How to integrate GEO with SEO

Generative AI is rewriting the SEO playbook.

The days of simply ranking high and earning clicks are fading and being replaced by a zero-click reality where the search journey is fragmented across multiple touchpoints.

Google still dominates the search market, but AI-powered answer engines have quickly emerged as alternative discovery tools.

ChatGPT alone has seen impressive growth, doubling its users in the past six months alone. As of February 2025, it has 400 million weekly active users.

Visibility now comes down to being a part of the answers users see – wherever they search – and whether or not they click.

Some might say it’s time to prepare for the future of search. 

But let’s get real. That future isn’t coming; it’s already here.

This article shows how AI-driven search differs from traditional search and how to blend generative engine optimization (GEO) with SEO to stay ahead. 

• What GEO is and how it works with SEO.
• How AI search is different from traditional search.
  • Why rankings don’t guarantee visibility in AI search.
  • Why authority is built through brand mentions, not backlinks.
• How LLMs learn and predict responses.
  • How AI retrieves real-time information to ground responses with RAG.
• Optimizing retrievability: Presence + recognition + accessibility.
• The multichannel reality of GEO.
• How to integrate GEO with SEO.
  • On-page SEO.
  • Off-page SEO.
  • Technical SEO.
• GEO + SEO: Welcome to your new playbook.

What GEO is and how it works with SEO

GEO is the process of optimizing an entity (whether that’s your brand, products, concepts, people, or ideas) to appear in AI-generated responses across features and tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity.

SEO and GEO are partners, each playing distinct yet interconnected roles:

• SEO provides the foundational layer for discoverability in search engines while evolving strategically for visibility in AI search.
• GEO blends on-site content strategies with efforts that extend beyond your website. It focuses on establishing brand recognition and a consistent presence across influential datasets, authoritative industry sources, and trusted knowledge hubs that shape AI’s training data and retrieval sources.

Together, SEO and GEO form a cohesive strategy that aims to position your brand and related entities in the spaces that AI turns to for information.

How AI search is different from traditional search 

Traditional search revolves around three core stages:

• Crawlability: How effectively search engines can access and read your content.
• Indexability: Whether your content meets the criteria to be stored in their index.
• Rankability: How well your content can rank within traditional search results.

It’s a familiar dance that SEOs have mastered over the years. 

But AI-driven search introduces a new one into the mix: retrievability.

Retrievability represents how effectively AI can access, interpret, and prioritize information about your brand when forming responses.

As Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications at Wix Studio, explains:

“As SEOs, we do not need to abandon the tactics we’ve always relied on, but we do need to evolve them. Where in the past we looked at crawlability, indexability, and stopped at rankability, we now need to add in retrievability. That is, taking extra steps to make sure that core information about our brands is available, accessible, and prioritized for LLMs.”

– “Investigating ChatGPT Search: Insights from 80 Million Clickstream Records,” Semrush Blog

Retrievability matters because it directly influences whether your brand appears within AI’s answers – answers that aren’t dictated solely by traditional rankings.

Let’s unpack exactly why traditional rankings alone aren’t enough to secure visibility in AI search.

Why rankings don’t guarantee visibility in AI search

If your goal is visibility within generative AI responses, it’s time to shift your thinking away from traditional “ranking.”

Many brands still assume that ranking at the top of traditional search results automatically means visibility within generative AI models.

But the reality is that it’s not that simple.

Sure, ranking well in search engines still matters, especially for search-powered large language models (LLMs) like Perplexity, ChatGPT search, and features like Google’s AI Overviews.

But ranking alone won’t guarantee visibility in AI search.

Why? Because LLMs don’t rank the way traditional search engines do.

Instead, they build responses dynamically by recognizing patterns in context and making connections between words, ideas, and entities.

This pushes us to rethink what “authority” really means in an AI-first landscape.

Why authority is built through brand mentions, not backlinks

For years, SEO has focused heavily on backlinks as the go-to method of building authority.

High-quality links have acted as signals of trust, credibility, and relevance, directly influencing your search rankings.

They still hold value in the right contexts. But the rules of authority have fundamentally changed.

AI recognizes authority through contextual relevance, entity associations, and consistent brand mentions in authoritative sources.

In short, mentions in influential conversations now carry tremendous weight.

To fully grasp why brand mentions are so powerful, let’s dig into exactly how AI models generate their responses.

Dig deeper: AI optimization: How to optimize your content for AI search and agents

How LLMs learn and predict responses

LLMs build their foundational knowledge by ingesting vast amounts of content from various unstructured data sources.

During training, they identify patterns based on how often and in what contexts specific words and entities appear together.

When you ask an LLM a question, it’s not searching through a database of facts.

Instead, it uses its understanding of entities to predict what words should logically come next in the response.

For example, let’s say you ask an LLM:

• “What is Nike known for?” 

The model processes your query and references patterns it has learned about the entity, “Nike” – specifically, words that commonly appear alongside the brand in relevant contexts.

It then dynamically generates a ranked set of possible following words or phrases, each with an estimated probability.

Hypothetically, here’s how this might look:

Because “innovation” has the highest probability in this example, the model might respond with:

• “Nike is known for innovation.”

But slight changes in wording or context could shift the response to:

• “Nike is known for sportswear.”
• “Nike is known for athletic footwear.“
• “Nike is known for sneakers.”
• “Nike is known for branding.”

Each response AI gives is generated dynamically, guided by the context of the query, and learned probability patterns.

Because Nike consistently appears alongside words like “innovation,” “sportswear,” and “branding” in trusted, authoritative contexts within training data, these associations are reinforced over time.

The takeaway for your brand? 

Frequent, contextually relevant mentions alongside core products, concepts, and well-known entities enhance your brand’s recognition in LLMs.

Ultimately, when these mentions accumulate across influential industry discussions and widely referenced datasets, they help shape how AI understands your expertise.

If you’re curious to dive deeper into the details of how ChatGPT makes its predictions, I highly recommend Stephen Wolfram’s excellent explanation in “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?” 

Rand Fishkin recently shared it on LinkedIn, and it’s a fantastic resource that reinforces exactly why strategic mentions carry so much weight in AI-driven search.

Dig deeper: How to implement generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies

How AI retrieves real-time information to ground responses with RAG

Some advanced LLMs go a step further by integrating their foundational knowledge with real-time information through retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Think of RAG as a research assistant for AI.

The model uses its foundational knowledge to form the initial context and then dynamically retrieves real-time insights from web search indexes or other external databases. 

The sources they prioritize typically include:

• Timely and authoritative news websites.
• Reputable industry publications.
• Established knowledge platforms.
• Discussion forums.
• Knowledge graphs.

As such, optimizing your brand’s presence across these sources is essential for influencing how your information is retrieved and shaping the responses generated by AI.

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Optimizing retrievability: Presence + recognition + accessibility

Retrievability is the key to visibility in AI search. It defines how well AI can access, interpret, and prioritize your brand’s information when generating responses. 

This optimization framework will guide your GEO strategies and position your brand for success.

Presence

• Ensuring your brand is consistently mentioned in the right places and contexts that shape AI’s training data and retrieval sources.

Recognition

• Building credibility through consistent, contextually relevant mentions, clear associations with trusted entities, and strategic content so AI sees your brand as a recognized, authoritative voice within your space.

Accessibility

• Structuring your brand’s information both on your website and across the web so AI can easily retrieve and prioritize core information about you and your entities when generating responses.

The multichannel reality of GEO

Building your brand’s presence and recognition requires close collaboration across digital marketing teams. 

No single channel wins AI search alone.

To position your brand strategically wherever influential discussions are happening in your niche, SEO teams need to work alongside:

• Owned media.
• Earned media.
• Digital PR.
• Branding.
• Social media.
• Creative teams.

Each discipline plays a vital role in shaping visibility. And real success happens when every channel works toward a common goal.

Bottom line: GEO is a team sport.

How to integrate GEO with SEO

Now that we’ve explored how LLMs learn, predict responses, and why retrievability matters, let’s dive into exactly how to weave these insights into your existing SEO pillars.

On-page SEO

Integrating GEO into your on-page SEO strategy doesn’t mean throwing out everything you already know.

All that great advice about creating relevant and valuable content for your audience still rings true.

Good content has always been about the user first, and that’s not going away.

But your content now has another audience: the AI that powers generative search.

Think of your website as a training ground. 

Your content isn’t just ranking and engaging readers anymore; it’s actively teaching AI about your expertise, your relevance, and your role within larger industry conversations.

The strategy expands to emphasize structured, entity-driven content that influences how AI recognizes and references your brand.

Here’s your playbook for evolving your on-page SEO strategy:

  Build topical authority with entity-rich content

• Pinpoint core topics and essential entities in your space.
• Structure content into clear, interconnected topic clusters around comprehensive pillar pages.
• Produce pieces to fill gaps in the content across your site and within the industry, ensuring you cover the entire search journey.
• Reference widely known entities, concepts, and experts in your niche to strengthen recognition.

  Reinforce entity relationships through strategic linking

• Internally link content to strengthen how AI associates related entities.
• Externally link to and cite authoritative, AI-recognized sources to build contextual associations.

  Create contextually relevant content aligned with evolving user intent

• Regularly review AI-generated responses around your core topics to identify shifts in user intent and context.
• Identify and close any content gaps based on AI’s current understanding of these topics.
• Refine and expand existing content to clearly, concisely, and comprehensively address user queries and intent.
• Create content optimized for long-tail queries and natural, question-based language.

  Establish thought leadership through research-driven insights

• Publish unique insights, original research, or data-backed reports to inspire citations and mentions.
• Cite reliable, credible sources in your content to reinforce trustworthiness.
• Highlight expert quotes and opinions clearly to strengthen the authority of your insights.

  Structure content for AI processing

• Use clear content formats like FAQs, bullet points, step-by-step instructions, and tables.
• Prioritize straightforward, concise, and natural language for efficient processing and retrieval.
• Use simple sentence structure when discussing your brand’s entities and expertise to clearly define associations.

  Keep your content timely and relevant

• Track real-time discussions on platforms like Reddit, Quora, social channels, and niche forums.
• Regularly update content to reflect trending topics, emerging questions, and shifting industry conversations.
• Determine the queries triggering search in hybrid LLMs and prioritize keeping that content fresh.  

Dig deeper: How to optimize your 2025 content strategy for AI-powered SERPs and LLMs

Off-page SEO

Integrating GEO into your off-page SEO strategy takes a fresh approach to building authority and recognition across the web. 

It’s like being at the right party with the right people. 

When your brand consistently shows up in the right contexts alongside well-known industry concepts and established entities in your space, AI begins to recognize you as a credible player in those discussions.

Here’s your playbook for evolving your off-page SEO strategy:

Identify and target AI-trusted sources in your niche

• Figure out where your audience and AI overlap. Think major industry websites, trusted niche publications, authoritative forums, and influential communities.
• Prioritize earning contextual brand mentions in these key spaces to directly shape how AI recognizes your relevance and authority.
• Stay actively involved in these discussions to continually reinforce your brand’s position as a trusted industry voice.

  Use digital PR to influence the conversations that shape AI’s understanding

• See which publications AI consistently references for your target topics and queries, and intentionally pursue mentions in those spaces.
• Build genuine relationships with journalists, influential bloggers, and respected voices in your niche who drive meaningful industry conversations.
• Produce insightful, original research or thought leadership content designed to naturally earn citations and reinforce your authority in spaces AI trusts.

Maintain consistency in brand representation across all channels

• Ensure your brand messaging, descriptions, and associations are consistent everywhere your brand is mentioned across the web.
• Reinforce clear and repeated associations with key industry entities, topics, and concepts to help AI clearly understand who your brand is and why you matter.

Strengthen your Knowledge Graph presence

• If your brand meets notability criteria, optimize your Wikipedia presence to ensure content accuracy and reference credible external sources.
• Regularly update Wikidata entries with precise, detailed information to clarify your brand’s connections to related entities and topics.
• Actively manage your Google Business Profile to solidify your brand’s structured presence and credibility within Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Dig deeper: When and how to use knowledge graphs and entities for SEO

Proactively engage in topical and real-time conversations

• Join timely, relevant conversations happening right now across influential forums like Reddit, Quora, niche forums, and social channels.
• Monitor these spaces regularly to quickly identify opportunities and add valuable, relevant perspectives.
• Position your brand at the center of emerging trends and conversations that AI references.

Continuously track, learn, and adapt your strategy

• Monitor how your brand appears in AI-generated content to track your visibility and the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Regularly refine your off-page approach based on what you learn and quickly adapt to shifts in how AI perceives your brand.

Dig deeper: Reactive PR & AI – How to capitalize on trending topics faster

Technical SEO

Integrating GEO into your technical SEO strategy doesn’t require reinventing the wheel.

The core technical principles that have always mattered just need to be fully optimized for how AI retrieves and processes information.

Your website’s technical structure should act as a clear road map, making it effortless for both AI and your audience to understand your expertise and access your most valuable insights.

These best practices have long supported search visibility, but they’re now non-negotiable in a world where AI models dynamically process content, prioritize structured data, and retrieve real-time insights.

Here’s your playbook for evolving your technical SEO strategy:

Keep data simple and clear

• Use straightforward HTML, limiting complex JavaScript for important content.
• Write clear, descriptive metadata to highlight the content’s key topics.
• Clearly organize your content semantically, making your pages easy for AI to understand.

Use structured data to enhance entity recognition and retrieval

• Implement schema markup (Organization, Person, Product, Article) to reinforce entity relationships.
• Use structured data strategically to make key brand information easier to retrieve.
• Ensure your brand and concepts are clearly defined in markup to establish relevance.

Prioritize site speed and performance

• Optimize images and scripts, and leverage content delivery networks.
• Regularly improve Core Web Vitals, ensuring your site loads quickly and reliably.
• Enable browser caching to deliver consistent experiences.

Help AI easily crawl your content

• Explicitly allow AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) via robots.txt.
• Regularly fix crawl issues like broken links and blocked resources.
• Use structured XML sitemaps strategically to guide AI to your best content.

Optimize media assets for multimodal visibility

• Give images and videos descriptive file names and clear alt text.
• Leverage OpenGraph tags and schema markup to enhance visibility in AI previews.
• Include accurate transcripts and captions for video content to assist processing.

How to measure success in AI-driven search

One of the biggest changes with AI-driven search is how we measure success.

Traditional SEO KPIs like rankings, click-through rate, and traffic don’t fully capture what’s actually happening anymore.

People are using more nuanced, hyperspecific queries, and many of these zero-click interactions aren’t tracked through traditional methods.

Adding to the challenge, AI platforms aren’t yet transparent about how they drive visibility.

Instead of waiting on better data, it’s up to us to find new ways to measure how people see and engage with our brands in AI-powered environments.

Here’s the reality we’re facing:

• Rankings don’t capture the whole story: Queries are now hyperpersonalized, often with little measurable search volume, even when they trigger AI-generated responses. Traditional tracking doesn’t capture how your brand actually appears in these contexts.
• Traffic is dropping, but demand isn’t: Zero-click searches are lowering organic traffic, but brands are still being discovered through AI. We just have to measure differently.
• Branded searches are rising: Many people now start searches with AI tools and then head directly to Google to find brands they’ve discovered along the way. A study by Rand Fishkin highlights that over 44% of Google searches are for branded terms, which confirms that AI is reshaping, instead of replacing, traditional search habits.

Here’s your playbook for evolving your metrics to capture true GEO impact:

Look beyond rankings to impressions and visibility

• Track your presence in AI Overviews, knowledge panels, discussions, and featured snippets.
• Impressions used to feel like a vanity metric, but now they help reflect your visibility within zero-click AI-generated answers.
• Even without clicks, strong impressions indicate that your brand is surfacing exactly where your audience is discovering information.

Focus on branded engagement, not just traffic

• Monitor branded search volume, direct traffic, and returning visitors as indicators your brand was initially discovered through AI.
• A rise in branded searches shows your visibility across the search ecosystem is successfully creating demand.

Prioritize real business outcomes: leads, conversions, and revenue

• Are leads stable or increasing? Are conversions and revenue strong despite declining organic traffic?
• Steady or growing conversions signal your brand is effectively visible and influential across AI-driven discovery.

Track referral traffic from AI tools

• Set up regex filters in GA4 to capture visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others:
  • (.*gpt.*|.*chatgpt.*|.*openai.*|.*neeva.*|.*writesonic.*|.*nimble.*|.*outrider.*|.*perplexity.*|.*google.*bard.*|.*bard.*|.*edgeservices.*|.*gemini.*google.*|.*copilot.*)

• Even though AI-generated answers don’t always send direct clicks, tracking helps you identify content that’s resonating within these platforms.

Dig deeper: How to segment traffic from LLMs in GA4

Monitor AI citations and mentions

• Regularly check how your brand appears in AI-generated responses across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.
• Use automated workflows (e.g., Google Sheets + ChatGPT API) to track and analyze these references consistently at scale.

While things continue to evolve, tracking these metrics can help you clearly see how your efforts are shaping your brand’s reach and visibility.

GEO + SEO: Welcome to your new playbook

Ultimately, SEO and GEO aren’t separate games anymore.

They’re two essential halves of your brand’s visibility puzzle in an AI-first landscape. 

Your traditional SEO foundation remains strong and vital, but now it needs GEO as its partner to amplify your reach across generative search experiences.

Forget trying to “hack” AI visibility. Focus instead on building topical authority through strategic content and a strong digital identity that AI naturally gravitates toward. 

Show up authentically, consistently, and strategically in places your audience already trusts. Let AI discover you through meaningful conversations, relevant context, and valuable content.

This isn’t just optimization anymore; it’s reputation-building at scale. 

Welcome to the future of search, where being known matters more than ranking first, and staying relevant means showing up everywhere your audience (and AI) expects you to be.

Dig deeper: The new SEO imperative – Building your brand