of search changes more and more each year, the opportunities expand as well. We love to see brands successfully implementing strategies to capture visibility, and GEO provides a new avenue to do just that.

If you need professional GEO assistance, our AI marketing agency is here to help. We’ve spent years working with clients to formulate a winning recipe for GEO as it’s usage has exploded since OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT.

In fact, we’ve built one of the first available service and tools for tracking this new endeavor. OmniSEO™ is our approach to getting your brand visible wherever your customers are searching. If gaining additional visibility for your brand is on your wishlist, get a demo of OmniSEO™ today!