TL;DR
FACT: SEO optimizes for a ranked list of links. GEO — generative engine optimization — optimizes for being named, cited and described correctly inside a generated answer.
INFERENCE: the technical foundation of SEO (crawlable pages, clear structure, consistent facts) is also the foundation of GEO. What changes is the unit of success: from position on a page to presence in an answer.
What carries over
Crawlability carries over. If a search engine cannot read your page, an AI tool that relies on search cannot read it either. Clear headings, one canonical page per topic, and consistent names, addresses and phone numbers all carry over — machines of both kinds reward the same clarity.
FACT: our own site passes the same technical checks for both audiences — sitemap, robots rules, server-rendered pages, per-page titles and descriptions. None of that stopped being necessary when AI answers arrived.
What changed
Three things changed. First, the answer is the destination: a user can get what they need without clicking anything, so being quoted matters as much as being ranked. Second, sources are chosen mid-answer: the model picks who to cite while it writes, not after. Third, consistency is machine-checked: an assistant that finds three versions of your name or founding date may average them into a wrong one.
FACT: in our 4 October pilot, two search-enabled models cited 58 links across 16 answers — and the most-cited sources were primary documentation, not the highest-ranking marketing pages. Being selected for an answer is a different contest than ranking first.
What GEO adds on top
GEO adds entity work: one canonical name, one description, one set of facts, repeated identically everywhere machines read about you. It adds answer-shaped content: pages that state a definition or a fact in the first sentence, in words a model can quote. And it adds measurement: fixed questions, run on a schedule, with the answers saved.
INFERENCE: the brands that win answers early are the ones whose facts are boring — the same everywhere, every time. Boring is machine-readable.
What to do first
Keep your SEO foundation; it is the entry fee. Then do the GEO-specific work in order: lock your entity facts, write canonical definition pages for the terms you want to own, and start a measurement loop so you know whether any of it worked.
If you want the definitions side by side, we keep them on one page: [GEO, AEO, AIO, HEO and SEO, defined together](/answers/geo-aeo-aio-heo-seo).
Canonical definitions used in this post
GEO, AEO, AIO, HEO and SEO: [defined together here](/answers/geo-aeo-aio-heo-seo). AI visibility: [What is BackTier](/what-is-backtier). Other terms: [the glossary](/glossary).