What is GEO? SEO and AI search, and how they differ

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the work of getting your site to show up high in the regular search results, the ones nobody pays for.

The difference from a search ad shows when the money stops. The ad disappears the same day. A page that ranks keeps bringing visitors for as long as it is the best answer to the question.

What does SEO consist of?

SEO is usually split into technical, content and authority. You need all three, and the weakest one sets the ceiling.

Technical. Google has to be able to find, read and store your pages. That takes a sitemap that lists them, a robots.txt that doesn't shut anyone out by mistake, pages that load fast on a phone and addresses that don't lead to error pages. One example is a site that got a new design and new URLs without redirecting the old ones. The new pages lose what the old ones had built up.

Content. Every important page should answer a question someone actually asks. The search term tells you the question. Someone searching "how much does a new kitchen cost" wants a price range and what drives it, not a company presentation. The page that answers plainly, with headings that follow the next questions, has a chance. The title and description shown in the results then decide whether anyone clicks.

Authority. Links from other sites work like recommendations. One link from an industry association or a local paper carries more weight than many links from directories nobody reads. Authority builds slowly, through content others want to point to.

How does Google choose which pages to show?

Google does three things. Bots go through the web and find pages. The pages are stored in an index. When someone searches, Google picks from the stored pages and ranks them.

The ranking draws on many signals, but they come down to three questions. Does the page answer what the person means? Can it be trusted? Does it work for the person who clicks?

Start with the first. The same words can mean different things. Someone searching "seo" usually wants an explanation. Someone searching "seo agency manchester" wants a supplier. Google shows different kinds of pages for those two searches, and a service page struggles to rank where Google shows guides. So look at what is already at the top before you write. It tells you which kind of page has a chance.

Then it's about finding the right searches. Search Console, Google's free tool for site owners, shows which searches you already appear for, where you land and how many people click. A page in position eight for an important term is often closer to page one than a brand new article. How to handle pages ranking 6 to 15.

What is GEO?

AI search is when the answer is written for you instead of handed to you as a list of links. That covers ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It also covers Google itself, where the AI Overview sits at the top of the results and AI Mode answers like a chat.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It is the work of becoming one of the sources those answers are built on. Some call it AI SEO or LLM SEO. It's the same thing.

What changes for a company is that a buyer can get a finished answer without visiting any site at all. Ask which suppliers exist for what you sell, and the answer names a few companies. You want to be one of them, and ideally linked as a source.

How is GEO different from SEO?

Four differences change what needs doing.

AI answers cite a handful of sources. In Google, ten pages compete for the click. An AI answer summarizes a few sources and the rest don't appear at all. Being one of the pages that rank isn't enough. You want the clearest answer.

AI services have their own bots. They fetch pages when someone asks a question, and they follow your robots.txt just as Google does. One line in that file is enough to shut them out, and someone other than you may have put it there, for example when the site was built.

The bots come in two kinds, and they are easy to mix up. Search bots fetch pages to answer a question right now. Training bots collect text that models are trained on. OpenAI states that sites that opt out of its search bot, OAI-SearchBot, will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, while GPTBot is the bot that collects training data (OpenAI on its bots). Blocking training bots is a choice. Blocking search bots means you can't be cited.

llms.txt is a proposal, not a requirement. An llms.txt is a text file at the root of your site that sums up what the company does and links to its most important pages. It is written for AI services. The format was proposed in 2024 and is still not a formal standard (llmstxt.org). Google says you don't need to create any new files to appear in its AI features. So the file doesn't replace any other work. It is still easy to add, and it gives AI services a short description of you in your own words.

The answer has to stand on its own. An AI service looks for passages that answer the question without the rest of the page. A page that opens with two paragraphs of company history before getting to the point is hard to quote. A short answer at the top, headings phrased as questions and figures with sources make a page easy to cite. This article is built that way.

Is AI SEO different from traditional SEO?

Less than it sounds. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimization is needed. The page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet in the regular results (Google Search Central on AI features). That is the same base as SEO.

Most of it holds outside Google too. A site that can be read, pages that answer clearly and a company others point to. What GEO adds is the bots, and answers that can be lifted out.

So don't treat GEO as a new channel with its own budget. It is the same work with a few extra checks. If your SEO basics are in place, you have done most of the work for AI search as well.

What should you check first?

Start with what can block everything else. Five checks, in this order.

1. Are the bots let in? Open your robots.txt (yoursite.com/robots.txt). If it says Disallow: / under Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or under an asterisk, the site is closed to that bot.

2. Is there a sitemap, and are all important pages in it? Pages missing from the sitemap get found later or not at all.

3. Which searches do you already appear for? Search Console shows you. Pages in positions 5 to 15 usually give the most for the least work.

4. Is there a page for what buyers search before they buy? Pricing, comparisons and your service in your city. Without the page, you can't rank.

5. Do your most important pages have a short answer at the top? If not, add two or three sentences that answer the question directly.

These are checks, not a project. The answers show where the work needs to happen.

What does it cost to get done?

It depends on who does the work and how hard the competition for your search terms is. With your own staff, the cost is working time. Agencies usually charge a monthly retainer or by the hour, and prices vary widely between markets.

Always ask what's included. Does the agency write the pages, or only the reports? Does it cover technical work and AI search, or just keywords? A monthly report without a single new or improved page is expensive at any price.

Verka costs $690 a month with every module. See pricing.

Every week, without doing the work

Most of the above is work, not decisions. Verka takes the work. Verka finds what needs doing, you approve and Verka does it.

Verka reads your Search Console and the search data in your industry. Terms you don't show up for, pages sitting just outside page one and technical issues holding them back land in your queue as suggestions, each with a reason.

When you approve an article, Verka first reads what ranks at the top for the term and which sources Google's AI Overview cites. Then Verka writes a page that answers better, in your voice. You read it, change a line if you want and publish it on your site. Verka tracks the term and shows what the article delivered after 7 and 30 days.

You keep the decisions. Verka does the work.

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