In 2025, search has changed quite significantly. We now consider SEO to mean Search Everywhere Optimization, a term coined by Neil Patel to reflect the increasingly fractured nature of the search ecosystem. SEO is no longer limited to ranking on a search engine results page, and this is due to the fact that AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini AI are reshaping the way users discover information by directly providing information.
Since 2024, Antyra has introduced Generative Engine Optimization as an add-on to our SEO retainer services, reflecting the nature of Answer Engines and specific techniques required for optimization.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and AI Engine Optimization (AIO) generally refer to the same thing. The objective of GEO though is fundamentally different from SEO. While SEO is all about driving relevant traffic through SERP performance, GEO is the process of getting brand mentions and citations from AI results. GEO may not lead to direct traffic to your website but should result in an overall lift of your brand presence.
Before we jump into optimization, it is important to understand how GEO works. If you are more technically inclined, this white paper by researchers from Princeton, Georgia Tech, The Allen Institute of AI, and IIT Delhi is among the first to describe the GEO process and quantitatively identify what works as well.
The question we want to answer is can we become a source for ChatGPT and Gemini AI, so we’ll earn a citation and a brand mention.
Here’s our thoughts on how to implement a Generative Engine Optimization strategy for your brand. This includes optimizing your website, building citations through practices such as Digital and Traditional PR and maintaining healthy reviews and customer sentiment.
Both these platforms extract information from the web, however, they have different ways of determining the content that shows up. ChatGPT relies on Bing’s search index and focuses on the quality of citations, consistent sourcing, domain authority and how well the content matches user intent. In addition, backlink quality matters as well. Gemini AI, on the other hand, draws from familiar signals such as E-E-A-T, Knowledge Graph alignment, and schema markup and semantically relevant content.
For local search queries, Gemini AI prominence is given to Local Business Reviews and Google My Business.
Sounds easy, but might be a little more difficult in practice. Something we do at Antyra is prepare a list of queries that we ideally would like to appear for in our competitive space, and then monitor the results of those queries. We identify competitor brands that appear, as well as sources used to inform the AI.
We then look at how we can appear in those sources ourselves. Sometimes, it’s quite easy, we found one situation where the primary source was a paid directory. We subscribed our customer to this directory and voilà, they started appearing in ChatGPT themselves within a month. At other times though, it might take months of PR work to be featured in a trusted source.
You can use AHREFs Brand Radar or AWR’s AI monitoring tool to monitor your brand.
Ensure your website is geared for AI bots that scan your website and retrieve information.
Ensure AI bots are not blocked. For example; ChatGPT will use OAI-SearchBot to link to and show websites in ChatGPT’s search results.
Structure your web pages for easier retrievals. A table of contents with inline links can help significantly. Other AI best practices are similar to search best practices and include proper and concise title tags, structured page content with H1 / H2 tags, use FAQs and Q & A formats.
It is imperative to establish topical authority by covering each subject in detail, linking related content and using domain-specific terminology. In addition, entity-based SEO involves optimising content around specific people, places, or concepts that are recognised by Google’s Knowledge Graph. Schema markup can be used to align the content and improve relevance and visibility.
With the use of AI search, it often leads to zero-click outcomes, as users get the answers directly from a summary or a preview. In order to get the content featured, it is important to focus on clarity of how the information is presented.
Be sure to structure the answers in a concise, snippet-style format and ensure the content can be easily summarised. Tools such as AlsoAsked, ContentKing, and JSON-LD can be utilised to narrow down related questions and make the structured data more readable by AI tools.
In a zero-click universe, it is also important to identify means to continue driving traffic through traditional SEO. It is mostly informational search terms that are leading to AI Overviews, as such it is important to constantly monitor your Google Search Console query data to identify traffic generating opportunities and to continue your optimization efforts.
In order to successfully optimise website content for visibility in AI-powered search engines and large language models (LLMs), the content needs to cater to both human readers and AI platforms. It is important to prioritise structure, use clear language, and build depth around the topics you know best, and most importantly ensure the content is well-structured, as it becomes easier to be featured by AI tools.
Be seen. Be cited. Be trusted in the AI era.
