GEO and SEO: Same Roots, New Questions

Build on SEO, do not replace it

GEO (generative engine optimisation), also called AEO (answer engine optimisation) or AI SEO, is the practice of improving how AI assistants find, understand and present your brand. It builds on classic SEO: crawlable, fast, well-structured pages with useful, trustworthy content still matter, and search-engine rankings often feed AI retrieval. What is new is the focus on being the cited, quoted source and on how your brand is described across the wider web. Be sceptical of anyone promising guaranteed placement: assistants are non-deterministic, change often, and the providers do not publish ranking factors. Google's own guidance on its AI features in Search says the same fundamentals apply and no special markup is required; check the current documentation.

Overlap and differences

Use the overlap as your base and treat the differences as experiments to measure.

Same as SEO                       Newer emphasis for AI answers
crawlable, fast, mobile-friendly   answer-first passages that can be quoted
clear titles, headings, sitemaps   consistent facts about the brand across the web
authority: links, reviews, E-E-A-T third-party mentions and comparisons that models read
structured data where relevant     measuring mention/citation rates over many prompts
No guaranteed placement either way; results vary by assistant and over time.

Treat claims with care

Be wary of "secret tricks" and of tools reporting a single "AI rank". Because answers vary run to run, honest measurement uses many prompts, repeated runs and ranges, as shown later in this course.

Quick check: How does GEO relate to classic SEO?

• It replaces everything about SEO
• It builds on SEO fundamentals and adds a focus on being quoted and described accurately
• It guarantees top placement
• It is unrelated to websites