Mastering Generative Engine Optimization for Enhanced Search Rankings

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative AI engines have been a major disruption in many industries and areas of human life, including digital marketing. Seeing the growing number of user queries in AI tools like ChatGPT, many businesses took an interest in AI search engines. The major question is whether it’s possible to use AI tools in a digital marketing strategy, and if yes, then how? The purpose of this guide is to answer these questions.

Definition and explanation of GEO

Generative Engine Optimization is a set of digital marketing practices aiming to attain visibility in AI-driven search engines. Check out this example of ChatGPT answering the question about wrongful dismissal in Toronto. It provides the links to the credible sources so that user can get more information and further their learning on the subject. The purpose of GEO is to be picked by AI algorithms and get featured in the AI output:

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Importance of GEO in Digital Marketing

According to Gartner, the use of Generative AI for answers will be increasing, while the volume of traditional search using Google, Bing and other search engines will decrease.

We’re not sure if the predicted decrease in volume will be as big as 25% in such short amount of time as stated by Gartner. However, we do believe that businesses should be GEO-ready. Think about this, in April 2024, the number of ChatGPT monthly users was 180.5M, by February 2025 it had surged to 400M users weekly.

Indeed, using generative AI engines to learn new information is much easier compared to the user search in traditional search engines, as you don’t need to sift through dozens of website and instead get a readily available answer. That’s why Google began incorporating AI summaries to the top of its SERP for some searches.

Check out an example of a Google Search Engine Results page. We deliberately made a mistake in checking if it understands human errors and how the latter impact the output. In our opinion, both AI and Google worked pretty well in understanding user intent:

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Understanding Generative Engines and AI Search

In this section, we discuss how AI-driven search engines work. It will help you to be better prepared to Generative Engine Optimisation.

How generative engines work

Generative engines operate differently from search engines, though they might apply similar search tactics like looking for relevant keywords. The output in SE and GE differs.

Google and other traditional search engines provide results as a list of similar articles. They give the user an opportunity to choose the article with the biggest value on SERP. They do not alter the texts they refer to.

Generative engines create an answer for a user query based on the data available online or the data they have been trained on. Unlike traditional search engines, AI usually rephrases the texts they refer to.

To best understand it, here’s an example of Google AI overview of SERP (grey highlight on the left side of the screenshot) vs the actual article the AI cited (purple highlight on the right side of the screenshot). As you can see, the texts are similar and different at the same time.

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In truth, nobody understands how AI models form their output, even their creators. AI engineers have a specific word for this phenomenon – black box. The simplest explanation you can get is this. AI has processed billions of human texts and has access to even more texts online. When asked a question, they form an answer based on context and “guesswork.” They “predict” what the next word or phrase should be based on their experience with processed data both during training and in real time as they parse the web.

In this sense, they are similar to traditional search engines, as marketers usually didn’t know how Google and other search engines formed their results either. SEO has been a lot of guesswork work and similarly, GEO will be a lot of guesswork. Be prepared for a lot of trial and error as well as fine-tuning your website copy to attain results.

Getting Featured by Generative AI

There’s one important thing to understand about getting to AI-generated responses. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others usually have free and paid versions. In the free version, generative AI doesn’t specifically parse the web unless the user specifically asks it to search the web. Instead it bases its search on the data it was trained on. To always be featured by AI-powered search engines, you need to work on your brand’s online presence.

Now that you know, there are three ways users can find out about your business in AI-driven search engines:

1. Get the link to your website in AI-generated responses when they ask for firms like yours operating in your area:

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2. Get your brand mentioned by the AI when people are looking for brands that meet certain criteria, for example, high-quality sustainable women’s clothes:

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3. Be quoted by AI-driven tools as a source of knowledge in your specific field:

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GEO vs SEO

Speaking of SEO vs GEO differences and similarities. If you don’t want to spend to much time reading this specific section, here’s a great summary provided by ChatGPT:

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Now let’s focus on the features that both SEO and Generative Engine Optimisation have. First things first, the key goal of both strategies is content visibility in traditional and AI-driven search engines, respectively. This goal is achieved via:

1. High content quality.
2. Understanding your user intent.
3. Finding the right keywords and phrases.
4. Achieving high authority in your respective field.
5. Building your trustworthiness.
6. Structuring your content and metadata.
7. Working on technical aspects of your website.

Now, the difference between the traditional SEO practices and GEO is in how the content visibility goal is achieved. Check out the infographic showing the differences between traditional Search Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation:

Summing up, unlike traditional search engine optimization, you’ll need content that focuses on clarity, facts, context richness, and uses more conversational language. You’ll need more long-tail keywords, and apply more question-answer elements.

Will Generative Engine Optimisation Replace Traditional SEO?

Probably not in the near future. Here’s how we see AI-driven search:

1. Generative AI is good for quick search for information to understand something on a very basic level. At the same time, reading multiple articles on a certain topic will provide you with a more in-depth understanding of this topic.

2. AI-driven search engines only provide several links; however, sometimes these results aren’t enough for in-depth research.

3. Free versions are limited to several responses per day. Beyond these, people will still have to use traditional search.

4. AI models are still prone to “hallucinations,” i.e., when they do not know the exact answer, they come up with a best guess. In some cases, it’s an incorrect guess. Check out this screenshot as an example. When asked about GEO, AI answers as if it were Local SEO:

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5. AI is also prone to excessiveness. Probably the best illustration of this phenomenon is the funny (and creepy!) pictures of human hands we saw at the dawn of AI-generated images:

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Similar things often happen to text, when the same idea is repeated over and over but phrased differently. This happens because, as we mentioned above, AI doesn’t think the way people do. It tries to predict the next possible word or image piece based on what it knows but it cannot “correct itself” just yet.

Probably we’ll see some merger between AI-driven search engines and traditional search engines, when we can ask artificial intelligence to work as both the librarian and the storyteller. That’s why for businesses today it’s paramount to use traditional SEO practices along with GEO.

Key Strategies for Generative Engine Optimization GEO

In this section, we review the key strategies that will lead you to visibility and discoverability in AI search engines.

Build Strong Online Visibility

One of the best ways to get to the AI-driven search is to build a strong online presence, which includes:

• Website with high performance
• High rankings in search engines
• High organic search traffic
• High domain authority
• Google Business Profile
• Strong Local SEO
• Good reviews on ranking websites
• Presence in social media.

Summing up, you first need to invest a lot of resources in traditional SEO techniques, website design, and digital marketing strategy. Here’s what Perplexity AI thinks about it:

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Now, on to the specific tactics that will help you get picked by AI algorithms.

Keyword Research

AI tools operate differently compared to traditional search engine formats. You don’t need to find words and phrases with high search volume and low difficulty. As shown above, AI-driven tools will rephrase your content anyway. Instead, you need to think about keywords in terms of user queries. How would you ask an AI about your services or products? Let’s say you have an immigration law firm. A standard first query in legacy search engines would be “Canada immigration” but that’s probably not what your potential client would ask AI, is it?

People talk to artificial intelligence as if it were their friend:

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That’s why understanding user intent and finding relevant long-tail keyphrases is critical to your keyword research.

Adding Relevant Keywords and Phrases

Similar to classical search engines, AI tools will analyse your content by its contents. Apart from regular keywords it expects to find words and phrases that are relevant to the topic you discuss. That’s why adding the so-called contextual keywords is as important to generative engine optimization as it is for traditional SEO.

There are several types of words you’ll be looking for contextual relevance (or co-occurrence):

1. Synonyms to the focus keyword, e.g., lawyer and attorney.
2. Industry-specific terminology, e.g., CBA, OHS, and severance pay for employment law firms.
3. Relevant entities. These are well-known organizations, locations, brands, laws, standards, or governmental bodies that are relevant in your field, e.g., WHO, ICD-11, The Canada Health Act, etc., for medical marketing.

Remember to include just enough of these keywords to achieve necessary semantic density (the amount of relevant and meaningful terminology for your area of expertise). Avoid keyword stuffing as it will harm you rather than help. Tools like SurferSEO are good at analyzing your semantic density in the text:

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Content Quality and Relevance

Natural language processing engines are at the heart of AI search. That’s why you need to create content that will be easily parsed by them and then transformed into content. How to achieve it?

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1. Use more conversational language in your content. Don’t be afraid to incorporate questions in your texts. FAQs are back and work pretty well in content.
2. Create parts of content that can be taken out of your copy to answer the question and still make sense.
3. Keep a neutral but confident tone of voice, avoid adding many sales pitches (unless it’s a service page), and instead focus on the informational value your copy can bring.
4. Cite reliable sources like journals acclaimed in your industry, scientific papers, and content from renowned international and local organizations.
5. Create content clusters to signal your expertise in the field and commitment to sharing your insights with others.
6. Structure your content using paragraphs, headers, and lists. Structured data is much more easily understood by both humans and AIs.

Add FAQs

The best FAQ practice would be to combine the FAQs people added for Search Engine Optimization purposes, plus additional questions that people ask about your products and services. To find classical FAQ, we suggest just searching for the focus keyword of your page, scrolling down to the “People Also Ask” section of Google SERP, and analyzing them. Pick those questions that are most relevant to your business.

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When it comes to the research of FAQs for generative engine optimization, the best practices would be to:

1. Analyze what questions people ask you about your services during initial consultations. There’s a good chance they’ve asked these questions before either online or from generative AI.
2. Use tools like Falcon AI to help research these topics.

Schema Markup

A bit forgotten traditional SEO practice of schema markup is back again. It was used to inform the Google search engine about the type of content you are publishing on a particular page. However, after some time, it became clear that it didn’t impact search engine rankings, and many specialists simply abandoned it altogether.

Recently, it became obvious that Generative Search engines use schema markup for a better understanding of the page contents. That’s why we suggest using it. Here are some types of content that you can mark with schema:

• FAQs
• Events
• How to (any content with steps falls under this category)
• Articles and blogs
• Product
• Service
• Review
• Organization or Local Business
• Video
• Software or app.

To form a schema markup, you can either look it up online or simply ask AI:

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Reviews & Ratings

When trying to determine the authority of the brand or website, Generative Search engines heavily rely on the opinions of others. That’s why adding reviews and ratings is essential.

Pro tip: Add reviews in your schema markup, adding your rating and maximum ranking as well. Putting a ranking like 200 doesn’t help, as search engines and AI are both good at recognizing when humans cheat. The safest policy of honesty will take you to the top of search rankings in Google and AI-generated responses.

Add Visual and Interactive Elements

AI engines prefer structured data because it helps them better understand the complex relations between the elements. They use the acquired understanding to improve their content quality and explain complex things to their users better.

Here are the types of visual data representation and interactive elements that will help in your generative engines optimization strategies:

1. Tables
2. Algorithms
3. Charts
4. Graphs
5. Infographics
6. Sliders
7. Calculators
8. Videos
9. Audios

Remember that the main purpose of visual content creation is not to add some element that would break the monotonous text. Your visuals should add value for the reader (and for the AI). If you’re still adding stock pictures in text that aren’t dedicated to stock pictures, you should stop.

Tip 1: To add visual elements for Generative Engine Optimization, we suggest using tools like Canva if you don’t have a professional designer. You can easily create various types of diagrams there by putting in the actual numbers you want to represent. You can also maintain your branding by using your brand colours and fonts.

Tip 2: Your GEO will benefit from meta tags, that’s why we suggest always adding ALT text to your images and naming a file in a way that can be read. Instead of “image.png,” try “LAZIK surgery statistics in Canada 2025.png.”

Work on Website Performance and UX

This tactic will work both to improve your positions in traditional search results and boost your GEO. Similar to search engines, AI prefers high-performing websites with clear navigation and good UX.

These criteria are indirect indicators of higher user engagement with the website and as well as website owners’ commitment to deliver credible and authoritative content.

Here’s what AI found as bad website UX examples:

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Track Your Progress

To refine your GEO methods and performance, we suggest tracking your progress. Here are several ways to do it:

1. Ask Generative engines questions related to your business to check your visibility in AI. This method is good because it will enable you to check your website process as well as see how others do it better. It will also enable you to understand better how your potential clients think and how they ask questions. You might also get a couple of insights on the type of content to create as you ask AI questions.
2. Analyze referral traffic from generative AI websites. It might fluctuate from time but you need to look for general trends within a certain period.
3. Use tools like Brand Voice to check your content’s visibility in AI search engines. This is a quantitative tool that will tell you how many times your brand has been quoted and seen by users.
4. Use Hubspot’s Brand Sentiment. It will enable you to see what people think about your brand. This tool is helpful for keeping an eye on your brand health and take timely action when people start talking negative things about it.

Optimizing for Generative Engines by Industries

In this section, we discuss the best Generative Engine Optimization GEO practices for different industries.

Law Firms

To get on the good side of AI algorithms, law firms need to:

1. Cite credible sources like laws and regulations of your country, statutes, case law, and scholarly articles.
2. Keep an eye on the legal accuracy of your content.

Healthcare

1. Cite evidence-based articles published in trusted peer-reviewed journals.
2. Use medical terms, but keep your copy simple for readers.

Business Services

1. Provide statistics relevant to your field from reputable sources like market research companies.
2. If your industry is heavily regulated, cite compliance protocols.

Implementing Generative Engine Optimization GEO

Generative Engine Optimization is a relatively new field with few specialists with experience in conducting it efficiently. That’s why we suggest partnering with a leading digital marketing agency dNOVO Group.

dNOVO Group can help you:

1. Build your website’s visibility both in traditional and generative engines.
2. Create engaging content that converts your leads into paying customers.
3. Build a digital marketing strategy that will help you attain your business goals.

Ready to win new customers using GEO?

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