When I started in SEO, GEO wasn’t even a thing. Now, it’s quite possibly even more popular than SEO, and it’s only going to keep growing. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation around GEO right now, so I want to share 5 things you should know about GEO to keep your site at the top of the pack.
1. GEO is not a black box or woo-woo magic.
Just like SEO, social media management, or Google ads, GEO has rules and the best results are achieved by playing by those rules and staying consistent. If an agency tries to keep an air of mystery around GEO, or talks about how fast you can get results, that’s a red flag. They should be able to explain in simple terms what needs to be done, how they'll do it, and show examples of it working for their other clients.
There are no hacks or shortcuts to instantly dominate AI search. If you try to cheat the algo overlords, you’re gonna get banished (and not in a cool way).
2. GEO and SEO are siblings, not distant cousins.
Both Google and AI have an appetite for unique, quality content. Google will read your whole article (but try to keep it at an 8th grade reading level), while an LLM will skim until it finds what it wants, and then dip. In cyber, we see that LLMs and search engines tend to cite companies mentioned on G2, Gartner, Expert Insights, etc.
We’re also seeing that while Google has been using schema for years, it’s had a glow-up lately and is especially useful for GEO. In a similar vein, structuring tricks that help Google understand your site like FAQ, summaries, bulleted lists, etc. are working incredibly well for AI search too.
The most important similarity though is that SEO and GEO are won the same way: consistent effort over a long period of time.
3. Llms.txt is worth adding to your site.
Llms.txt is a plain-text file at your site's root that gives AI models a curated map of your most important content, similar to how Google uses sitemap.xml. We’re seeing adoption of llms.txt by big players like Anthropic, Cloudflare, Stripe, and Vercel, which is a good indicator of its importance.
The standard is new enough that there's not a ton of evidence that having one gets you cited more often. But, it’s a good future-proofing tactic. We already have a handful of case studies where Google, GPTBot, or ClaudeBot have accessed llms.txt files, and we can expect this number to go up.
Plus, creating one takes maybe 30 minutes and costs nothing to add. Who doesn’t love an easy win?
4. GEO should feel like a natural extension of your other marketing efforts.
GEO relies heavily on other marketing channels. For example, the more brand mentions you have across the internet (PR, anyone?), the more likely you are to be cited by an LLM. Positive reviews, original research, and published videos all also directly influence GEO mentions.
It’s essentially impossible to have a successful GEO campaign in a vacuum without help from other marketing channels. It’s a team sport.
5. GEO is not a separate service from SEO.
Similar to how both local SEO and global SEO are built on the same fundamentals, GEO is built on top of SEO, not beside it. Research shows there's an 81% chance AI is pulling its answer from a page that's already ranking in the top 10 on Google. Which means if your SEO isn't solid, your GEO won’t have much to stand on. And the actual work that drives GEO, like structured data, FAQ content, authority, site speed, etc? That’s SEO work, and always has been.
If an agency is trying to sell you GEO as a separate service from SEO, ask them how that's supposed to work.
