What is GEO? Discover SEO for AI

We have been hearing and reading for years that SEO has died, but the truth is that organic positioning in search engines has always been transforming and adapting to the new reality.

We are probably facing the biggest challenge at a marketing level that AI proposes. SEO as such is increasingly losing influence in traffic generation, but this does not mean that we are going to stop optimizing our eCommerce or, much less, that we are going to give up, right?

We have fully entered the era of GEO, which shares many things with SEO, but has important nuances. Let me tell you what it consists of and in which direction we must work so that our online store continues to be relevant in the immediate future.

Make yourself comfortable because the post is long, but interesting.

As it usually happens in online marketing, all strategies and tactics are usually identified with acronyms. In the case of GEO, these correspond to Generative Engine Optimization.

Basically, it consists of adapting our website or eCommerce to appear as a result in the conversations and prompts introduced in the different Artificial Intelligences.

This represents an important change, because, on the one hand, we stop optimizing for keywords, and on the other, Google stops being the “navel” of the universe, because there are increasingly stronger competitors.

For a long time we have been talking about the importance of optimizing our pages for search intentions over keywords, but in reality, most users still worked to position themselves as: “online shoe store” or “blue sweater men”.

We not only focused on generating content on our website, correctly using meta tags, structured data… we also worked to manage to provide an extra of authority. In addition, Google has always been obsessed with the semantic web, with better understanding the content of words, establishing semantic silos, relating concepts…

Now, all this has taken an exponential leap, it is increasingly common for users to use these alternative platforms to search for products and services, and they do so in a 100% semantic way.

We typed in the search bar: “online shoe store”, now we ask naturally: “where can I buy water-resistant sneakers for my excursion next weekend”. And that artificial intelligence engine, with all the context it has about you and about the conversation you are having, offers you a series of alternatives.

Thanks to GEO, you will appear better positioned in AI. Thanks to the authority generated and the relevance of your content in different channels, you will have many more possibilities for AI to recommend your online store.

The landscape has changed so much that even the main SEO reporting tools have been introducing this variable into their dashboards. Thus, as an example, look at this Semrush screenshot.

Most of these tools work in a similar way, with parameters or GEO KPIs such as:

For now, it is reckless to consider Google dead, and having SEO optimized favors GEO, but it is clear that it is very convenient to see the trends we are beginning to face.

The search engine par excellence in our market is still the big G, but the type of results it shows has changed. In fact, progressively, it sends less and less traffic. This is due to AI Overviews, those information previews generated with Gemini, which answer many queries in the so-called position zero without the need to enter a website.

But add to this the vertiginous growth of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude… Searches are fragmenting, perhaps the volume of these platforms is not yet excessive, but the commitment to GEO is clearly strategic.

We all are quite clear about what determined the position or ranking of a keyword in Google: a combination of relevance for the search and generated authority, essentially through linkbuilding.

The logic is similar, because both seek the relevance of the answer, what happens is that AI is almost “one shoot”, since it does not show a list or SERP in which the user has to proactively search for the one that interests them most.

The GEO response is generated through the knowledge it has acquired through training, scanning multiple data sources and texts (in addition to what it has learned about user uses, interests and habits).

With this, it generates a context and establishes relationships between concepts to build an answer.

In addition, most platforms make online queries in real time within blogs, news and databases. Here our content is particularly influential.

As this is becoming a more technical post than I would like, we are going to give concrete and actionable examples so that you can update your online store. As these things are always more digestible with examples, let us suppose that we have an online shoe store and we want to optimize our presence in generative engines.

The objective is that, when AI builds an answer to a question such as:

“Where to buy comfortable and cheap sneakers online?”, we are the chosen option.

Let us see where AI draws from.

Blogs continue to be the fuel of the Internet, and that does not seem to change. If our shoe store generates its own conversational content in the form of posts, AIs will receive it very positively.

Suppose you have written articles with titles such as:

Note that they are answering specific questions and provide solutions. Although to this you must add a good structure and useful and well-written content.

After all, in SEO content alone is not enough.

If you also sell on Amazon, Zalando or any of these platforms, it is important that you have good product sheets… because GEO also feeds on them. After all, they are domains with a lot of authority and include product descriptions, ratings, prices, stock.

What signals does AI extract? For example:

Since this topic of reviews comes up, I will insist that they are very important. And they are for customers, but also for AI. Take a look at how your reputation is on sites such as Trustpilot or Google Reviews, they are two very authoritative sources and it is proven that they are weighted by AIs.

After all, Artificial Intelligence is capable of interpreting what your reputation is, the tone of the reviews and, ultimately, the reputation of your store.

As we said, if in your reviews it is mentioned that your sneakers are very comfortable, that they are well finished or that your delivery is fast and without problems, GEO will take it into account when someone searches for footwear with those characteristics.

Here there is another parallel with traditional SEO, because links and mentions from third-party websites are interpreted as recognition that increases our authority. In addition, the greater the reputation of the medium in which we appear, the more value that mention has.

This provides credibility and visibility, which increases the chances of being cited by AI via GEO.

There is no need to say much more, but we can give an example. Imagine that an article appears in a digital newspaper or in the blog of an influencer talking about ideal shoes for traveling… this is a 10 for your brand.

In the case of the example of an online shoe store, price is important for our positioning. That is why appearing in online comparators, and performing well compared to the competition, strengthens our role.

In addition, on sites such as Idealo or Google Shopping, price is not the only variable. It is also crossed with other data such as models or own characteristics. This information will be used by AI engines to give complex answers that involve several of them. For example: affordable waterproof sneakers or Adidas Spezial sneakers at the best price.

Using this information, AI is capable of recommending, comparing and making lists of different options.

Gone are the times when the only reference that search engines had of an image was the alt text that was placed for navigation adapted for people with visual impairments. Crawlers and algorithms were not capable of interpreting multimedia content beyond a mass of pixels.

Generative AI is capable of creating images and videos, with even more reason it has demonstrated incredible solvency when interpreting what is in a photo or a video.

That is why it is increasingly important in the GEO strategy to have photos, infographics and a lot, a lot of audiovisual content of brand and product.

It is proven that TikTok and, especially, Youtube are scanned by AI engines to analyze videos, extract information and draw conclusions.

What videos can work for GEO in eCommerce? Basically content prepared following the same parameters as blog posts: useful, relevant, authoritative, well-structured information capable of solving queries.

Topics such as:

Work a lot on content: it is good for users and for AI.

This, which in SEO was somewhat old school, in GEO is important (very important, in fact).

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini… go through discussion platforms, review threads, scan content and weigh it very well, because they understand that it is user-generated content and, therefore, the recommendations extracted from it are valuable for other users with similar interests.

We are talking about platforms that may surprise you a bit, which you probably had not considered at the time such as Craiglist, Reddit (a highly valued source) or specialized forums. In the case of sneakers, it could be the Runnea forum, for runners, or Youlookfab, for more stylish looks.