SEO & GEO
What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?
Definition
The practice of optimising web content to be cited and surfaced in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
In more detail
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the discipline of making your website's content visible and citable in AI-generated search results. As users increasingly get answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews rather than clicking through to websites, appearing in those generated answers becomes a critical form of organic reach.
GEO works by making content authoritative, clearly structured, and machine-readable. This includes technical elements like JSON-LD structured data, llms.txt files for AI crawlers, and semantic HTML — as well as content elements like direct definitions, cite-ready formatting, and named entity recognition.
GEO complements rather than replaces traditional SEO. A site with strong technical SEO foundations — fast load times, clean crawlability, structured data — is also well-positioned for GEO. The difference is in the content layer: GEO-optimised content is written to be extractable and citable by AI systems, not just ranked by traditional keyword signals.
Why it matters
Search behaviour is shifting. A growing percentage of queries are answered directly by AI systems without a click. GEO is how businesses maintain organic visibility in this new environment.
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