What to remember
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) refers to the set of practices aimed at being cited and recommended by generative AIs like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
Traditional SEO and GEO are complementary, not opposed: good SEO remains the essential foundation for being visible to AIs, which largely rely on the best-ranked content.
AIs favour structured, expert, precise, and up-to-date content — exactly what quality SEO already produces.
Being cited by a generative AI represents a major opportunity for visibility on high-stakes commercial queries.
Adapting your content strategy to GEO is now a priority for companies that want to remain visible in the next 3 to 5 years.
Imagine that tomorrow, a growing portion of your potential customers no longer type their query into Google, but ask it directly to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. "Which travel agency for Thailand?" "Which firm should I consult for my contract law issues?" More and more professionals and consumers are asking these questions to a generative artificial intelligence — and expect a direct answer without having to click on ten links.
In this new landscape, one question arises: does your business, your content, your expertise appear in these answers? This is the challenge of GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — and understanding how it works, and how it differs fromSEOtraditional, has become essential for any business that relies on digital.
SEO and GEO: two distinct logics, one common goal
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimising your content to be well positioned in the results of traditional search engines, foremost among them Google. Its operation relies on algorithms that analyse hundreds of criteria — content relevance, domain authority, user experience, quality of inbound links — to decide which pages deserve to appear at the top of the results.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is more recent. It refers to all practices aimed at ensuring that your content is selected, cited, or recommended by generative search engines — those AI systems that, rather than returning a list of links, generate a synthetic response based on numerous sources.
The ultimate goal remains the same : to be visible when a potential customer is looking for an answer to a problem you can solve. But the mechanics are different. In SEO, you aim to occupy the top positions on a list. In GEO, you aim to be the source on which an AI relies to construct its response.
How do generative AIs choose their sources ?
To optimise its presence in AI responses, one must firstunderstandhow these systems work. Large language models like GPT-4 or Gemini are trained on vast corpora of data from the web. They have "absorbed" a considerable amount of content during their learning phase. But they also incorporate, for some, real-time search mechanisms (Perplexity, ChatGPT with web browsing enabled, Google's Gemini) that allow them to consult current sources at the moment of generating a response.
In both cases — pre-trained content or real-time search — the selected sources share several common characteristics. They address the topic with accuracy and depth. They come from fields perceived as authoritative. They are well-structured, easy for a machine to "read". And they clearly answer a specific question.
These are not new criteria. They are, in fact, the same criteria that have been valued by quality SEO for several years. That is why the boundary between SEO and GEO is less clear-cut than one might think — and this is good news for those who have already invested in a serious content strategy.
What changes concretely with GEO ?
While the fundamentals remain similar, GEO does introduce important nuances in how to conceive and write content.
The first difference lies in the format of the responses. Google positions you on a query. An AI generates a response to a question. Therefore, the formulation of your content should anticipate the questions your customers ask more and respond to them in a direct and structured way. "Question-answer" formats, clear definitions, structured lists, and explicit comparisons are particularly well absorbed by AIs.
The second difference concerns authority signals. For SEO, authority is built notably through inbound links (backlinks) from other sites. For GEO, authority is more related to editorial reputation: do other sources mention your brand, your experts, your studies? Are your contents cited or referenced? This is what we call unlinked brand mentions, or "brand mentions" — a signal that is increasingly taken into account.
The third difference is the freshness of the content. AIs that have access to the web in real-time (Perplexity, ChatGPT with browsing, Google AI Overviews) favour recent and regularly updated content. An effective GEO strategy therefore involves not just producing content, but maintaining it — updating your existing articles to reflect the state of the art on each topic.
Concrete levers to optimise your content for AIs
Moving from theory to practice requires integrating several reflexes into your content strategy.
The first lever is the structuring of content with clear semantic markup. Your site should use consistent H1, H2, H3 tags that align with the questions your customers are asking. AIs analyse the structure of a page to quickly extract essential information. A well-structured article, with explicit headings and direct answers under each heading, is infinitely more "digestible" for an AI than a long, homogeneous text without hierarchy.
The second lever is the addition of structured data (schema markup). These technical tags, invisible to the reader, enrich the meaning of your content in the eyes of search engines. Schemas such as FAQ, Article, LocalBusiness, or HowTo are particularly valued, both for traditional SEO and for AI understanding of content.
The third lever is the demonstration of real expertise. AIs — like Google since its EEAT updates(Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) — favour content that comes from identifiable, qualified, and consistent sources in their field. Signing your articles, presenting your authors, linking your content to reliable sources, citing recent data: all these elements enhance the perceived credibility of your content.
Finally, the fourth lever is the optimisation for conversational queries. AI users ask natural, long questions, phrased as in a conversation. Your content must incorporate these natural formulations — this is precisely what long-tail SEO already does, but taken even further towards spoken language.
SEO and GEO: a unified strategy, not two separate projects
The good news for businesses that have already invested in their SEO is that they have already accomplished a large part of the journey towards the GEO. Quality content, regularly updated, structured, written by recognised experts and cited by other sources: this is what works for both Google and generative AIs.
What changes is the marginal approach: thinking more in terms of questions than keywords, structuring your answers even more explicitly, developing your editorial reputation beyond just backlinks, and actively monitoring your presence in the responses of major AI tools — which is becoming possible through specialised monitoring tools that are starting to emerge in the market.
GEO is not a revolution that makes SEO obsolete. It is a natural evolution that further rewards what SEO has always advocated: useful, well-constructed content by people who know what they are talking about.
FAQ
Will GEO replace SEO ? No. SEO remains fundamental, particularly because generative AIs largely rely on the best-ranked content to build their responses. Visibility in Google remains a prerequisite to being "seen" by AIs. GEO complements SEO, not replaces it.
How can I tell if my site is already mentioned by AIs like ChatGPT ? You can conduct manual tests by asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini questions about your sector and observing if your brand or content appears in the responses. GEO monitoring tools are also beginning to emerge to automate this monitoring, similar to what SEMrush or Ahrefs do for traditional SEO.
Do small businesses have a chance of being mentioned by AIs compared to large sites ? Yes, especially in specific niches and local or sector-specific queries. An AI that answers a very specific question ("best marketing agency in Andorra") can certainly mention a small structure if its content is the most relevant and well-structured for that query. Specialisation is a competitive advantage in GEO.
Should all existing content be reviewed to adapt to GEO ? Not necessarily all at once. Start with your best-performing SEO pages and articles, update them if necessary, check their structure, and add structured data if it is missing. Then, integrate GEO best practices into all new content produced.
Does GEO change the way link building is done ? It complements it. Backlinks remain important for domain authority, which is still a factor considered by AIs. But GEO adds another signal: unlinked brand mentions, that is, the times when your name or content is cited without a hyperlink. Therefore, working on your editorial reputation — interviews, contributions to media, presence in sector studies — becomes even more important.