Words: Alex Coe – Digital Director
Category(s): Campaigns, Content
Date: 9th April 2025
Why rumours of SEO’s death are greatly exaggerated.
If you’ve spent any time in digital marketing, you’ve heard it before: SEO is dead. It dies a lot, at the hands of content farms, social media, voice search, mobile-first indexing, privacy laws, and the absolute enshitification of Google’s search results.
Yet, SEO never truly dies. It evolves, reacts, but its core principles remain unchanged.
Now, its latest assailant has arrived: GEO (generative engine optimisation). The king is dead. Long live the king.
GEO is the latest thing that everybody in search marketing needs to be doing right now. It’s the idea that optimising for AI prompt responses from platforms like ChatGPT and Claude requires its own set of strategies.
Except, once again, I’m not buying it. To me, GEO feels more like an AI industry sales pitch than an organic shift from digital marketers.
Maybe that’s just my contrarian side, but I don’t see why we’re pretending GEO and SEO are fundamentally different. Sure, distribution has changed, but webmasters, publishers, and businesses all still need to operate within the same guidelines. (Kids, ask your parents what a webmaster is.)
What actually gets cited in GenAI results?
Relevant, authoritative and high-quality information. (You see where I’m going.)
And how can you create content that is relevant, authoritative and high quality? By researching what your audience is searching for.
It’s SEO101. These principles should be the same ones that are always guiding you. (Hopefully. Black hat SEO is actually dead, right?)
If your content is authoritative, well-structured and useful, AI is more likely to cite it. If it’s not, it won’t. Just like Google. The rules haven’t changed, they’ve just been applied to a new medium.
GEO’s big problem
I’ve noticed a plethora of ‘how to optimise for GEO!’ content being pushed, by the aforementioned AI industry plants, with some marketers seemingly scrambling to optimise for AI-generated results.
But if you are thinking about shifting your SEO strategy into a GEO one, then heed my concern: data visibility.
SEO is built on data. We have Search Console, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs – if it moves, we track it. With GEO, however? Almost nothing. (In fact, the best tip I’ve seen for measuring GEO performance is to use SEO tool data to make best-guess assumptions to apply GenAI.)
Where’s my AI Search Console? I want to be able to see:
- The prompts that led to my content being cited
- Which URLs are accessible to GenAI platforms
- What my click-through rate is
- Whether competitors are cited alongside me (and are they above or below?)
From what I’ve seen to date, AI models offer zero transparency when it comes to ‘GEO’. No detailed insights, just a black box.
Should you optimise for GEO?
Yes. But… you probably already are.
If you’ve been doing SEO properly – creating valuable, well-structured, authoritative content – you’re already optimising for AI-driven search. The same principles apply:
- Create high-quality content that AI models find authoritative
- Structure your content with clear headings and summaries for easier AI parsing
- Build strong backlinks and domain authority
- Stay ahead by testing how AI models reference your industry
Instead of chasing the hot-new-thing, double down on content fundamentals and track AI-driven traffic trends with the data you do have.
Is GEO the future?
Sure, in the sense that AI-driven search is growing. But does that mean SEO is dead? Absolutely not.
Good content will always win. Whether it’s ranked #1 on Google, cited in an AI response, or shared by an actual human, the principles of digital visibility don’t change.
The marketers who thrive in the AI era won’t be the ones panicking over another SEO obituary. They’ll be the ones who see through the hype, stick to what works, and adapt strategically.
Oh and, final thought: Generative engine optimisation doesn’t even make sense. It should be GAIPRO (Generative AI prompt response optimisation), but this piece won’t rank as well unless I call it GEO, so.