What Is GEO? A Guide to Generative Engine Optimization

People are changing the way they search for information. Instead of opening Google, clicking through ten different websites, and comparing everything themselves, they can now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, or other AI-powered search tools a direct question and get an answer in seconds.

For example, a buyer might ask, “Who are the best hotel linen manufacturers in China?” or “What should I look for when choosing an industrial filtration supplier?” If your company is never mentioned in those answers, you may be missing part of the buyer journey—even if your website already ranks well on Google.

This is where GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, comes in. The idea is relatively new, but the basic principle is not as complicated as it sounds. You want to make your company and its expertise easier for AI systems to understand, trust, and potentially reference when they generate answers.

My View on GEO

I don’t see GEO as a completely new marketing channel that needs to be separated from SEO. In my opinion, GEO is an extension of SEO.

Why? Because AI systems still need information. They need to understand what your company does, what products you offer, which industries you serve, what problems you solve, and whether the information about you is trustworthy. A lot of this information already exists on websites and across the internet.

So if a company’s website has very little useful content, weak product pages, poor technical SEO, no clear About page, and almost no credible information outside its own website, there isn’t much for an AI system to work with in the first place.

That’s why I prefer to combine SEO and GEO instead of running two completely separate strategies. When I work on a B2B website, I want the website to rank in Google, but I also want the content to be useful enough that it can become a source of information for AI search. The work overlaps a lot: good content, clear website structure, real expertise, internal links, technical accessibility, and trustworthy external references all matter.

What Is GEO?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the process of improving your online presence so that AI-powered search and answer engines can better understand your company and potentially mention, recommend, or cite it in their responses.

Traditional SEO is mostly about getting pages to appear in search results. You research keywords, understand search intent, improve pages, build internal links, fix technical problems, and earn relevant backlinks. GEO adds another question to the process: when someone asks an AI system a question related to your industry, does that system have enough useful information to understand your business?

Let’s say you manufacture hotel bed linen. Ranking for “hotel bed linen manufacturer” is obviously useful. But a buyer may not search that exact phrase. They might ask which fabric is best for luxury hotels, what thread count hotels normally use, how to choose a hotel linen supplier, or which manufacturers offer OEM production.

Those questions create opportunities for content. Instead of only trying to rank for product keywords, you build useful resources around the questions buyers actually have. That’s where SEO and GEO start to overlap.

How Does GEO Work?

There isn’t one universal GEO algorithm. Different AI products work in different ways, and their methods for generating answers can change over time. Some systems rely heavily on their underlying model knowledge, while others can retrieve and use information from the web or other sources when answering a question.

From a business perspective, however, the practical problem is fairly simple: AI needs to understand who you are and what you know.

If your website clearly explains your products, applications, industries, manufacturing capabilities, certifications, company background, and expertise, you are giving search systems much more useful information. If that information is also supported by relevant third-party websites, industry publications, LinkedIn profiles, customer references, or other credible sources, the picture becomes stronger.

This is one reason I don’t recommend chasing GEO tricks. There will always be new AI tools and new tactics. Building a website that clearly explains what you do and demonstrates that you actually know your industry is much more sustainable.

GEO vs. SEO: What Is the Difference?

The easiest way to understand the difference is to look at the final result.

With SEO, you’re generally trying to get a page to appear higher in Google’s organic search results. With GEO, you’re trying to increase the chance that your company or content becomes part of an AI-generated answer.

The user behavior is different, too. A Google user might search “industrial water filter manufacturer” and compare several websites. An AI user might ask, “Can you recommend several industrial water filter manufacturers and explain what each one is good at?” The second search is more conversational, and the system may decide which companies are worth mentioning based on the information it can find and understand.

But the foundation is surprisingly similar. Both need useful content, clear information, good website structure, technical accessibility, authority, and trust. That’s why I think it makes more sense to build SEO and GEO together rather than treating GEO as a replacement for SEO.

Why Does GEO Matter for B2B Companies?

B2B buyers usually don’t make a purchasing decision after visiting one page. They research. They compare suppliers. They look at specifications, certifications, production capacity, minimum order quantities, delivery times, applications, and customer experience. Depending on the product, this process can take weeks or even months.

AI search fits naturally into this research process. Instead of searching dozens of individual questions, a buyer can ask an AI tool to explain an industry, compare suppliers, summarize options, or help them understand a technical problem.

That changes the opportunity for B2B brands. You don’t only want to be visible when somebody searches your company name. You want your expertise to be visible when potential customers are researching the problems your products solve.

For example, an HVAC vacuum pump manufacturer can create useful content about choosing a vacuum pump for different refrigerants, vacuum pump maintenance, R32 applications, common HVAC evacuation problems, and the differences between different pump technologies. These topics can attract search traffic, but they also give AI systems much more context about the company’s expertise.

The Three Layers of a GEO Strategy

For the B2B websites I work on, I usually think about GEO in three layers: content, technical SEO, and external/social signals. Content is the most important part because there is no GEO strategy without useful information. Technical work makes that information easier to access and understand. External signals help establish that the company is a real business with real expertise.

Content Is the Most Important Part

If I had to choose only one area to focus on, I would choose content. But not “more content.” Better content.

A lot of B2B websites still have product pages that say things like “high quality,” “competitive price,” and “professional service” without explaining anything useful. From a buyer’s perspective, that doesn’t answer much. From a search perspective, it doesn’t give Google or an AI system much context either.

Instead, build content around real questions. FAQ, How To, What Is, product comparisons, buying guides, application guides, technical articles, case studies, and troubleshooting content are all useful formats.

For example, instead of writing a generic article called “Our Hotel Linen Products,” a hotel textile supplier could answer questions such as “What GSM Should Hotel Towels Be?”, “What Is the Difference Between Percale and Sateen Hotel Sheets?”, or “How Do Hotels Choose a Linen Supplier?”

The best advantage comes from information that competitors cannot easily copy. If you have real manufacturing experience, customer projects, testing data, production photographs, technical specifications, or lessons learned from working with buyers, put that information into your content. That’s much more valuable than publishing another 1,500-word article that could have been written for any company in the industry.

Don’t Ignore the Technical Side

Good content still needs a technically healthy website. If important pages aren’t indexed, if your robots.txt blocks crawlers, if your sitemap has problems, or if your pages are extremely slow, you have a basic problem to solve before worrying too much about GEO.

For a B2B website, I would normally check indexing, robots.txt, XML sitemap, canonical URLs, mobile usability, page speed, internal links, structured data, and overall site architecture. These are not GEO-only tasks. They’re part of a good SEO foundation.

Structured data can also help describe information on a page in a machine-readable way. Depending on the page, this might include Organization, Product, Article, BreadcrumbList, or other relevant Schema.org types. The key is accuracy. Adding schema everywhere just for the sake of having schema isn’t a strategy.

It’s also worth checking whether important content is unintentionally blocked from relevant crawlers. AI search is developing quickly, so technical access should be reviewed as part of normal website maintenance rather than treated as a one-time setup.

What Content Should B2B Companies Create for GEO?

I would start with the questions your sales team receives again and again. Those questions are often much better content topics than a random list of keywords.

For example, customers may ask about product specifications, materials, applications, installation, maintenance, certifications, lead times, customization, pricing factors, or differences between two technologies. These questions can become FAQ pages, technical articles, comparison guides, buying guides, or sections within product pages.

Then connect those pieces together. A product page can link to a technical guide. The technical guide can link back to the product. A case study can link to both. An industry page can bring the whole topic together. This creates a content cluster instead of a website full of unrelated blog posts.

It also creates a much better experience for the buyer. Someone who arrives through an informational article doesn’t have to start searching through your navigation to understand what you actually sell. The internal links can naturally take them from learning to evaluation and eventually to an inquiry.

Why E-E-A-T Matters for GEO

One thing I pay particular attention to is E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

For B2B businesses, this is especially important because buyers are often looking for evidence rather than marketing claims. Saying “we are an experienced manufacturer” is easy. Showing factory photographs, production capabilities, technical data, certifications, customer projects, and real examples is much stronger.

Experience can come from actual projects and practical knowledge. Expertise can be demonstrated through detailed technical content. Authority can be supported by relevant industry publications and external references. Trust comes from clear company information, real contact details, certifications, policies, and transparent business information.

I don’t think E-E-A-T should be treated as a small section added to an SEO checklist. For a B2B website, it should be visible throughout the site.

Why Brand Consistency Matters

Imagine an AI system trying to understand a company. It finds the official website, LinkedIn, several business directories, an industry article, and a customer mention. If all of these sources describe the company in roughly the same way, that’s helpful. If they all contain different company names, product categories, descriptions, or business models, the situation becomes much less clear.

That’s why I recommend keeping your basic brand information consistent across the web. Your company name, product categories, industries, location, manufacturing capabilities, certifications, and core positioning should make sense wherever people find you.

You don’t need to copy and paste the same paragraph everywhere. In fact, you shouldn’t. The website, LinkedIn, industry publications, and other platforms have different purposes. What matters is that the underlying facts and positioning remain consistent.

How to Measure GEO Performance

Measuring GEO is still less straightforward than measuring traditional SEO. Google gives us familiar metrics such as impressions, clicks, rankings, and CTR. AI search doesn’t provide one universal reporting system that works across every platform.

For my GEO framework, I focus on two metrics first: Mentions and Cited Pages.

Mentions means how often your brand appears in relevant AI-generated answers or recommendations. This is the metric I would prioritize because it tells you whether the brand is actually becoming visible in AI conversations.

Cited Pages looks at which pages from your website are being referenced. This is useful because it can tell you what kind of content is actually gaining visibility. If your product pages are never cited but your technical guides are, that gives you something to learn from.

At the same time, don’t throw away your normal SEO and business metrics. Organic clicks, impressions, rankings, qualified traffic, inquiries, and sales opportunities still matter. The ultimate goal isn’t to get mentioned by AI for the sake of getting mentioned. The goal is to become easier for potential customers to discover and trust.

Why You Should Track Different Markets

For companies doing international B2B business, I would also avoid looking at GEO as one global number.

A company may have strong visibility in the United States but almost no visibility in Germany. It might appear for product-related questions in one market but not for supplier-related questions in another. Language, local competitors, market preferences, and available sources can all affect the results.

A simple approach is to create a list of questions for each target market. Include questions about suppliers, products, applications, comparisons, industry problems, and your own brand. Then periodically check whether your company is mentioned, which competitors appear, and which pages or sources are being referenced.

This gives you a much more useful picture of AI visibility by market than simply saying that your company “has done GEO.”

How to Start GEO for a B2B Website

You don’t need to rebuild your entire marketing strategy to start. In most cases, I would begin with an SEO audit and competitor analysis.

First, understand what your competitors are ranking for and what questions buyers are asking. Then map those topics to the right pages: homepage, category pages, product pages, industry pages, solution pages, case studies, and blog content. Don’t create a separate page for every slight variation of a keyword. Build useful pages that cover a meaningful search topic.

Next, improve the actual information on those pages. Product pages should contain specifications, applications, customization options, certifications, and other details buyers need. Your About page should explain who the company is. Case studies should show real work. Articles should answer real questions rather than simply repeat information already available everywhere else.

After that, review the technical side: indexing, sitemap, robots.txt, page speed, mobile experience, schema, and internal links. Finally, work on your external presence through LinkedIn, industry publications, relevant backlinks, partnerships, and other credible sources.

That’s essentially the same process I would use for a strong B2B SEO strategy. GEO is added into the process rather than bolted on as a separate project.

Common GEO Mistakes

The first mistake is thinking GEO means “write articles for ChatGPT.” It doesn’t. AI systems don’t need thousands of generic articles about your company. They need useful, reliable information.

The second mistake is publishing content without any real industry experience behind it. If ten companies publish almost identical articles about the same topic, there is little reason for your version to stand out. Your own data, projects, technical knowledge, opinions, and customer experience are what make the content different.

Another mistake is ignoring the website itself. Some companies spend a lot of time posting on social media while their product pages contain almost no useful information. Others publish hundreds of blog posts but have broken internal links and poor indexing. Neither approach solves the underlying problem.

I also wouldn’t recommend obsessing over one AI platform. The technology is changing quickly. A tactic that works for one system today may not work the same way six months from now. A stronger long-term strategy is to build a website and online presence that clearly demonstrates what your company does and why it deserves attention.

SEO and GEO Should Work Together

This is probably the most important point I want to make about GEO.

You don’t need to choose between SEO and GEO. If you’re already investing in B2B SEO, a lot of that work is useful for GEO as well.

Keyword research helps you understand what buyers are looking for. Search intent helps you understand why they’re looking. Content helps answer their questions. Product pages explain what you sell. Internal links connect related information. Technical SEO makes the website easier to crawl and understand. Backlinks and third-party references strengthen authority. E-E-A-T helps demonstrate that the information comes from a real business with real experience.

GEO simply adds another question: can AI systems understand and confidently represent this information when answering a buyer’s question?

That is why I would build SEO and GEO as one integrated strategy rather than two separate services competing for the same budget.

Final Thoughts

GEO is still developing, and nobody can honestly promise that a specific optimization technique will make an AI system recommend a particular company. The technology is moving too quickly for that kind of guarantee.

But the direction is clear: people are using AI to research companies, products, suppliers, and solutions. B2B businesses need to think about how they are represented in those conversations, not just where they rank in Google.

My approach is fairly simple. Build a strong website. Create content based on real buyer questions. Show real experience. Make your company information clear. Keep your brand consistent across the web. Fix the technical foundation. Build relevant authority. Then measure whether your brand is actually becoming more visible in AI search.

In other words, don’t chase GEO tricks. Build a business that is worth mentioning.

If you’re looking to improve your B2B website’s visibility across Google and AI search, contact Orangeeweb to discuss your SEO, GEO, website, and lead-generation strategy.

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