Artificial Intelligence Optimisation (AIO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) are some of the biggest changes in search and marketing channels since the launch of social media. Getting AI citations is seemingly bringing some of the most converting traffic to websites, at the moment. Therefore, optimising your content to increase your chances of AI citations is a pretty helpful action to take.
GEO is also levelling the playing field for some results right now. It’s a bit like when Instagram came out. It was far easier for small businesses that jumped on the opportunity to be found and followed. By the time the big brands and names hopped on board, it was game over for the smaller, independent businesses. Or rather, it was much harder to achieve those levels of engagement.
Let’s be clear, not every business is optimising content for AI citations at the moment. At some point, many will be doing. There is an opportunity here to leverage this newness for a short period.
What are AIO and GEO?
AIO or GEO is the process of optimising content for AI search crawlers, so that you increase your chances of being cited on a Large Language Model (LLM) platform, such as ChatGPT or Claude, in answer to a prompt.
It’s slightly different from the helpfully similar acronym Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), but they all work on very much the same premise, with a few tweaks.
Let’s say you’re an architect covering a local area and your average project brings in around £20k turnover. When someone buys a period property, they might put questions into their ChatGPT that asks what’s possible with the property to keep it looking part of the period but updating it for more space.
If you specialise in period properties, then you’ll want to have content that answers this question. If you do, and it meets the criteria, then you might be cited on the LLM answer. That person searching then thinks they probably need an architect, and so are more likely to click on the link and contact you. Research finds that the conversion rate of an LLM is 9x better than SEO.
How does GEO work?
GEO works by scanning millions of webpages, sorting out what it thinks are the most valuable answers, pulling them together into one round-up answer and citing the sources it used. GEO is optimising your content to be cited as one of the sources.
Is GEO any different to SEO?
GEO needs different criteria from traditional SEO to increase your chances of ranking. However, the basic principles of SEO still matter a lot here. The LLMs will use search engines like Google to aggregate the data for the best answer.
It’s less about ranking highly on Google for a search term and more about getting the information in the right place for the LLM to find and understand it.
For example, someone who has bought their period property might also have to navigate the fact that it’s listed. In this situation, they would ask a very specific question about listed properties and developing them. Here, a level of expertise, trust, and giving a direct answer will increase the chances of being cited.
It really is about getting straight to the point in the content. Yet, at the same time, you still need the signals of good content that Google will look for when displaying answers. These are experience, expertise, authoritiveness, and trust (EEAT).
That should be the foundation of all good content online, and it is still the foundation of what LLMs are looking for in their answers.
Here are some ways that you can optimise your content for GEO.
1. Answer the questions directly
Give the answer straight away underneath the question. If you want a good GEO article, then put in the question as it would be asked and do so as a sub-heading. Then, answer that question in the first sentence.
In an ideal world, we’d all get to the bloomin’ point a whole lot quicker in our content. It’s something I teach in the Blog Confidence course when we look at intros. It’s essential. No one wants to scroll through irrelevant thoughts before they get to the answer. This isn’t an attention-span issue; it’s a communication issue.
Articles optimised for GEO need to answer the question in clear language and communicate it well.
2. Know what people are asking
You need to have a good idea of what questions people are asking, as that will give you clues into what prompts they are putting into the LLMs. This is nothing ne,w and it is exactly what you need for good SEO. When you’re creating regular content that answers the right prompts, you’ll start to see some pay-off for your hard work in GEO
3. Make sure your structure is clear
How you structure your articles and webpages is more important than ever. Making proper use of sub-heading tags such as H2 and H3 is critical. As is making sure the code is in place that tells the crawl spiders what is on the page. Having schema markup on your content will help with this and make it easier for the LLM crawlers to know what is on the page and how important each piece of information is. It’s that thing again of getting to the point at the top of the page.
4. Be a trusted source
Expertise is more important than ever. Your specialist insights and the sources that you cite will all influence how often you are cited. And it’s worth noting that what you put out across social media can also influence this. Your reputation matters across all platforms so that the LLM can make the right conclusion (or the best possible conclusion, as we know it’s not always right).
Digital PR is hugely important here. You want to have good-quality backlinks to your content that come from other trusted sources. That means doing regular checks on who is backlinking to your website. If you’ve ever invested in one of those backlink-building programmes, now is the time to check the relevancy and quality of the URLs linking to your domain.
Again, all of this is good for more than GEO. It expands your brand reach, increases visibility and is good for SEO as well.
5. Test content formats
As I’ve already touched on, the citations can come from several sources, including social media. It’s not just about your website or your blog content. Your sales pages can also be cited in LLMs, articles you put out on other platforms, and transcripts of podcasts (although not the audio from podcasts).
LLMs like to present outcomes in a clear and concise way. They use bullet points, numbered lists and tables. You should consider using these in your content to support GEO. And you should consider using these in your content because it makes it easier for people to read and understand as well.
Comparison content is also a good way to increase your AI ranking chances. When you compare your services with those of another provider, you give clear answers along with pros and cons. Put this in a comparison table, and it makes it an attractive source for LLMs.
Also, consider what potential customers are doing. They are probably looking at your business, plus a couple of others. While there are many factors in making the decision, looking at a comparison table makes their life a lot easier. Comparison content is going to be more crucial than ever in the content ecosystem.
6. Ask AI to help
Before you publish your blog, ask AI what it would improve to help you get a citation for that content. It should give you a nice list of opportunities to improve and may help you think differently about the way you’ve presented your content.
Although this output is only helpful if you put it into practice. Experience tells me that most marketers need to move on to the next thing. If that’s the case, either outsource this part of the process or set a date in the calendar to get it done. Until, of course, AI can log into your website and do it for you.
7. Track the data
GEO only works if you’re tracking the data. It’s only a good use of your resources if you know that it’s leading to more business. There are ways you can set up reports in Google Analytics that tell you how much traffic is coming to your website from LLMs and what content it is taking them to.
This is useful as you can then work out what other content you need to build on this. And you can then match that traffic to any business goals.
Although this comes with a caveat that analytics can only currently track LLM traffic from browsers and not anyone using a phone app. For this, you’ll need to talk to your customers.
8. Track how people find you
Ask them. It might surprise you. Often, people have multiple touch points, but having a form or onboarding process that asks how they first heard about you will give you more data on whether your investment in GEO is worthwhile.
Ready to increase AI citations?
Here are five simple things that you can do this week:
- Audit the top 20 pages for direct answer opportunities
- Implement schema markup on key service pages
- Create 5 comparison tables for main services
- Set up GA4 tracking for AI referrals
- Add “How did you hear about us?” to lead forms
And if you’re struggling for time to get your head around GEO, then let’s talk.