EMBiz: SEO vs GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Hi, I'm Cody, Content Director at Elevate My Brand, and this is EMBiz. Today's topic is about SEO versus GEO, a topic that is really hot right now with a lot of clients asking us what is the difference and how they can optimize. 

How Does Generative Engine Optimization Differ From Traditional SEO?

So let's start with the basics of what is SEO and what is GEO?

SEO, the more traditional term, is search engine optimization. It's essentially playing well with all of Google's guidelines about how to rank well in the search results pages or search engine results pages, which is called SERPs.

GEO is a sort of newer term for generative search. So it is generative engine optimization, and that is dealing with these new AI like chatbots and LLMs like ChatGPT in order to show up better in their results. There's actually a lot more crossover between the two than you might think. So let's talk about SEO versus GEO and how you can create content that works well for both. 

First of all, we have a more comprehensive blog post on this, so feel free to go find that in our blog on our website. It goes into much more depth. But SEO essentially focuses on ranking your web pages in search engine results like Google, Bing, etc. Through things like keywords, topical relevance, backlinks, which are links from other sites to your site, etc. And Generative Engine Optimization or GEO, optimizes content to be cited and referenced in those LLMs that I talked about, like ChatGPT, et cetera. 

How to Write GEO- and SEO-focused Content

How do you optimize your content for those chatbots? Honestly, essentially the same way that you would optimize your content for SEO. So there's a lot of overlap. For instance, most ChatGPT results that they cite come from the top 10 results in Google search results, which means the first page. So if you are doing well in your SEO, most likely you're also going to be doing well in your GEO.

Focus on structure

First of all, and emphasize your content structure. So that is actually more important in GEO than in traditional SEO, because ChatGPT looks for logical structure and to be able to read through things not only and how it's technically constructed in terms of H1, H2, etc. But also does it have a logical flow? So it's less about keywords and more about is your content structured in a way that makes sense? Is it going to be structured how ChatGPT might structure in a very logical way? So focus on content structure. One of the ways you can do that, as I always recommend, create an outline before you ever actually start writing content so that you can say, does this flow well? 

Write the facts

Two, ensure factual accuracy. So you should have already been doing this forever and ever and into perpetuity, but it's more important now than ever. Not only because ChatGPT and other LLMs prioritize content that is factually accurate and backed up by other peer sites, but also we now have a bigger responsibility to ensure content accuracy and like factual accuracy. Because as chatbots look to content across the interwebs to cite and use its resources, you want to make sure that if it's looking to you that you are providing factual information. So that's a really big component. Now, that was always important, but it's even more important than ever. 

Be conversational

Third is to elevate your semantic richness. And what I mean by that is, is to be more conversational. In the past, a lot of people when they search on Google, would just search recipe, lasagna, vegetarian. They would just put those three words. But now, as we go into ChatGPT and even voice search, which is a whole other conversation, people are using more semantically rich searches. So they may say, what is a recipe for lasagna that is vegetarian? Or give me a vegetarian lasagna recipe. So you want to use more semantic richness, more conversational tone, and also you want to, like, speak in ways that users might speak, because that's going to be more relatable to ChatGPT, but also more understandable by ChatGPT because it is a large language model. It's built on how humans search, how humans speak. So more than SEO, GEO is going to prioritize that semantic richness. 

Be authoritative 

Fourth, and finally, be authoritative in order to align with how AI models process data. So you want to make sure that you're taking an authoritative tone. If ChatGPT uses sort of tonal things that it picks up on in your content, where it seems like maybe you're not sure or maybe you're not even referencing or citing external sources, it may see you as less authoritative. So basically, speak with your chest, as my dad might say, in order to make sure that you're being more authoritative in your content, because the LLMs are going to pick up on that and be more likely to see you as a resource to share in generative engine results. So those are a couple of tips on how you want to focus on geo, which will feed into and support SEO. 

Ask for help

And our final little bonus tip is that one thing that you can do with GEO or LLMs, you can't do an SEO. You can actually ask your chatbot to help you write content that is going to be optimized for both SEO and geo. So so give that a try. 

Next time you use ChatGPT or one of those other LLMs, ask it how you can optimize the content that it is giving back to you. So that's a little bit about SEO and GEO and how you can optimize for them both in your marketing content.