Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is a new way to make sure your content is found by AI tools. You can think of it as an additional layer on top of traditional search, where organisations maximise their visibility on the internet through search engine optimisation (SEO).

Generative search doesn’t lead with listing links to websites, it pulls information from those sites and summarises it for the user in digestible, natural language.  

Early indications are that people are attracted to this new form of search because of the user experience and time saved. AI Overviews (summaries) have for a while been appearing at the head of traditional Google searches. Understandably, there is intense interest from businesses in monitoring GEO and developing GEO capabilities.  

Carry on optimising

For those already doing a good job with SEO, there’s no need to panic about GEO. Many of the skills, habits and processes for doing SEO well are transferable to GEO. For example: keywords are still important. High-quality content will win out. Clarity, authority, trustworthiness, expertise and detail all still count. 

However, GEO is parsing structure, looking to information that can be summarised into coherent answers to user queries and requests. GEO loves brevity and bullet points.  

To do GEO well, you need writing expertise in house (and people who have time to learn and practise the art), or access to those skills through a content agency (like Collective Content!). 

High-performing GEO content:

• Is structured in a way that is attractive to AI – clear headings, short paragraphs and clear bullets
• Makes use of external quotations and statistics to appear authoritative
• Uses metadata that makes content even more attractive to search engines 

 

Writing for GEO 

Comprehensive articles that cover a topic in breadth as well as depth currently beat multiple shorter articles for GEO discovery. Once you have your main key word, establish a group of related words, or clusters, to build content around. 

It’s also better to use the simple language that reflects AI tools’ training. So don’t say:

“An enumeration of all UK metropolitan locales wherein the cumulative populace surpasses a count of two hundred thousand residents.” 

 Say:

“A list of all UK cities with a population over 200,000.” 

 

GEO is not eclipsing SEO

AI is changing how people work and search for information but for serious in-depth research or risk-sensitive topics, users are still going to click through to websites, so quality online content is still important.  

But GEO is certainly having an impact and all businesses that rely on online readers or viewers need to consider GEO and monitor its development.  

If you’re already smashing SEO, then getting GEO right is not a huge leap. If you’re lacking on SEO, then the advent of GEO is a spur to get up to speed on both.  

Make your content easier for AI to find, read and use. And keep testing. Type your customers’ and audiences’ questions into AI-powered platforms and see if you appear in the AI summaries. Keep testing, tracking results and adjusting. 

Stay visible during the latest sea change in search.  

And remember: ask for help. GEO won’t stand still or go away.