GEO vs SEO: what generative engine optimization actually changes
The short version
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the work you do so AI tools can find your pages and quote them correctly. It overlaps heavily with technical SEO. Same fast pages, same clean structure, same good schema. But it adds a few concerns that traditional SEO does not have to think about.
What stays the same
Strong information architecture, crawlable URLs, fast server response, mobile rendering, canonicalization, internal linking, and accurate Organization, Service, and FAQ schema are still the foundation. AI tools lean on the same underlying signals Google does. They just consume them differently.
What changes
GEO adds five things classic SEO often skips. One, explicit definition blocks AI tools can quote verbatim. Two, FAQ patterns that map to question-answer training data. Three, fuller schema beyond just Organization. Four, entity-clear authorship and sources. Five, discovery files like llms.txt and a robots.txt that explicitly allows AI crawlers. Together they make the page summarizable, not just rankable.
Where to start
If you already have solid SEO, start with definition blocks, FAQ patterns, and a hand-authored llms.txt. If your SEO is weak, fix that first. No amount of GEO work will save a site that AI tools cannot crawl or summarize in the first place.
Written by Mustafa Karim, founder and principal consultant at NavoTech Digital Solutions. Have a project or counter-example? Get in touch.