How GEO actually changes your content strategy in 2026

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation” (or “optimization” if you live on the other side of the pond). SEO is a range of techniques you can use to make your website appear in the results pages of traditional search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. These techniques revolve around how you design and implement your content on your website and on other people’s websites, how you use links, how you build your website technically, etc.

GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the same idea as SEO, except you apply it to generative AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude as well as to AI Overviews in Google search. GEO uses similar but slightly different techniques to SEO to help your brand be mentioned and cited in generative AI responses to user queries. 

SEO and GEO are related content marketing approaches that work to different criteria and metrics. For example, whereas SEO is big on keywords, traffic and backlinks, GEO loves mentions, citations, structured data and domain authority.

To improve your visibility in generative AI, you need to start doing a few things:

• Develop a content strategy that is relevant and coherent across multiple channels. Now that GEO is in town, you really must start thinking beyond your website. If you want to be mentioned in generative AI responses, you’ve got to be present on as many platforms as possible. This includes third-party websites, comparison websites, forums (Reddit) Google My Business, Amazon, and social media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn), etc.
• Develop a mention strategy while creating and maintaining a brand narrative that is clear, coherent and different
• Ensure your content includes FAQs, comparison tables, key figures, up-to-date data, testimonials, etc.
• Structure your content to make sure there is a paragraph for each key piece of information or key topic
• Update and expand old content, and create new pages with fresh data
• Use a structured data markup for your website

Our white paper deep-dives the 20 best practices in SEO and GEO that will help you stay visible in search engines, LLMs and AI Overviews.

Not at all. Despite what you may have heard, SEO is alive and kicking. In fact, you need to optimise your web pages more than ever now that AI-driven search is here. This is because conversational search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude base many of their answers on the SERP (the traditional search engine results page).

Not only that, but the first touchpoint for B2B clients with brands is still search engines. (In B2C, it’s social media.)

To add GEO to your marketing strategy, begin by analysing your presence and positioning in generative AI answers: 

• Is your brand mentioned? 
• For which prompts? 
• How is your brand perceived by LLMs? 
• What information does AI highlight about your brand?

Once you understand how you’re showing up in AI responses, you can begin building a coherent GEO-driven strategy. Think about the messages you want to convey, the people you want to speak to, and the channels that are most relevant for your business (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc.).

By the way, you can totally combine your GEO strategy with your current SEO strategy. In fact, we highly recommend it. Simply optimise your content for traditional and AI search engines, using keywords, search intent, semantic keywords, and so on for the one, and structured data, mentions, query fan-outs, comparison tables, and everything else for the other.

There are several tools you can use to analyse answers in conversational search engines and develop content that is optimised for generative AI models. Traditional SEO tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs now have new features that are specific to AI search, covering AI traffic and visibility, brand performance, user queries, brand perception and prompt research.

There are also tools that are specific to GEO such as Meteoria and Promptwatch. These analyse AI answers and generate relevant content based on existing competitor content that is performing well in various AI engines.

Then there is GetMint, a tool that analyses the source pages and domains most consulted by AI for a given prompt.

A final example is ChatGPT Search Capture, which can identify query fan-outs for a given prompt.

In this white paper by the team at Contentactic, you get access to:

• Key figures for search in 2026, and related insights into what’s changing in the search landscape
• An analysis of changing user behaviour in the age of AI
• Advice on how to optimise for GEO with a clear strategy that works alongside your existing SEO strategy
• A list of the domains most cited by AI 
• A list of actionable tips on how to optimise for GEO and SEO for your website, socials, etc.

When you think about search engine optimisation, you immediately think of Google because it is still the most widely used search engine in the world. But if you want to optimise for GEO, which AI engine do you focus on? Experts are divided on the issue. ChatGPT may be the most popular LLM, but other generative AI models like Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot are gaining traction. 

If you are new to GEO optimisation and you have a limited budget to create optimised content for conversational search engines, we recommend concentrating on ChatGPT to begin with.

Major caveat: Even though most experts agree that ChatGPT is the AI search engine to target, others recommend looking further afield to stay ahead of the next changes and exploit new opportunities to develop your online visibility and authority. Then again, to do this you need a budget to match.

Not sure what to do? Just ask us – we’re happy to help!

In traditional SEO, the visibility and authority of a website are hugely dependent on the number and quality of the links to that website (backlinks). Search engines like Google use backlinks to rank a webpage in its search results.

With generative search engines, LLMs work differently. Not that they don’t use the internet to source information. Of course they do. But they generate answers based on different criteria. For example, instead of links, LLMs prioritise citations and mentions. This is why you need to get cracking on developing a relevant, coherent mention strategy if you want to appear in AI answers. 

For experts who specialise in brand visibility, the goal nowadays isn’t just to rank in search results. You’ve also got to make sure your brand is cited as a trustworthy source in AI answers. Brand citations and co-occurrences are gradually replacing keywords and backlinks as the holy grail of online visibility.

In the good old days of traditional search engines, users would use a string of individual keywords to find what they needed. Nowadays, users ask complex, contextualised questions in natural, conversational language. Whether they use ChatGPT, Perplexity or something else, users simply don’t formulate queries the way they used to.

As a result, your content strategy needs to adapt. And the one thing it must do now is provide answers to these new search intents that demonstrate deep expertise and contain reliable, structured data.

To generate a reliable answer, generative AI engines don’t just read a single page on its own. They analyse all the pages of your website as well as external trust signals to confirm your expertise.

Generative engines cross-reference data from social media, websites and forums to decide whether your content is useful for the user. But what exactly are the signals of trust and authority that AI search engines use?

Generative AI likes content that:

• is full of expert insights and quotations from industry professionals

• is attributed to an identifiable expert (the way LinkedIn articles are, for example)

• is generous with figures, case studies and original research

• is neutral and factual, and includes comparison tables

By publishing expert content, your authority rises in the eyes of AI. And then you start to pop up in AI answers.

This is a common concern, but the situation is more complicated than that. GEO and SEO are not contradictory. The goal is the same in that they both aim to give the user the best possible response to their query.

Okay, search engines like Perplexity and Google with its AI Overviews directly display summaries that can siphon off some of your informational traffic. But remember that a user who clicks on a link or a source cited by an LLM is a warm lead who is deep into their buyer journey. If you learn how to optimise for GEO, these new sources of traffic make up for any loss of traditional traffic because they have a much higher conversion rate.

It is harder to gauge your performance in a conversational search engine than with traditional organic traffic. For example, clickthrough rate is a handy way of gauging how useful or appealing users find your content. But the thing is, clickthrough rate often drops when answers are displayed directly in an AI Overview or an AI search engine. Now does this mean your content isn’t useful?

To assess how much authority you’re earning, you must use other metrics: 

• Appearance rate in AI answers

• Quality of traffic from LLMs

• Changes in on-site conversion

Specialised tools now exist to track these metrics so that you can fine-tune your strategy and gauge the effectiveness of the actions you take on your website and third-party platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Google My Business, etc.).

We put this white paper together to give you actionable tips and practical SEO/GEO optimisations that you can use right now on your webpages and other content. But if you want an effective strategy that targets both traditional search and AI search, that’s going to take time and it requires specialist knowledge.

If you don’t have the time or knowledge to audit your brand visibility in search engines, analyse your buyer behaviour and publish content, you can always delegate.

By outsourcing the design and creation of content that is optimised for both traditional and generative search engines, you maximise your chances of building authority and visibility online. You also ensure that the answers generated by AI search engines are relevant to what your organisation does.

If you have more questions about GEO optimisation, get in touch with the team.