Ranking in search engines like Google is still essential for businesses to reach their audience in the right moment, but the mainstreaming of generative AI tools presents a new channel that brands must get right – GEO.
In September 2024, OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit over 3.1 billion monthly visits, overtaking Microsoft search engine Bing’s traffic for that month (1.8 billion visits). It’s an amazing achievement for a relatively new player, but it’s also no surprise.
If you need to do some research for work – do you open Google as your starting point? What about writing a strongly worded email to your internet provider, or crafting a cover letter for a job application? If you’re not using ChatGPT for these tasks, you are wasting your valuable time. Even the most basic internet users will notice the helpful AI overviews at the top of Google search results, these punchy summaries answer your question and throw in supportive citation links.
There’s no denying the shift in information consumption. Users are turning to generative AI for summarised answers, reducing the need to click through multiple links. This fundamentally changes how brands gain visibility. The mainstreaming of AI is afoot, and zero-click search is here.
As a content marketer, my team and I spend a fair part of our week on SEO efforts for clients to help them rank in Google and build authority online for their specialist topics. But lately, we’ve been evolving our services to include tactics that increase accuracy, visibility and authority for our clients on Generative AI platforms.
We have started treating AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini as top-of-funnel discovery engines, that have the potential to drive referral traffic and influence purchase decisions and brand perception based on their responses.
If you haven’t thought about generative search as a channel, don’t panic. GEO is still an emerging field, and early adopters can gain a competitive edge by being among the first to optimise. However, if your competitors actively publish comparison content and you don’t – they control the narrative, can highlight their strengths and your perceived weaknesses, even if misrepresented or based on outdated information.
Keep reading for everything we know so far about GEO and its impact on content marketing.
What is GEO?
You might have heard of GEO – or maybe AISEO, AIO or LLM SEO. We’re keeping things simple for now… Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is a major development that’s changing the way people search and interact with information online. GEO is all about creating content with AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI overviews in mind.
GEO positions your brand to appear in AI-generated results when audiences search for queries related to your product, service or expertise. When AI platforms cite your brand as a source, it significantly boosts your credibility and trustworthiness.
What’s the difference between SEO and GEO?
Simply put: Generative AI doesn’t just list websites like traditional search engines, they generate comprehensive answers by pulling information from multiple sources.
SEO content is structured around keywords and links, while GEO content needs to be more integrative, offering citations, stats, and a broader context that AI can utilise. For SEO, success is often measured through metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates, and time on page. GEO is about creating rich, comprehensive content centred around user search intent.
How to create a GEO strategy
Just as humans value authenticity, it appears that generative AI also has a need for high-quality, informative and accurate content (see the ‘Garbage in Garbage Out’ or ‘GIGO’ rule).
Generative AI relies on synthesising information from multiple sources. If your brand’s digital presence is thin, outdated, or inconsistent, it’s likely to be misunderstood or overlooked. We approach GEO with a mix of long-form website content (optimised brand pages that give structured clarity on who you are, what you do, and why you do it), strategic press coverage (bringing contextual relevance) and social content on community driven platforms (to provide third party validation).
When it comes to website content and brand pages, this is where the direct “answer” content resides. Content needs to be structured for AI readability, authoritative, and answer specific executive-level queries.
PR in a GEO context isn’t just about media mentions, it’s about generating authoritative, citable content in high-trust environments that AI models deem credible. Thought leadership and expert commentary is more important than ever as AI love subject matter experts, while reputation management and proactive PR helps build a strong positive narrative that can outweigh any potential negative mentions.
Social media primarily drives engagement, but for GEO, it’s also about amplifying authoritative content, showcasing expertise in a conversational, shareable format, and giving AI extra digital touch points of your brand that they can corroborate and validate information from, including user sentiment and insights.
You must think about these channels in tandem and see the bigger picture you are building for your brand or business – at Thinking Hat, this channel integration has long been best practice, now we wrap a layer of deliberate logic around this to cater to real audiences and the AI platforms they use.
How do I create website content for AI platforms?
For your brand or business to appear in Generative AI, it needs to be optimised not only for keywords, but for how well it can be integrated into AI-generated responses. Here are a few tips:
Citation optimisation
Strategically incorporate references from authoritative and credible sources that can significantly increase your content’s trustworthiness. Well-chosen citations can increase the likelihood that your content will be featured in generated responses.
Statistical integration
Stats play a crucial role as AI-driven engines often look for data to create compelling, fact-based responses. The integration of up-to-date, accurate, and contextually appropriate statistics can help your content stand out in AI-generated results, as these engines use data to substantiate the responses they generate.
Contextual relevance
With GEO, contextual relevance is even more critical because AI-driven engines generate responses based on a holistic understanding of the query. This means structuring your content in a way that flows logically, answers potential follow-up questions, and provides a comprehensive response to the initial query.
Unlike SEO, GEO is less about standing out on a list of search results, and more about becoming a part of the answer itself.
How do I measure the impact of my GEO stratgey?
There are no official tools yet (e.g. from Google) to show what people ask, or your brand visibility. For now, we use manual checks across users and devices to monitor visibility and accuracy. We also look at GA4 and lead generation forms to see where users on clients’ sites or platforms come from.
If you want to discuss adding GEO to your marketing mix to get ahead of the curve, email me at claire@thinkinghatpr.com and we can schedule a coffee consultation.
Want something a little different? Read Liv Cox’s guide on how to diversify your social media strategy.
