Why Brands Need Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and SEO
Apr 30, 2025|Read time: 7 min.
Key Points
- Why do brands need GEO? Because AI search has altered the way audiences engage online and created a connection gap for brands.
- Brands should add GEO to their existing SEO strategy to cover the gap and benefit from the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches.
- With integrated GEO and SEO, you have a greater impact on visibility, share of voice, narrative control, and your reputation across organic search and AI tools.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) burst onto the digital marketing scene over the last 12–18 months. This was due to the speed of AI adoption and the recognition by savvy marketers that brands need a foothold in the artificial intelligence space.
With visitor numbers reaching into the billions (AI Overviews already broke 1 billion monthly users back in 2024), the power of AI to engage audiences into the future is crystal clear. This also means brands need to understand their visibility in these spaces and how their narratives are being represented.
But what does it mean to be present in AI experiences? How does GEO even do that? And how should something new like GEO fit into existing marketing priorities like search engine optimization (SEO)? We’ll answer these questions and more in this article.
The importance of generative engine optimization (GEO)
Generative AI search is now essentially a new channel despite its appearance as a closed system that cannot be influenced. The truth is that AI narratives and sources can be influenced by brands and web content with the right optimization strategies.
We’ve even seen a correlation between traditional SEO best practice implementation and content being included in AI answers, or as sources. Organic search efforts like E-E-A-T and trustworthiness measures, high-quality content creation, technical SEO, long-tail strategy, and schema markup seem to matter to AI and Google Search.
But even a well-rounded search engine optimization strategy alone cannot address the entire generative AI search space. A targeted strategy is needed to optimize content and other assets for AI and that’s why GEO emerged.
Not only does GEO impact AI’s comprehensive responses, it also enables marketers to constantly tap into the AI search landscape to detect performance, find gaps, and refine many aspects of their digital marketing strategy.
GEO vs. SEO: The basics
Simply put, generative engine optimization builds and distributes content designed to influence sentiment and brand visibility in AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews and AI mode, and the growing list of platforms.
Traditional search engine optimization does something similar but focuses on content visibility and rankings in search engines, specifically Google (because it remains dominant), but also Bing and others.
In some sense, GEO is a type of SEO hyperfocused on AI platforms. But generally, SEO doesn’t include GEO and lacks the tools needed for deep AI analysis. Also, insight from the analytical side of GEO can help improve SEO performance.
Crossover optimizations
One reason for the shifting boundaries between SEO and GEO is intent. Search engines want to help you as much as possible with relevant search engine results pages, or SERPs. AI wants to do the same thing with generated responses to user queries.
Search and AI, therefore, value content designed to help an audience solve problems. That’s why ranking well in search with helpful content can also mean showing up as a citation in AI answers. This is especially true when AI is built directly into search, like with Google’s rising AI Overviews, making the crossover even more apparent.
On the other hand, SEO performance doesn’t guarantee AI-generated response controllability or content inclusion in AI-powered search. It’s not uncommon for AI Overviews to cite sources that meet user intent despite poor ranking performance and other SEO violations.
Without GEO strategy and its ability to measure things like sentiment, narrative control, and visibility in AI tools, it can be difficult to pierce the ‘black box’ of AI algorithms and access this more nuanced performance data.
To build our GEO approach, we invested in creating a data science team of technical experts across disciplines like engineering, computer science, and data science — the foundation of AI itself. Combined with decades of SEO experience, integrating GEO with SEO is second nature for Terakeet.
Where SEO and GEO overlap — and where they don’t
| GEO & SEO: Similarities |
|---|
| Both are brand visibility and reputation-focused |
| Both require high-quality, UX-friendly web content |
| Both can reveal consumer intent insights and inform your entire marketing spend |
| AI and search engines reach billions of users |
| Both require keyword research, constant analysis, and iteration to achieve success |
| GEO & SEO: Differences |
|---|
| GEO specifically targets AI and AI-driven search engines, SEO specifically targets search engines |
| GEO’s main metric is controllability*, SEO’s is ranking |
| GEO requires AI model expertise |
| GEO impacts the narrative and visibility in AI tools output, SEO increases URL ranking in search |
| GEO requires alignment with natural language processing (NLP) and large language model (LLM) format needs, SEO focuses on search algorithm guidelines, backlinks, and more |
*Learn how we helped a top executive achieve 94% average controllability in AI tools.
Integrating GEO and SEO into your marketing strategy
The ideal approach prioritizes the SEO strategy spend, but brings in the new and unique discipline of GEO. It’s important to benefit from the symbiotic relationship between SEO and GEO.
With both, you’re taking care of your visibility and share of voice in Google Search plus asserting your narrative, solidifying your reputation, and becoming a source in AI tools. You’re also able to supplement audience search query data with user and sentiment data from AI platforms.
This provides a clear picture of your total brand opportunities, gaps, and how to win across rank, controllability, visibility, and growth. If data from SEO can inform all of your marketing efforts, adding a fresh flow of AI-derived insights provides even more to work with.
It’s also vital to bring in other specialties like content strategy, technical and UX/UI, and data analytics for even more impact. That’s why online brand enablement is so effective and why SEO and GEO are part of it. The end result is maximum online presence.
Making GEO and SEO work together
While there’s a generous overlap between GEO and traditional SEO, brands need to implement both intentionally to unlock maximum value. It’s important to consider the overlap but also the gaps that exist between SEO and GEO. The aim is a synergistic system that achieves brand goals.
Expand your keyword research
The first aspect is upgrading your keyword research to go beyond big terms and traffic. GEO deals with the more conversational and contextual queries (often long-tail) and answers from users and AI, respectively.
Say you’re planning a new article on an industry topic. Think beyond just ranking in search engines and do your due diligence in AI platforms. Ask relevant questions, assess the answers, and use that insight to inform the article’s content. At scale, this approach satisfies search and AI algorithms.
Align your content strategy
Again, think beyond just creating content for Google and actively work in helpful, detailed, contextually appropriate content designed to maximize reader benefit. We know AI is relentlessly focused on helping users — mirror that in your content and you’ll not only boost SEO metrics, you’ll also get pulled in AI citations. And we know AI-cited articles receive more clicks.
Optimize everything
High-efficiency GEO and SEO rely on a complete optimization picture. It’s not just about content optimization. Brands need to invest in holistic optimization across their digital assets. That means content optimization, technical optimization, UX and UI optimization, plus data-driven strategy management. Another reason online brand enablement is key — it does it all.
Get insightful
AI and search are not only channels that you need to be present in and achieve high visibility. They’re also excellent learning opportunities when you focus on gleaning insights. AI platforms are a strong measure of what your audience actually wants and how you can help.
We’ve called Search the world’s most honest focus group. Well, AI Overviews (for example) extend the metaphor and bring even more depth and detail. That’s one reason we’ve invested so much into technology that can access insights from search, AI, and beyond.
Looking toward the future of search
With the relationship between GEO and SEO defined, brands need to shift from the traditional search focus into an approach that combines the two.
Done right, the symbiotic nature of these strategies not only boosts the other but offers more data and audience insights that can transform your entire digital marketing strategy. Brands that seek to lead or maintain their market position in the AI era have a powerful tool in GEO.
