GEO: The Complete Guide to Generative Engine Optimisation

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the discipline of optimising your business for AI search systems: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and the emerging AI-native search experiences that will define the next decade of discovery.

If you understand SEO, GEO will feel familiar. But the differences are significant enough that a direct translation of SEO tactics will leave you invisible in the most important new search channels.

What GEO Is (and Isn’t)

GEO is not:

• Getting AI to write your content (that’s content production, not optimisation)
• Stuffing content with AI-related keywords
• A technical trick or shortcut
• A set-and-forget activity

GEO is:

• Building the authority signals AI systems use to decide which brands to trust and recommend
• Creating content structured in the way AI systems can accurately retrieve and use
• Ensuring your entity data is consistent, complete, and trustworthy across the web
• Tracking AI citations and brand mentions as performance metrics
• Continuously adapting as AI search systems evolve

The Five Pillars of GEO

1. Entity Authority

In the world of AI search, your business is an entity: a named thing with attributes, relationships, and a reputation. AI systems use entity recognition to understand what your business is, what it does, who it serves, and whether it can be trusted.

Building entity authority means:

• Ensuring your business information is consistent across Google Business Profile, your website, LinkedIn, major directories, and any industry databases
• Creating rich, accurate content that clearly describes your products, services, expertise, and geographic focus
• Building relationships with other recognised entities (publications, associations, partners) that reference your business

2. Topical Authority

AI systems associate brands with topics. If your website consistently produces high-quality, deeply researched content on a specific topic, and that content is referenced by credible external sources, AI systems learn that your brand is an authority on that topic.

This has a compounding effect: more citations lead to stronger authority signals, which lead to more citations.

Building topical authority requires:

• Identifying the specific topics where you need to be the recognised authority
• Creating comprehensive, genuinely useful content on those topics
• Earning external citations through quality, outreach, and partnerships
• Publishing consistently over time

3. Structured Content and Schema

AI systems retrieve and use content better when it’s clearly structured. This means both the organisation of your content (headings, clear answers to questions, logical structure) and technical schema markup.

Key schema types for GEO:

• Organization schema: tells AI systems exactly what your business is and what it does
• FAQPage schema: makes your Q&A content highly retrievable for question-based queries
• Service schema: clearly describes each service you offer
• LocalBusiness schema: critical for location-based AI recommendations
• Article and BlogPosting schema: helps AI systems understand and cite your content

4. External Validation

AI systems don’t just trust what you say about yourself. They cross-reference your claims against what third-party sources say.

This means:

• Press coverage and media mentions
• Industry publication features and guest contributions
• Partner and customer testimonials on credible platforms
• Review volume and sentiment on major platforms
• Academic or research citations if relevant to your field

External validation is often the hardest pillar to build quickly, but it’s among the most valuable. A single mention in a high-authority publication can significantly improve how AI systems perceive your brand.

5. Measurement and Iteration

Most businesses doing GEO today aren’t measuring it properly. They might track website traffic or Google rankings, but they’re not monitoring AI citations.

Effective GEO measurement includes:

• Regular manual and automated checks of what AI systems say when asked about your brand
• Tracking citation frequency across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AIOs
• Monitoring the specific queries where your brand appears (and where it doesn’t)
• Attributing leads and customers to AI search channels
• Benchmarking against competitors’ AI search presence

The Opportunity Window

AI search is in its early days. Most businesses haven’t started thinking about GEO. The businesses that build AI search authority now will be significantly harder to displace later, for the same reason that businesses with strong Google authority today took years to build that position.

This is a genuine first-mover opportunity. Not an infinite one, but a meaningful one for businesses that act in the next 12 to 18 months.

How to Get Started

The practical starting point is an audit: understanding where you stand right now. What do AI systems currently say about your business? Which of your competitors are being cited instead of you? What are the specific gaps in your entity data and topical authority?

Book a free strategy call with our team and we’ll run this audit before the call, so you arrive with specific findings and a clear picture of the opportunity available to your business.