What distinguishes traditional SEO from Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

There are no universally agreed concensus or facts here. But there are directions and statements from important industry people.

And there is already some imperical data on the work itself and theories around ranking signals for each.

Popular take: GEO = SEO

The most famous strong stance on GEO is probably Danny Sullivan from Google saying “Good SEO is good GEO”

Popular counter take based on studies: GEO is partially different

Michael King takes you through his conclusions and data in this interview with Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad:

And here is a summary of the data points that make him claim that SEO is not GEO:

• Being top 10 in Google gives you only a 25% chance of surfacing in AI results (ZipTie).
• Profound reports 19% overlap between Google visibility and ChatGPT visibility.
• Josh Blyskal’s latest findings: position matters far less than relevance to the model.

So this makes you realize there is still a big gap.

My own take

• +90% of businesses do not have the ressources to dive deep into these nuances. So the practical question becomes how can I succeed in both channels and are there any big differences to keep in mind?
• I would say the answer to that question leans more towards Danny Sullivans position because a lot of (especially smaller) companies have not yet even done good basic SEO, which I believe is also the foundation for GEO.
• And yes there are big differences, but I would say you can reap at least 30% of your potential (varies by industry) visibility share in GEO by doing good, white-hat, modern SEO
• And once you have done that, then – and only then – do you start with GEO.
• And what are the actions to take then that different from SEO? There are several key findings which this blog post also covers:
  • More niche “long tail” questions answered with your content
  • PR, YouTube, Reddit and more social signals are extra strong “rank boosters” with GEO
  • Mentions are as important as backlinks
  • Structured data with Schema
  • Meta titles and descriptions also critical for when bots quickly answer what your pages are about (Google often ignores them and generates their own knowledge)