GEO is replacing SEO — what does that mean for your online store?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has, for a while, been considered a key ingredient to success for online stores. And smaller ecommerce businesses have spent years perfecting SEO strategies to compete with big players.

However, as artificial intelligence (AI) infiltrates every facet of technology, a new strategy being termed ‘Generative Engine Optimisation’ or GEO, is set to overtake SEO.

GEO measures how well online content can be summarised by AI platforms. And it seems to be the new gold standard, as top rankings on search engines become less relevant.

Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT have already transformed how people find products online. Now, it’s up to businesses to respond to the changing face of online sales. 

What is GEO — and how is it different from SEO?

GEO refers to the strategy of making content more appealing and more easily discoverable by AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s SGE. It’s being popularised because AI search is becoming the dominant route of online shoppers searching for products online. 

GEO and SEO share many similarities, such as the use of keyword strategy, an emphasis on high-quality, helpful content that represents E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust), and a goal to enhance the visibility of content online and build site authority.

The main differences of GEO, compared to SEO, is that it prioritises clear, structured, and conversational content that can be easily parsed by LLMs, not just human eyes. 

Instead of keyword stuffing to score top ranks, GEO favours content that is written in a natural tone, with question-based, long-tail keywords that genuinely satisfy a user’s intent. 

Traditional SEO is by no means redundant, but generative tools are on the rise, and they ‘read’ and summarise pages differently. To succeed amid the changing face of search, ecommerce businesses need to adapt their approach accordingly.

Why ecommerce businesses can’t afford to ignore GEO

If you have an online store, you might have noticed a drop in visibility as AI search tools are on the rise. This is because tools like Google’s SQE prioritise content summaries, instead of direct links. While this is great for users getting a balanced answer to their query, it means sites may experience a decrease in clicks. 

However, AI search doesn’t have to mean goodbye traffic. By writing product descriptions, FAQs, and reviews in a style that AI algorithms can easily understand and extract value from, your site can still be picked up by search engines. 

If you’re still relying on keyword-rich, jargon-heavy, sales-oriented copy that previously scored top rankings, you may want to simplify your approach. AI tools often skip over this type of writing, since it’s less conversational and more difficult for algorithms to parse. 

How to build a GEO strategy for your website

To summarise, the key difference between SEO and GEO is that SEO’s focus is to achieve page-one search rankings, while GEO aims to score a spot in AI-generated summaries.

But how does that translate to actually setting up your online store? Here are some helpful tips for building a GEO-first strategy for your ecommerce business:

• Write conversationally: AI search tools prioritise content that is clear, conversational, and direct. So, opt for keywords that use natural phrasing that your customers would actually say. And no more keyword stuffing.
  
• Structure your content as a Q&A: a good way to seamlessly adapt your content for GEO is to reformat existing posts into FAQs or simple Q&A. This way, you naturally lean into a more conversational tone and use those question-based, long-tail keywords that AI search loves
  
• Embrace images, videos and infographics: you may have noticed that Google likes to spotlight video content at the top of its search rankings where available. It’s because it’s often a quicker and more user-friendly way to digest information
  
• Use schema markup: schema, AKA structured data, helps AI and search engines understand your content contextually. You can manually insert schema into your HTML

Sellers need content that is scannable, human-first, and multi-modal to remain relevant as GEO ripples across the ecommerce world. By embracing both SEO and GEO as part of your approach, you can continue to promote your business successfully on search.