SEO and GEO

A few years ago dealing with Google was enough. Today a large share of people put a question straight to an AI and accept the answer they get without clicking a single link. If you are not in that answer, you do not exist, even if you are second on Google.

GEO is shorthand for optimising for these answers. It is not a different discipline from SEO, it is its continuation, and it is done at the same time as SEO.

What I do for the search engine

I find out what your customers actually type, not what you think they type. Those are two different things, and the gap between them decides whether anyone finds the site.

From that I design the page structure, write the copy and set up the technical side: speed, mobile, the sitemap, structured data. After launch I watch what happens in Search Console and, based on the real numbers, fill in what is missing.

Did you know Google is not the only index?

Copilot, the one built into Edge and Windows, does not draw on Google. It draws on the Bing index. So does a share of ChatGPT answers. That means you can be highly visible in AI answers even where Google is full of agencies.

Most small businesses have never set up Bing Webmaster Tools at all. Not out of ill will, but because somebody sold them "SEO" and meant Google. The pitch there is half empty and can be won for a fraction of the effort.

This is not theory. The AJ bikes workshop ranks first on the map and fourth among the links in Microsoft search. Customers tell the owner they asked an AI for the best bike workshop nearby and got his name.

So I do it on every site: Bing Webmaster Tools, the sitemap submitted there too, and IndexNow, which reports new pages the moment they ship instead of waiting for a crawler.

What I do for the language models

Models cite content from which one clear answer to one question can be pulled out. So I write copy so that every important thing is said plainly and with a number, not hidden in the third paragraph among adjectives.

That goes with machine-readable information about the business, a file that tells models what is on the site, and above all specific case studies. Text that says "average position 5.9 and 76 percent of visits from mobile" is exactly the type of content that gets cited. Text about a dynamic team does not.

What I will not promise you

I will not tell you that you will be first on a phrase where companies with an ad budget bigger than your whole project have been sitting for years. I will tell you which phrases you can realistically reach and how long it will take, and I will name the rest as unrealistic.