The Rise Of GEO: How To Get Found In AI Answer Engines

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, CTO, here at Mod Op, and today I am once again joined by Maurice White and he leads SEO here at Mod Op. And we’re having him on again to discuss a very important topic. It keeps popping up. It’s GEO.

[00:00:21] Tessa Burg: So Maurice, thank you for joining us again to dive deeper into what is GEO, why do we need to start paying attention to it and thinking about it in our communication and PR strategies? And I’ll, I’ll leave it at that. So let’s dive in. Thanks for being here.

[00:00:37] Maurice White: Yeah, you’re welcome. Um, to get started, what is GEO?

[00:00:42] Maurice White: It stands for Generative Engine Optimization. Right. Um, what that means is being able to optimize your website to return in the answer engines such as Perplexity ChatGPT as well as Google’s AI overviews or AI mode, as it now, as now known. So to be able to optimize your website to return an answer within those systems is what is GEO, generative engine optimization.

[00:01:17] Tessa Burg: Yeah. One thing that I find kind of funny is some of our clients will be in ChatGPT themselves, and they’ll ask questions where they would expect their company, their brand, to be the authority to be cited. Like I know some people are, you know, a lot of, a lot of, especially in B2B marketing, thought leadership is so important.

[00:01:40] Tessa Burg: They’re putting out all this thought leadership and then they go into ChatGPT. And ask the very question, their thought leadership answers, and they don’t see their brand or company cited or even the type of information what, why is that? I mean, I feel like this is the biggest question. They’re like, how do we get into the answer?

[00:02:01] Tessa Burg: So tell us a little bit about like, what are the fundamentals, what do they need to lean into to increase the visibility in ChatGPT and Perplexity in those answers that are being generated, um, by AI?

[00:02:16] Maurice White: Well, it all starts with fundamental SEO, right? Making sure that you have a technically sound website, making sure that your on-page content is helpful and answers questions about your product or services.

[00:02:29] Maurice White: Um, making sure that your backlink profile, your off-page, uh, SEO is tight. You, you’re getting, uh, you know, links from authoritative sites saying that you are the authority within this particular market or industry. Now, that’s 80% of it, right? Making sure that you have, as far as you know, and I’m gonna go a little bit more deeper on the technical side first, because.

[00:02:55] Maurice White: All of the search engines and answer engines are essentially bots that are scanning your site and they’re looking to identify patterns that you know is, or is relevant to the question or search queries that people are asking about. So making, making sure that you have structured data on your website, schema markup, making sure that you’re heading hierarchy, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 is optimized, you know, for that particular, you know, search interest. Um, making sure that your information architecture is in a place where it’s easy to understand and associate related content and value. Because what we’re seeing is our users are going to the answer engines such as ChatGPT, and typing out a paragraph.

[00:03:45] Maurice White: And wanting to know more about what’s going on with a particular subject. And if your website doesn’t have the foundational SEO in place, you’re off the top not even getting into the answers. Right. But then there’s that other 20%, which is newer. And more exciting for us, and this is where we get lean into the generative AI optimization or the GEO, which is making sure that you have cited content, meaning working with your PR team in order to get your brand mentions out there, into the internet, into the world at large, so they know who your brand is.

[00:04:22] Maurice White: Also, another big portion of it is, is your Google business profile, like your local SEO, making sure that your reviews are on point, making sure that there’s a, a, your, your Google Business profile is set up correctly to match your industry in service, right? Another thing with that are citations as well, making sure that you are cited in all of the different areas, such as lists, such as, uh, forums, such as Reddit, like all over the place, you know, so there’s a lot of optimization to be done once the foundational SEO is in place.

[00:05:03] Tessa Burg: I think it’s really interesting because I feel like there’s a lot of clickbaity articles out there that are saying SEO is dead, and it’s really the opposite, right?

[00:05:14] Tessa Burg: The formula of. My site has to have high quality, authoritative content that my audience cares about. I mean, the mistakes that people made in the days of Old, of SEO of keyword stuffing and just trying to optimize pages. And we know with each Google algorithm update, those sites would crash. And you would, it’s sad, because some businesses really suffered every time Google released a new algorithm.

[00:05:43] Tessa Burg: But I hope we can learn from that and realize that quality contents ’cause now that we can use generative AI to spit out tons of different content. It’s still for GEO, for getting visibility, still going to matter, to have very high quality content that your customer actually cares about.

[00:06:05] Tessa Burg: What are some ways that people can start to uncover the content that should be on their website to deliver on that quality, demand, or quality requirement?

[00:06:20] Maurice White: You know, that’s a great question. I mean, the on-page content structure is very important. First of all, having relevant content to your product or services is critical.

[00:06:30] Maurice White: You mentioned the algorithm updates over the last several years. The helpful content updates, specifically coming from Google has been. Preparing us for that shift to these answer engines, right? So like you’re saying, keyword stuffing is, is no longer happening, right? But what is happening is having a summary on top of your page that explains clearly what this page is about.

[00:06:54] Maurice White: Having your content structured in a way to where you have FAQ for that particular page, uh, cited sources citing that you know you are the authority from other, you know, mediums. Being able to have that structured data, like I was saying, um, and then also answering relevant questions. Because your question is how do they uncover what content to put out there?

[00:07:20] Maurice White: You put out the content that you want your visitors to know about your particular service, right? So for example, if you’re selling shoes and you have boots. Running shoes, uh, hiking shoes, uh, shoes to go out to, you know, have dinner with. You wanna make sure that each of those pieces of content are tailored specifically to that type of shoe, right?

[00:07:43] Maurice White: So you don’t want to be talking about hiking boots when you’re talking about running shoes, and you’re on the running shoe page, right? And then when you’re on the running shoe page, you want to explain the benefits of why your running shoe is going to help you achieve your goal, which is comfort. And stability, right?

[00:07:59] Maurice White: So it’s all about the relevance of the content and then being able to have that content supported by data. Supported by outside sources. Having, again, that FAQ section, you know, uh, where can I go in these shoes, you know, how, what’s the temperature, you know, of my feet? Or, you know, just different things that are relevant points to those particular items.

[00:08:22] Maurice White: Uh, maybe that’s not a good example, but the point is surfacing that relevant content that answers why. Should a user go with your particular product or service? What are the benefits? Where’s the data that backs that up? Who else is using this information? Who, where can I go to? And that helps gain that exposure, right?

[00:08:45] Maurice White: But it’s all about helpful content. Like it, that’s what it boils down to. If your content isn’t helpful, then you’re not going to even ranking the ranking engines, the traditional search engines, right?

[00:08:56] Tessa Burg: What I love about your example is. The questions that you were asking are reflective of different moments in the buyer journey, and something that has dramatically changed on both the B2C side and the B2B side is the journey itself.

[00:09:14] Maurice White: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:16] Tessa Burg: People are, are asking questions how, where and when. Has shifted way up funnel, and when we talk about that remaining 20% of what it takes to increase visibility in the answer engines that they’re using today, because yes, they’re still using Google, but Google’s giving them the answer without a click.

[00:09:41] Maurice White: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:41] Tessa Burg: Yes. A lot of people have shifted to exploratory question answers in Perplexity, in ChatGPT and Claude and all the other engines. And your examples really your, the big unlock that you mentioned is the why. Why do they start? Where can I leverage market research, persona, data, conversations to get a better idea of where my customer is starting this exploration?

[00:10:09] Tessa Burg: Where can I leverage PR and those external points of validation to establish brand and preference at the very beginning? And maybe even influence the next types of questions that they ask. So you mentioned comfort, you mentioned where could I go? Like I love taking that step back and when you think about GEO, it’s not just about, Hey, how am I gonna get more customer reviews?

[00:10:35] Tessa Burg: Hey, how am I gonna get more PR mentions?

[00:10:37] Maurice White: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:38] Tessa Burg: It’s really deeply understanding where’s the start of this journey? Where does it make the most sense for me to influence? And where does my point of view. Provide meaningfully different value because when you are differentiated in that point of view, you’re going to get more pickups, right?

[00:10:56] Tessa Burg: You’re going to, the PR will take, and that’s going to add credibility and validate the quality data that you’re putting on your site itself.

[00:11:04] Maurice White: Absolutely, absolutely. Um, just like you’re saying, the shift between. The shift from browsing to answering is real. You know, people are looking for, uh, complex, concise answers that give them in-depth knowledge where they can ask further questions and interact further, right?

[00:11:22] Maurice White: So having that content on your website easily readable to the search bots. Is giving you a step ahead in that. Right. Um, and again, like you said, working with PR to increase your brand mentions is very important. Um, and there’s all types of other content ideas or content strategies that. The answer engines, like for example, comparison charts.

[00:11:48] Maurice White: They love comparison charts. When you compare, you feel me, your your shoe to the com competition shoe and where your shoe shines at, they love that type of information, so it’s just all about, again. Fundamental, SEO is already in place. Your page titles, your meta descriptions, your search intent, everything is optimized.

[00:12:09] Maurice White: Your technical stack, your core web vitals, the performance of your site, all of that’s in place. Now. You’re looking at structuring the content on page to where it’s easy to read. It’s helpful, and it provides a ton of detail. You know what I mean? Another thing that’s important too, is. Updating your cornerstone content, the freshness of your content, being able to have that content updated, re-crawled by the search engines, and available for, you know, the, the answer engines to be able to re refer to that information.

[00:12:45] Maurice White: So it’s critical.

[00:12:47] Tessa Burg: Yeah, it is critical and I think when we talk about updating content and being relevant and having a specific point of view, it’s the combination of the vision and values of, of your brand. But also something that we’re using internally. Uh, we created an agent called Mod Heat, and it is to track specific points of conversation happening in our clients’ industries happening among their customers and their target account sets are happening in consumers and what’s going on in conscious consumerism. And we think about our B2C brands.

[00:13:17] Tessa Burg: And when you have, um, when you start to pair what agents can do, it’s not just to generate content. It is, you know, starting to use agents to do that research and to stay on top of those topics of relevance for you and take.

[00:13:36] Tessa Burg: You know, if you’ve already done persona research, if you’ve already done market research and flow it out along the journey. If you can see what topics are hot and what questions are being asked, where do you need to be in the journey? Whether that’s social media, external websites, maybe triggered emails that immediately respond or proactively give information and tools before and or to differentiate you and then ask for a review.

[00:14:02] Tessa Burg: Like I think that, that GEO. Is also a call to start thinking about a more cross channel approach to answering questions in customer service and creating this like flywheel of answer. They respond, I use their responses fuel to look at where I need to be next to be in service of this new journey.

[00:14:27] Maurice White: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:28] Maurice White: Um, the LLMs, they like to pull an credible content that’s trusted from expert source. So EEAT is very important, right? Like I know, um, we’re talking about generative optimization, but we can’t get away from the fact that if your content is not trustworthy, your, it doesn’t, it suit expertise, right? Then you’re not going to even rank in the traditional search engines, right?

[00:14:57] Maurice White: So you need. Uh, it’s very important to understand that that helpful content is the key. That’s the starting point. Once you have that helpful content in, then all of the technical optimization strategies will benefit you more and increase that visibility across search engines and answer engines, because quiet as it’s kept, Google.

[00:15:22] Maurice White: The AI overviews or AI mode references its own ranking system when providing the answer, and so if you go into the cited sources or where the information is being pulled from, you can see that Google is still pulling from the search engines on this information. So it’s imperative to have your site set up, technically sound, your content on point, helpful, answering relevant questions.

[00:15:51] Maurice White: And not fluff. Provide the data, you know, provide the statistics. You know, having, um, that FAQ information, like, I know I’m, sound like I’m repeating myself, but you can’t say these things enough, right?

[00:16:05] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. So one of the things that we didn’t get into enough on our first interview was how we measure. And I, and we did our first interview just a few weeks ago, and the space is changing and new things are being released all the time.

[00:16:22] Tessa Burg: Um, has there been any progress in brand’s ability to actually measure what their visibility is in generative answer engines?

[00:16:33] Maurice White: Absolutely, there are a ton of tools out there that help you measure that visibility. But I like to key in on really two, uh, two tools that I use really. One is Search Console.

[00:16:46] Maurice White: Search Console is key in understanding the site’s SEO Health overall, but now it allows you to track interactions and other. AI overview, uh, you know, data to where you can pull it up and Search Console. Another tool that I use and shout out to Semrush, uh, they have, you know, within their standard core product, the ability to show you which keywords you’re ranking for in the.

[00:17:14] Maurice White: AI overviews, which keywords you’re not ranking for, and how you can be able to optimize with, you know, include those keywords you’re not ranking for within your content strategy. But they’re also just released a new platform called AIO, which is a more in-depth measurement of how the answer engines or viewing your website and how you can be able to optimize for greater visibility.

[00:17:41] Maurice White: So there are definitely a ton of tools out there and I recommend that the listeners out there go check out, uh, Semrush AIO, which is a new platform that they have out, and even their core product, the ability to understand where you are. It’s really great. Semrush also has another, uh, tool called the AI Toolkit, which gives you a snapshot of how the answer engines or LLMs is viewing your website.

[00:18:11] Maurice White: Right. And then there are also other tools, like there’s this one tool, um, I can’t think of the name right now, but it is a, uh, a agent within ChatGPT that you can add. It’s a free tool and it allows you to measure your brand awareness without using the search the internet function in ChatGPT.

[00:18:31] Maurice White: But just with the training data, you know, you can be able to see what is your visibility within the, um. That the LLMs. So there are a ton of of tools out.

[00:18:42] Tessa Burg: That’s huge.

[00:18:42] Maurice White: Yeah, it’s very huge.

[00:18:44] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Even that, just that, that you just mentioned in ChatGPT, that’s something anyone can do right now. And we know, you know, from research that we’ve received from Forrester that B2B buyers, like we said, they’re moving up to setting preference much earlier.

[00:19:01] Tessa Burg: And we know they’re using chat g PT as a part of that exploration. So this is, you know. Monumentally important for brands to get on. And what I love about this conversation is we’ve shared some quick wins that you can do today. Like if you don’t have schema markup on your site, do it. If you don’t have FAQs, source your customer service data.

[00:19:23] Tessa Burg: Get that up there, make sure it’s well structured, high quality. And then also these more strategic. Ways that you can start to create that flywheel of content that is informed by listening to your customers, by tracking trends and aligning back to your differentiated product and brand. And you know, we, we hear that brand is becoming bigger and bigger, but unlike the days of old, your brand and the impact that it has on the journey and revenue growth and retention is now measurable.

[00:19:56] Tessa Burg: And I think. That’s, it’s a new frontier, but it’s, it’s really exciting, especially as we’re seeing lots of other types of metrics that we’re used to getting, or lots of other type of data we’re used to getting these marketers, uh, no longer be available.

[00:20:11] Maurice White: Right. And just to come back to that tool I mentioned, because I like to give credit, whereas due, um, there’s a guy called, uh, Nathan Gotch.

[00:20:21] Maurice White: He puts out a ton of information and he created the GEO brand audit, right? So you can go into ChatGPT, search their agents and search for the GEO brand audit agent, and then you’re able to understand how you can, how the, the answer engines are viewing your website because just like you said. Um, when you know the, the executive leadership goes to ChatGPT and types in a question under wanting to understand how, you know they want to see their brand as the first response.

[00:20:54] Maurice White: You’ll be surprised, you know, that it’s not there. So with tools like this, the GEO brand agent with tools like Semrush with tools like Search Console. You are able to understand the visibility and then measure the progress as you go forward. ’cause that’s really important because once you put the optimization steps in place, you wanna be able to see if this working.

[00:21:19] Maurice White: You know, you want to be able to see if a, if a, if a question is asked in the LLM or right directly on Google, is your brand going to come up? Right? So it’s important to understand first, where do you stand at? Then secondly, what steps do you need to take to be able to optimize your website, starting with the fundamental SEO, right?

[00:21:40] Maurice White: And then from there, going into the other techniques like we talked about briefly here.

[00:21:46] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And, and we’ve talked a lot about, you know, how businesses can increase their visibility. Now we have tools for measurement, uh, different ways to do it, but what about for the consumer? So obviously we can’t change how this buying journey has shifted.

[00:22:01] Tessa Burg: But by increasing our own brand visibility, what are the benefits to the consumers and the B2B buyers who have already made this change are already using LLMs. Are there any benefits to them? The, the more high-quality content that brands put out?

[00:22:19] Maurice White: Well, absolutely because then they’ll get the high-quality answers that they’re looking for.

[00:22:24] Maurice White: So it’s a direct one-to-one relationship. High-quality content returns a high-quality answer within the answer engines or LLM. So the benefit to the consumer would be, now I have more in-depth information versus going to the traditional search engine, typing in what are the best running shoes to wear on a 5K marathon and getting a list of, uh, you know, websites that I have to do further investigation.

[00:22:52] Maurice White: Now as a consumer, I can say, what are, what are the best running shoes for a 5K marathon? And it’s going to gimme a concise answer. Well, Maurice, the best running shoes or this, this and that, and this is why, and this is where you can go to find more information and make your purchase decision right, so, or your purchase itself.

[00:23:09] Maurice White: So it benefits the consumer because now you’re getting concise answers to your question.

[00:23:16] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And I also feel like maybe this is just me and totally biased. Whenever I saw listings and search engines, sometimes I didn’t really trust if that meant it was the best. To your point, like I really, I clicked on like five, seven links and compared the copy.

[00:23:37] Tessa Burg: I read it down. I tried to see is this true? And it really points to, I think, consumers and even B2B buyers. May even trust the answers they’re getting out of ChatGPT more because it, one, it feels conversational, it already feels trustworthy, whether it is or not, you know, it can’t speak to that. But the way to get in requires the, the heavy external validation signals.

[00:24:07] Tessa Burg: If you don’t have the reviews, if you don’t have the external validation, it’s very hard to get into the consideration set of an LLM, right. Um, to get in because it’s all pattern based. So if you’re, if you’re not within those strong validation signals, um, then it just looks like words in isolation. Which is not that they’re looking for.

[00:24:34] Maurice White: Right. And you know, one example I can give, you know, I was recently, uh, you know, shopping for a new truck, and so I went to ChatGPT and I said, okay, you know what? The difference between a Ford Ranger Wild Track versus a Ranger Raptor, right? And it gives me all of this in-depth information, a table, uh, dimensions and designs, interior features, pricing, a summary, and then I can go ask further questions to really fine tune if I want to get the Wild Track or the Ranger Raptor.

[00:25:10] Maurice White: So as a consumer. I don’t have to go any further for research other than going to the dealership and then confirming the information that was fit back out to me from the answer engine versus having to go to Ford’s website and then kind of pull out all of this data myself. I mean, it saves me a ton of time as a consumer.

[00:25:30] Tessa Burg: Yeah.

[00:25:31] Maurice White: You know, and once I go to the dealership, yeah. I’m ready to buy. I have all of the information that I need. Right. So as a consumer, it’s very important. To be able to quickly surface the benefits of the product or service that you’re looking to invest your money or time into. And so that, that’s really it right there.

[00:25:52] Maurice White: Like I don’t need to say more.

[00:25:54] Tessa Burg: I know the conversation just makes the whole process much shorter. I mean, that’s one of the agents that we just launched and is going into market with a couple clients. It looks just like ChatGPT, but on the website and it’s not just a chat bot. Like whenever we work with clients in chat bots.

[00:26:11] Tessa Burg: The handoff to need a human is still too high. Right? So this is a conversational agent that’s operating off a core LLM, but it’s using all of the same awesome content that our clients are producing to increase their visibility in the LLM. The added benefit that they get then is they get to see the questions being asked on their site.

[00:26:30] Maurice White: Right.

[00:26:31] Tessa Burg: And I think the more brands sort of start to lean into this opportunity to bring conversation. On their website, in their app, like wherever that consumer is, it’s faster. You get, you ask the question, you get the answer back in the way that you want, and we don’t have to like hunt and, and man, there’s so many, for as much time as invested in UX and UI, I’m always amazed there’s still so many crappy websites that are hard to navigate and hard to find information like, you know, now I could just ask.

[00:27:04] Tessa Burg: And I get it and I get a summary and I can kind of like, you know, decide what I’m gonna download. And I, I think of like B2B sites, and it’s just like PDFs opening up multiple windows. Like what a terrible experience. So this is also like a great way to, if you lean into that, you can personify your brand, you can make it more conversational, and for the end user, the customer or the client, it’s more efficient.

[00:27:32] Maurice White: Yeah, absolutely. And you, and you bring up an interesting point, navigating crappy sites, right? Like if, if, if you have a hard time navigating the site. What do you think the search bots are having when they go to your site to try to understand where’s the relevant content based on a question or a query that’s been presented to them?

[00:27:51] Maurice White: Right. So that navigation is critical that that information architecture, that ability to create topical authority, like again, these are all basic, fundamental. SEO practices or strategies, but when you combine that with the other techniques for optimizing specifically for the answer engines, then you, you, you’re just increasing your visibility tenfold.

[00:28:15] Maurice White: Right. So it definitely works, you know?

[00:28:18] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. So, Maurice, I don’t wanna get off the call and miss something again. Is there a topic we haven’t hit on that you think we, we need? To put out there into the world on this subject.

[00:28:34] Maurice White: Well, we kind of talked about it the last time, but I think it’s really critical pairing PR with SEO.

[00:28:41] Maurice White: Like, man, the benefits are boundless or, you know, unlimited. You know what I mean? Um, especially now because PR driven content. You can think, press mentions, guest articles and influencer shoutouts boost your brand authority. You know, so not necessarily having to link back to your website like traditional backlink strategy would, you know, you, you would implement, but more just that brand mention meaning, you know, if more people are talking about you, the search engines are going to understand that the answer engines are going to see that.

[00:29:15] Maurice White: If less people are talking about you, that means you’re less authoritative in their eyes and why should you even be brought up in the answer? You know what I mean? So working with PR is, is critical.

[00:29:27] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. And if you want to hear more about that, that a lot of it was covered in the first episode, great episode.

[00:29:37] Tessa Burg: I don’t know the number, but you can find it on modop.com. Go to podcast or Leader Generation. We have all of our episodes there. And we’ll also have the transcript for this episode. ’cause I think we’ve, we’ve packed a lot in, we’ve gotten some quick wins, we’ve gotten tactical things, strategies people can use so that you can have an always on brand boosting visibility engine, engine yourself. Um, and I think that’s it. So Maurice, thanks so much for coming on again, going deeper into it. There’s a lot of great tips that people can take back and enact immediately, so it’s exciting.

[00:30:16] Maurice White: Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me. I enjoy working with you.

[00:30:20] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I know more and more and, uh, like I said, if you want more episodes of Leader Generation, you can find them wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:30:29] Tessa Burg: We’re also on LinkedIn and follow us at Mod Op and until next time, uh, good luck in increasing your brand visibility in generative engines.

[00:30:39] Maurice White: Absolutely.