This insights post is a summary of the blog post published by Wisse Kommunikatie. View the full insight at: Hoe GEO SEO voorbijstreeft – en hoe jij er je voordeel mee kunt doen.
Based on your SEO initiatives and budgets, you create content and optimize your website to make sure you are indexed by Google. And then you hope that they’ll choose your organization by clicking on your “blue link.” That’s so March 2025!
AI assistants now provide instant answers to your search queries. That sounds like a big advantage, but keep in mind that these AI tools independently determine which organizations and brands to cite. And you still have to help them choose you.
We live in a new online reality, where generative AI engines, not search engines, determine what information your stakeholders see and therefore where you can be found. Where GEO is taking over from SEO.
That’s why we’ve outlined a practical approach for you to become visible in AI answers through Generative Engine Optimization.
How is GEO different from SEO?
For context, here’s a quick note: with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you’re optimizing your site to generate signals for search engines to earn high rankings and clicks. Your goal is to rank as high as possible in search results.
GEO ensures that AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity find your content, interpret it correctly, and incorporate it into their answers. So, GEO isn’t about page-one ranking, but about presence in the answer.
While traditional SEO remains the foundation, as the technology, content, and authority remain important. But GEO broadens the scope to include topic clusters and places great importance on the “who” and “what” and how they relate to each other.
This means, among other things, that AI assigns authority to content with accurate facts and a demonstrable reputation. The result is that users quickly receive summarized, precise answers without having to click through and study further. Zero-click by design.
How to create geo-friendly content?
How do you ensure that AI tools include your content in their results? The short answer: write for humans, structure for machines.
AI prefers well-structured, credible, and fact-based content. Therefore, consider the following strategies including:
- Accuracy: name the (real!) authors, refer to biographies and references and cite sources (research, government, industry, KOLs)
- Readability: Use short sentences (15 – 20 words), 2 – 4 sentences per paragraph and an active tone
Apply a clear H1–H3 hierarchy; formulate some headings as questions, use bullets, tables, lists, and steps - Usefulness: Publish FAQs, how-tos, checklists, comparisons, add diagrams, charts, video explanations, expert Q&As, and long reads
- Current events: Refresh core pages and the arguments and proof points on them regularly; AI values ’freshness’
- Authority: AI assigns authority to external sources, so make sure they’re accurate.
From keywords to topics: build GEO-ready clusters
Shift your focus and efforts from keywords to topics and build ‘GEO ready’ clusters.
A single natural language query is broken down by AI into dozens of sub-questions (definitions, comparisons, reviews, lists of best products). To demonstrate to the AI tools that you deserve authority on this topic and its subtopics, you create clusters of topics that encompass the entire story you want to tell. In other words, you don’t focus your content solely on a single main term, as you would with SEO.
To get more details and insights about shifting your SEO strategy to be GEO friendly, read the full article at: Hoe GEO SEO voorbijstreeft – en hoe jij er je voordeel mee kunt doen.
