Some are calling it GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or GAIO (Generative AI Optimization), others are calling it AI powered SEO or AI Search Results SEO. Call it what you want, but as a business all that matters is appearing where prospective customers are looking.

AI overviews coming up in Google Search Results and prompt responses from AI Chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, etc. are a hot topic gaining more and more steam.

Over the last 5 years, with things like Siri, AI, and People Also Ask in the search results, conversational SEO focused on appearing in these formats that are essentially a discussion have been critical for guiding content creation and driving traffic, leads, and sales. It’s arguably the most important item to focus on. The other item coming to mind is Google Guaranteed and other ad formats that can appear at the very top of search results.

It may seem daunting to learn about how to target this, but when it comes down to it, it’s just a reinforcement of Google’s existing focus. Create user-centric content that is helpful, and exhibits experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT). We’re here to help make it easy.

Understanding how AI Works

AI works a bit differently depending on the chatbot you’re using.

To keep it simple, they use Large Language Models (LLMs) to process a ton of data, understand it, and generate a response. These models are constantly learning and being improved by developers and the models themselves.

AI can be used to correct code, generate ideas, and get creative. It can save you a lot of time in most careers.

For example, a developer may have a break in their code, they can ask a chatbot to identify the error with the code, instead of having to hunt it down. Or a writer may have “writers block” and need to get an outline or general ideas together. The right prompt can resolve this quickly and keep things moving.

Google provides a great overview on how AI works in general, specific to their model, Gemini. Gemini and other platforms rely heavily on rapid data processing and sources/citations to generate more accurate, quality responses. This plays into some of the strategies we’ll discuss below. Also, Google just released Gemini 2.0!

Sometimes AI can get it wrong or be vague, but as time goes on you can expect more and more accuracy. Some models are improved and offered as a paid service, and you can expect better results there. For example, ChatGPT offers Free, Plus and Pro models.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how it works, let’s get into some strategies of how to leverage it, and appear in Chatbot results and AI overviews.

Content: EEAT + Helpful

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Bots crawl websites and evaluate content quality, site structure, performance, and many other factors. If you make your website useful to the end recipient, Google likes that.

It’s the same concept with AI Chatbots/LLMs.

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. This is what your content should exhibit.

• Ideas for your pages/posts:
  • Experience: Note years in business, have an author headshot with short bio
  • Expertise: Have case studies, show certifications
  • Authoritativeness: Show awards, show results
  • Trustworthiness: Show client testimonials, review scores

Helpful content is exactly what it sounds like. Linked above (Google’s existing focus. Create user-centric content), Google breaks down specific ways to evaluate your content, and ensure it’s helpful/following EEAT.

This kind of guidance is a result of the earlier days of SEO where people would create content on their site to discuss hot topics, and then their website would come up on the first page. It was just focused on appearing for anything, rather than writing helpful content specific to their business clientele.

Search shouldn’t be manipulated, it should be accessible and useful, per Google’s mission. If Google catches on to stuff like this you could not only have bad rankings, but you could get a manual action that takes your website out of search. I’m wondering if Google will start placing manual actions on websites over-utilizing AI.

Here is their doc on AI-generated content. They are enthusiastic about AI usage, but want folks to be responsible. See the “How can Search determine if AI is being used to spam search results” section.

Technical

As noted above, LLMs process a ton of data.

Just as we improve technical aspects of websites for Googlebot and other search engine bots, we need to make sure chatbots can swiftly crawl information on websites to process data even faster. It may not be explicitly stated, but I like to think that this has some benefit given the fact that it’s processing large amounts of data, and qualifying that data.

At webFEAT we run crawls and site audits with Screaming Frog and semrush when we work on SEO campaigns of any kind. We fix issues like broken links, unnecessary redirects, speed/load (which usually simplifies code), adding ALT text to images, etc.

You can take a step beyond that and implement schema/structured data markup, improving internal linking and with that user-experience, and working to improve crawl stats/crawlability with the data provided in Google Search Console.

Continually maintaining and improving on these kinds of items as you would with a general SEO campaign can be helpful for appearing in any kind of search result or prompt response.

Brand Perception + Trust Building

All in line with Google’s standards and the ideas shared above, your brand should be strong.

A user should see logo, font, and image consistency online with business listings, social media, and your website. You should be in different relevant listings and directories. Users should have zero confusion if they’re looking at your brand, and that is one component that will encourage trust.

Another is review scores.

If you’re a local business, Google is very important. Software, maybe something like G2.

Some presence is better than no presence. We see businesses all the time that have no social media. It’s best if you have an updated page and post, but a page with no posts is better than no page at all.

Anything your brand can do to be present, current, and active with your user-base will benefit your visibility.

Focus on AI and leverage it to ramp up visibility

We can help!

Not only do we use AI to learn and generate more helpful content, but we also leverage the strategies discussed in this post to get brands in front of prospective customers more often. Not to mention, some of these strategies have been in our playbook for years. We always want to be innovators when it comes to helping the businesses we work with.

Request a free Search Marketing Audit today!

Image Credit: PhonlamaiPhoto-Canva