The shift from SEO to GEO: What marketers need to know about AI and search

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (I’m envious if you were), no doubt you will have felt the transformative impact of the generative AI on SEO. In my 15+ years working in organic search — and currently as Contentful’s SEO lead — I can say with confidence that this is the most turbulent shift in organic search since Google claimed dominance over Yahoo two decades ago. 

In an effort to more closely examine this evolution and dissect this metamorphosis, we recently hosted a pair of webinars with experts Alex Hawley from Vercel and Scott Michaels from Apply Digital. Here’s a recap of the key takeaways and actionable insights from these sessions.

Want to dive deeper into the discussion around the critical shift from SEO to GEO? Are you seeking actionable strategies your team can implement today? Watch an on-demand recording of the webinar on our dedicated hub.

Understanding generative engine optimization (GEO)

GEO — also known as answer engine optimization (AEO) or artificial intelligence optimization (AIO) — is critical for brands aiming to stay visible in the AI-driven future of search. While SEO focuses on optimizing web pages and content for organic search visibility, GEO shifts the emphasis toward optimizing entities like brands, products, services, or even people, to appear prominently in generative AI results.

Why the shift matters

Generative search engines, powered by large language models (LLMs), are transforming how users interact with search. Unlike traditional search engines, which return lists of web links based on a single query, LLMs provide rich, conversational answers that anticipate user questions and offer deeper context. This results in significantly fewer clicks out of these chat-based interfaces, dramatically lowering referral traffic to websites from organic search results.

As Alex Hawley, Senior Manager of Partner Solutions at Vercel, points out: "We're seeing that AI crawlers already represent about 20% of Googlebot’s requests — an immense net new presence on the web that's consuming content and represents a huge opportunity to get your content into a whole new channel."

While there’s a clear decoupling between search demand — which remains high — and actual website traffic, this illustrates that we need to change how we measure success, shifting our KPIs away from traffic and toward conversions, deeper pipeline metrics, and visibility in generative AI. Focus on what really counts and moves the needle.

Foundations for GEO success

Thankfully, GEO doesn't demand an entirely new approach; it's largely built on the foundations of traditional SEO. Here are the key principles we highlighted during our sessions:

1. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)

Generating high-quality, authoritative content is essential. Content should clearly demonstrate expertise, provide authoritative insights, and build trust among your audience. Simply put, if your content adheres to Google's quality rater guidelines, your SEO best practices will apply directly to GEO.

2. Structured and retrievable content

While Googlebot has evolved to become sophisticated, AI bots lag behind in parsing JavaScript-heavy websites. Therefore, it's critical to serve fully rendered HTML using server-side rendering or prerendering to ensure these new bots can access and interpret your content.

3. Data matters (especially structured data)

Structured data, like schema markup, significantly helps AI engines understand your content, increasing the likelihood of your brand being cited or included in generative search results. Don't leave metadata fields blank; ensure images have descriptive alt text and videos come with transcripts.

4. Tracking GEO success

Traditional metrics like website traffic alone no longer tell the full story. Marketers need to shift their focus toward deeper funnel metrics such as conversions, as well as measuring your visibility and share of voice in generative search results.

Alex highlighted the importance of measuring your referring traffic from LLMs. "At Vercel, we saw 10% of new signups coming from ChatGPT. Track the impact and use it as a baseline to measure future changes around."

5. Team agility and iterative approach

Given the rapid evolution of generative AI, marketing and development teams need to work with agility. Regular iteration and swift deployment of both technical updates and fresh content are essential to staying relevant and competitive. This includes adopting new technologies which we’ll highlight shortly.

6. Consistent branding and messaging across channels

Maintaining consistent brand messaging across all platforms is critical. Misaligned messaging can confuse AI bots and negatively affect your visibility in generative AI results. Regularly auditing your brand's presence across external platforms, such as Wikipedia, social media, and third-party sites, is essential, as these are frequently crawled by generative AI bots. 

How to talk to the C-suite about GEO

When communicating the value of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to executive leadership, it's important not to panic, as leadership is likely already concerned about declining traffic and AI disruption; instead, approach them with clarity, data, actionable insights, and a playbook. 

Frame GEO as an opportunity — a new channel for attracting high-quality, pre-qualified traffic from AI interactions — and speak their language. Provide clear data, using metrics like conversions, sentiment analysis, and share of voice to articulate the value and ROI of your GEO initiatives. 

Finally, highlight the necessity of involving content, brand, social, and PR teams, emphasizing GEO as a cross-functional initiative requiring collective effort.

Advanced GEO strategies and emerging insights

Scott Michaels, CTO of Apply Digital, pointed out the emerging significance of direct integrations with generative AI platforms: "Some of the larger news organizations and content farms are making paid agreements to get their content purposely crawled, so form that direct relationship wherever you can."

Furthermore, Alex recommended embracing frontier content opportunities: "Find content that hasn't been written about and get in early to establish yourself as the subject matter expert — you'll be ahead of the curve when it comes to those answers being cited."

Tools and strategies for getting ahead

At Contentful, we leverage structured content modeling to seamlessly optimize for AI processing. Alongside strategic partners like Vercel and Apply Digital, we enable ways to further enhance site performance, structured data implementation, and real-time content management.

Alex provided practical insights regarding refreshing content during the sessions, explaining, "You're going to want to set a content refresh cadence — to not have your published content get stale and make sure that your content stays relevant."

Apply Digital also highlighted the emerging importance of Model Context Protocols (MCPs), which help generative AI engines access real-time data. As Scott shared, "It is going to let the different types of crawlers actually treat your website more like a database — so you're going to have a complete bypassing of sites pretty soon — and those that use an MCP are going to win, and those that don't are going to miss out."

The bottom line

While these changes represent significant disruptions to traditional SEO strategies, they also open up enormous opportunities. Embracing GEO today can position your brand as an early mover in this new era of generative AI search.

Alex reinforced this optimistic outlook: "Now we have a whole new tool that's parsing your content without you doing anything that understands the meaning of your content, your business, and can also refer users to your site."

By proactively adapting to these new realities, marketers and developers alike can secure a competitive edge, maintain visibility, and ultimately drive meaningful interactions and conversions from this evolving search landscape. 

Interested in more insights like these? Watch an on-demand recording of the webinar on our dedicated hub. Ready to take your next steps? Contact us to explore how Contentful, Vercel, and Apply Digital can help your organization navigate and excel in this new generative AI-driven search environment.

Take a tour

Chat with our team

We'll show you how our composable content platform can enhance 1:1 customer connections and drive growth for your business.

Subscribe for updates

Build better digital experiences with Contentful updates direct to your inbox.