Since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in late 2022, generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has exploded in popularity and disrupted numerous industries. Unsurprisingly, this new tech is transforming how we search for information online (e.g., through Google’s Gemini-powered AI Overviews) and, subsequently, how marketers do their jobs.
As prospective clients increasingly turn to genAI tools to answer their questions, marketing professionals must ensure the content they create is optimized not only to appear in traditional search engine results pages (SERP) but also crafted with AI summaries in mind. We have entered the era of generative engine optimization (GEO).
What is generative engine optimization?
GEO is the process of fine-tuning your content to cater to genAI tools such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity, among others, according to Search Engine Land. People increasingly ask these AI tools for information instead of querying traditional search engines. In fact, by 2026, Gartner has predicted that legacy search engine volume will decrease by 25 percent as AI chatbots and virtual agents gain ground.
“Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines,” Gartner Vice President Analyst Alan Antin said in a press release. “This will force companies to rethink their marketing channels strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise.”
GEO vs. SEO: What’s the difference?
To stand out and succeed in today’s AI-powered world, modern marketing teams must prioritize GEO in addition to SEO. While both pursuits promote your brand’s visibility, they differ in key ways. Here are some notable distinctions between GEO and SEO, according to Search Engine Land and HubSpot.
- SEO is about ranking at the top of SERPs, whereas GEO entails optimizing your content for discovery by genAI tools scraping the web for answers.
- Succeeding in the realm of SEO has more to do with relevance and authority, whereas winning in the GEO space is more closely tied to your content’s structure and crawlability.
- Optimizing content for traditional search engines involves focusing heavily on keyword research. Meanwhile, optimizing for AI engines involves identifying and emulating AI-generated content architecture and citation patterns.
- To assess the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, you look at organic search metrics such as rankings for specific keywords. By contrast, to determine if your GEO tactics are working, you must measure referral traffic from genAI tools.
How to optimize your content for genAI: 5 essential GEO tactics
To ensure your company’s future success, you must develop a GEO strategy and adjust your content to increase the odds that generative AI solutions will incorporate it into their answers. Here are a few recommendations concerning how to approach generative engine optimization, according to Forbes, Search Engine Land and HubSpot. Note: This isn’t an exhaustive list of essential GEO strategies.
- Make your writing conversational, since genAI utilizes natural language processing (NLP) to respond to questions.
- Break up your text with bullets and subheadings.
- Focus on long-tail questions as target keywords and aim to answer related queries.
- Utilize structured data/schema markup to clarify context.
- Include statistics and cite authoritative sources.
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