For the last two decades, getting found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. You optimized your pages, built some links, and waited for the algorithm to notice. That model still works. It is just no longer the whole picture.
A growing number of buying decisions now start with an AI engine — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity. Someone asks a question and gets an answer. If your business is mentioned in that answer, you exist. If it isn’t, you don’t — regardless of where you rank on page one.
This is the distinction between SEO and GEO, and most businesses have not caught up to it yet.
What SEO actually does
Search Engine Optimization is the craft of making your site legible, trustworthy, and relevant to Google’s crawlers. It covers technical hygiene (speed, structure, mobile), on-page content (keywords, headings, intent matching), and off-page signals (links, mentions, authority).
When done properly, it earns you a position on the results page for searches your potential customers are already making. It compounds over time. It does not require ongoing ad spend. It is still one of the highest-leverage things a small business can invest in.
What GEO actually does
Generative Engine Optimization is newer and less understood. The goal is to make your business quotable — legible to AI systems that synthesize answers from across the web rather than returning a list of links.
AI engines favor content that is:
- Factually clear. Specific claims, numbers, and named details get quoted more than vague positioning.
- Well-structured. Headers, short paragraphs, and logical flow help models extract and attribute your content correctly.
- Authoritative. Who you are, what you do, and where you are should be stated plainly and consistently across your site and elsewhere online.
- Machine-readable. Schema markup, structured data, and an
llms.txtfile signal to AI crawlers what your site is about.
Where they overlap and where they diverge
Good SEO and good GEO share a foundation: clear writing, honest content, a fast and well-structured site. If you have been doing SEO properly, you are not starting from zero.
Where they diverge is intent. SEO is optimized for a click — you want someone to visit your page. GEO is optimized for a citation — you want an AI to mention your business in an answer someone else is reading. The desired outcome is different, and some of the tactics follow from that.
The businesses that will have a structural advantage in the next five years are the ones that built authority for both audiences — not just the one that’s been around longer.
What this means practically
If you are a small business thinking about your online presence, the honest answer is: do not choose between them. A site built with SEO in mind is already most of the way to GEO-ready. The additional work — structured data, clearer writing, an llms.txt — is not large.
What is worth avoiding is the assumption that if you rank well on Google, you are discoverable everywhere. That was true in 2020. It is not true now.
Every website I build includes both SEO and GEO from the start. For existing sites that need it added, that is a separate engagement — but usually not a large one. If you are curious about where your site stands, get in touch.