Today, most professionals are familiar with search engine optimization (SEO)–the art of getting their content seen online, by the correct audiences, by highlighting the specific keywords.
But when you look into how to boost your website’s visibility in 2025, you’re more likely to find articles about why SEO may be on its way out—to make way for a new acronym: GEO.
In a two-part series, we’ll explain why you’re seeing that and what it means for you. We’ll explain why you don’t need to ditch your understanding of SEO to retrain your business brain for GEO.
What Is GEO?
GEO stands for “generative engine optimization.” Instead of optimizing your content for web-crawling search engines, you’re optimizing it so that AI can generate responses based on your website’s text.
What Are the Key Differences Between SEO and GEO?
Before audiences can find your website, a search engine—like Google—needs to find it. In order to help search engines find your website, you need to optimize its content.SEO and GEO are both ways to do that, which is why “optimization” is built right into both names.
SEO: In the past, when you searched for something in Google, the list of website options that followed (the search results) was largely ranked according to the content found on those websites. In order to get listed higher, websites needed good SEO.
GEO: Today, above the list of search results, there’s an AI-generated summary. If you want your website to be featured there—way up high where people are even more likely to see it—then you need GEO. A GEO strategy attempts to get generative language models to find, summarize, and surface the content within your website. The most popular generative language model that you’re likely familiar with is ChatGPT.
These differences are important because:
- It changes how content is highlighted within search engines. GEO is about making sure AI tools can easily reproduce your content when people ask questions. Surfacing your content can encourage searchers to click on your site to learn more.
- It shifts how you should frame the content itself: While SEO prioritizes keyword density within text, GEO requires clearly written, well-structured content that AI models can easily understand and quote.
- It can be used to amplify your authority and signal it to others: GEO emphasizes credibility, citations, and semantic clarity—in other words, it convinces AI to trust your content. As a result, users tend to also trust surfaced content.
- Zero-Click Impact: With generative answers appearing above organic results, GEO helps ensure your brand’s presence is retained even if users find their answers in that summary and no longer need to click to learn more.
Keep reading for Part 2 on SEO vs. GEO.