SEO (search engine optimisation) helps you rank in normal search results. GEO (generative engine optimisation) helps AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity name and cite your business. AIO (AI Overview optimisation) helps you appear in the AI summaries Google shows above its results. They share foundations: a fast, well-structured site with clear, trustworthy facts.
Why search changed
People still search Google, but more of them now ask an AI assistant or read an AI summary before clicking anything. If the AI answer names three businesses and yours is not one of them, you may never get the click. Being found now means being understood and trusted by machines as well as people.
SEO: search engine optimisation
SEO is still the foundation. Search engines need to crawl your site quickly, understand each page and trust that you are a real, relevant business.
- Fast pages that pass Core Web Vitals on mobile
- One clear topic per page, with a descriptive title and heading
- Local signals: Google Business Profile, consistent name, address and phone, reviews
- Links from relevant, reputable websites
GEO: generative engine optimisation
AI assistants build answers from sources they can read and trust. GEO makes your business easy to understand, and easy to quote.
- State facts plainly: what you do, where, for whom and at what price
- Consistent entity details across your site, profiles and directories
- Structured data (schema.org) describing your business, services and FAQs
- An llms.txt file that summarises your site for AI systems
- Mentions on sources that AI models already trust
AIO: AI Overview optimisation
Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode summarise the web above the normal results. Pages that answer the question directly, early and accurately are the ones cited.
- Answer-first writing: the answer in the first two sentences, detail after
- FAQ sections that match real questions
- Evidence and authorship: named authors, dates, sources and experience
- Content that is genuinely more useful than the alternatives
What ExIQ Web includes
Every ExIQ Web site launches with the foundations for all three: fast static pages, structured data, an llms.txt file, AI-crawler access, a sitemap, and Search Console and Bing set up. Ongoing plans add monthly technical fixes, answer-first articles, AI answer tracking and citation building. We never use link spam, fake reviews or doorway pages.