GEO vs SEO

SEO Approach

Create a content plan based on keyword research, traffic data, and competition.

GEO Approach

Create a content plan which includes publishing in-depth content about your business, your services, and why you are unique. Focus on establishing authority and a unique point of view.

Common Ground

High-quality, in-depth content benefits both SEO and GEO by enhancing credibility.

SEO Approach

Ensure content is scannable, well-structured, and follows SEO best practices for readability. Use Schema markup for inclusion in Google featured snippets.

GEO Approach

Use headers, concise paragraphs, bullets, bold important phrases. Use Schema markup to aide AI in understanding your content.

Common Ground

Good structure and schema markup improve visibility in both SEO and GEO.

SEO Approach

Use keyword phrases and semantically related terms naturally within the content.

GEO Approach

Keywords still help establish relevance but focus more on contextual signals and semantic understanding. Pay attention to word proximity for key terms because AI looks at word patterns.

Common Ground

Both require an understanding of user intent and the type of information users seek.

SEO Approach

Authority is built through authoritative backlinks and online reputation.

GEO Approach

Authority is built through brand mentions, particularly by authoritative sources in the field.

Common Ground

Both value authority, but GEO emphasizes recognition from trusted sources rather than just links.

SEO Approach

Use images, infographics, and videos to engage users and improve rankings.

GEO Approach

Publish multimedia to help AI engines reference or include content more effectively.

Common Ground

Both benefit from multimedia elements to enhance content appeal and engagement.

SEO Approach

Build FAQs to help users and get your question/answers featured in Google's Q/A modules.

GEO Approach

Build FAQs to make it easy for AI to use your questions and answers and refer traffic to you.

Common Ground

FAQs are good for both and generally helpful for your customers and customer service staff.

SEO Approach

Organic traffic, domain authority, search rankings, click-through-rate, backlinks, brand mentions.

GEO Approach

Referral traffic from AI tools. Brand mentions. Test AI search tools to see what kinds of queries trigger brand mentions.

Common Ground

You can track referral in both traditional and AI search, but there is a lot that is trackable in SEO that is not in AI Search. Though there are some good tools coming out for tracking AI such as Rankscale.ai.