Your Complete GEO Guide: How to Build a Winning AI Search Strategy

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GEO 101: The key points

• GEO (generative engine optimization) is the practice of influencing how AI answer engines—like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview—surface your brand.
• AI-powered discovery is accelerating fast, and brands that don’t react will lose visibility, authority, and ultimately customers to competitors.
• GEO isn’t quite the same as SEO: AI engines reason differently, provide personalized and contextual answers, and rely on broader signals across your entire digital ecosystem to determine your authority.
• Effective GEO consists of four pillars: technical foundations, content development, third-party syndication, and continuous reporting.
• Our five-step GEO framework walks brands from foundational readiness to advanced maturity. We take you through how to identify prompts, build answer-ready content, earn citations, measure results, and much more.

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There has been a lot of talk about AI answer engines, and how they’re turning the search world (and the actual world, honestly) upside down.

We’re here to report that the data supports the buzz: Semrush predicts that AI search visitors will surpass their traditional search counterparts in 2028. That’s right around the corner, and brands who aren’t addressing this shift right now will struggle to maintain visibility and authority.

How should marketers counter? By developing a generative engine optimization (or GEO) strategy. 

But because the GEO discipline is so new and fast-changing, it comes with a lot of unknowns that make it hard for brands to confidently build a strategy.

At Right Side Up, we’ve had many discussions—both internally and with external subject-matter experts—about how to best take on GEO. 

In this article, we want to share some of what we’ve learned: these are findings we’re applying to our own strategy as well as the GEO services we’re offering to clients. 

We’ll cover what GEO is exactly, why it’s so important, how it differs from traditional SEO. Then we’ll take you through a step-by-step GEO framework that can be valuable to any brand, regardless of size or industry.

What is GEO?

In short, generative engine optimization is the practice of influencing answers generated by AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. 

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Prefer to learn live?

Tune in to our webinar on 12/3/25 as Amy Scanlon and other experts as they break down GEO fundamentals.

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More specifically, brands identify prompts that are relevant to their brand and try to affect the answers. Their goal is to either:

• Increase brand visibility within those answers
• Ensure brand mentions are accurate
• Reinforce positive sentiment and trust
• Or any combination of the three

What are the important elements of GEO?

Many brands think they can attain GEO supremacy by just creating and updating a few content pages. It’s unfortunately not the case. (If it were, this article would be much shorter.) 

Successful GEO relies on many moving parts. We’ll break them down in detail shortly, but at a high level, they fall into four core categories:

• Technical foundations
• Content development and optimization
• Third-party syndication
• Reporting and analysis

Even as specific tactics evolve, these four categories will continue to serve as the foundational pillars of GEO—and should always remain top of mind.

Why does GEO matter?

While the traditional Google SERP model still remains hugely influential, many signs point to the increasing dominance of AI-powered discovery. 

There’s the Semrush data we referenced earlier, which predicts that more site visitors will come from AI search than traditional organic search in 2028.

You also have the rise of Google’s AI Overviews, which reduce CTRs to the top-ranking organic page by 34%, on average. AIOs now show up on 21% of all keywords, twice as often as they did just six months ago, and on 58% of all question queries. 

And then there’s the fact that ChatGPT now has 400+ million weekly users, along with projections that the global market for LLMs is set to grow almost 500% in the next five years (from $6.4B in 2024 to $36.1B in 2030).

These data points—and scores of others that didn’t make the article cut—indicate the seismic shift currently happening in search, and the implication for brands is clear: they need to get in the GEO game right now.

Why brands need to have a GEO strategy right now

What happens when a competitor gets cited every time ChatGPT answers a category prompt—and you don’t? 

The short answer is: they’re winning attention, trust, and customers that could’ve been yours.

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Need help with your GEO strategy?

Right Side Up has you covered. From content creation to technical optimization to syndication, we can handle it all, whether you need a few hours of support each week or a full team.

Reach out. →

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Behind the scenes, here’s an overview of what’s happening and why it’s so crucial to have a GEO plan right now: 

AI engines start to see your competitor as credible. Adjacent prompts start surfacing them as well. The effect compounds: the more citations they have, the more authority they gain. And the deeper your competitor gets entrenched inside the models’ internal knowledge graphs, the harder they become to dislodge.

In other words: every month you wait to join the GEO race makes closing the competitive gap exponentially harder.

What’s the difference between GEO and SEO?

There’s a common belief that GEO is an evolution of SEO: only a letter separates the two after all. And while there is some overlap, solely excelling at SEO isn’t enough to succeed at GEO for two key reasons:

1. AI models don’t think or work like search engines. Instead of crawling and ranking pages, they draw on patterns learned from vast datasets—including web pages but also much more—to generate contextual answers.
2. Customers turn to AI search for more than just information. They want recommendations, strategic guidance, and solutions to complex problems—all delivered in a personalized way. 

Let’s take a look at five key similarities and five main differences.

Five factors that are important to both successful SEO and GEO:

• Clear messaging: Systems need to understand who you are, what you offer, and how you relate to your category, so you need to send consistent and unambiguous messages across channels.
• Topical depth: Sustained posting about core themes builds credibility in both SEO and GEO.
• High-quality content: Your content itself needs to bring value to your audience—that’s a non-negotiable always and forever.
• External validation: Reputable third parties need to reference and/or link to your content.
• Constant monitoring and optimization: You need to regularly check if your strategy is working and make the necessary corrections when it’s not.

Five differences in how to succeed at GEO vs. SEO:

• Content design: The optimal content structure slightly differs based on what you’re focusing on. GEO content should be snippet-friendly and aligned to prompts (definitions, questions, bullets) whereas SEO is more centered around long-form, keyword-optimized articles. 
• Content optimization: While SEO focuses on optimizing content on your website, GEO requires optimizing your entire digital footprint.
• Authority-building: SEO famously relies on backlinks, whereas AI models command a distributed approach to authority, where all relevant brand mentions (even unlinked ones) contribute to the knowledge graph.
• Technical structure: Crawlability, metadata, and internal links are SEO mainstays whereas GEO success improves with schema depth and structured data (like adding an FAQ module to pages).
• KPIs: Each discipline uses completely different metrics. SEO success is measured in rankings and organic traffic; GEO is tracked through answer presence, prompt coverage, and citation frequency. 

How to build a successful GEO strategy

Now, what you’ve been waiting for: we’re about to take you through a sustainable, scalable GEO strategy that can drive results regardless of what industry or growth stage you’re in. We’ve also rooted our strategy in deep principles so that while the exact tactics for success will change over time, you’ll have a framework that can still hold up.

We’ll cover in GEO two parts:

1. First, we’ll give quick definitions for the four key components of GEO—the same ones we mentioned earlier on.
2. Then, we’ll show you exactly how these components come together in a five-step GEO framework that goes from foundational to advanced.

The four pillars of modern GEO

Pillar 1: Technical GEO

What it is: Technical GEO ensures your owned platforms (including your site, of course) are set up for AI engines to accurately interpret and surface your brand’s content. This bucket isn’t about content creation, but rather improvements on the back end and brand consistency across platforms.

The idea: Set up your content for success by ensuring your site is optimally interpretable by AI engines.

Pillar 2: Content creation and optimization

What it is: Brands need to create and update content in language that AI engines can easily understand and spit back out in answers. This includes applying a lot of the longstanding principles of content marketing—thought leadership, topic relevancy, clarity—with a few added wrinkles, such as replacing keyword research with prompt research and thinking “answer-first” when writing.

‍The idea: Create and optimize your content for answers, not rankings.

Pillar 3: Content syndication

What it is: How third parties talk about your brand is hugely important in GEO. For this reason, brands need to make sure they’re being mentioned by authoritative third parties accurately—and often. This can entail distributing thought leadership content to industry publications, getting cited in relevant articles, or influencing mentions on high-value forums like Reddit.

The idea: AI models look at relevant places in your space to learn if your brand is credible. Be in those places—and be represented accurately.

Pillar 4: Continuous reporting

What it is: Like with any other marketing channel, you need to constantly monitor and optimize your GEO efforts, especially since AI models learn and evolve at a much faster pace than their traditional-SEO counterparts. Track metrics like prompt coverage, brand sentiment in answers, and third-party citations. Then identify gaps and address them. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

The idea: Learn → adapt → reinforce.

Our five-step GEO framework

These steps are in chronological order and also correspond to the maturity phases of a brand’s GEO development.

Step 1: Build your technical foundation

Your goal: To become findable for AI search engines

Before even thinking about content, syndication, and all that good stuff, you need to set the foundation that will enable your GEO strategy to flourish. This is done in two parts.

First, ensure your brand entities (company, products, execs) are consistently defined across the web. Then, implement technical site optimizations to make it easier for AI engines to access your content.

Step 2: Identify and prioritize which prompts to go after

Your goal: To understand how models (and your audience) talk about your category and brand

Consider this your research phase. Once you’ve addressed the technical foundations, the next step is determining which prompts you actually need to address. Look at both category and brand prompts, and note how your brand is represented—if represented at all. Learn the language and tone AI is using for those answers.

Step 3: Build and adapt the content

Your goal: To create content that AI engines will actually surface 

It is now show time. Take a look at your priority list, and determine how to best address each prompt based on your current gaps—the formula will be different for each one.

If your brand isn’t visible at all for a key prompt, you might need to create a net-new piece. If it’s an inaccurate answer you’re looking to fix, it could be a matter of tweaking the copy on a core page and adding an FAQ.

Step 4: Syndicate your content to reputable third-parties

Your goal: To become corroborated and validated by independent sources

“Just” creating good content has never been good enough. For SEO, link-building was an important part of the recipe for success. For GEO, the placement play expands beyond links: unlinked brand mentions and citations are also important to AI engines.

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Related article‍

Learn how to build a winning affiliate strategy on Reddit.

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Brands need to proactively earn links, citations, and positive mentions on credible domains, which includes relevant editorial platforms but also major community ecosystems like Reddit and Quora.

Step 5: Track, measure, and optimize 

Your goal: To continuously steer visibility and perception in your favor

After you’ve completed the first wave of your GEO plan, the work is just getting started. Using the KPIs you set in step 1, continue to monitor how you’re performing against prompts—and take action when optimizations are needed.

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Want GEO support? Right Side Up can help.

The framework we just shared reflects our approach, and it should serve as a solid foundation for any brand trying to adapt to the new search landscape. However, it is just that: a foundation. 

GEO success takes deep expertise and cross-functional resources, not to mention constant iteration. Regardless of where you are in your GEO journey, Right Side Up can help—from our in-house affiliate team who specialize content syndication to experts in our talent collective who can update your existing content and ensure your technical foundation is sound. 

Whether you need a full team to build your GEO strategy from scratch or just a few hours of support a week, we’ve got you.

‍Reach out today. →

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