GEO + SEO: AI Search Strategy

Today, the customer journey doesn’t look like a funnel. It's more like a pinball machine, with audiences bouncing between Reddit threads, AI results, influencer posts, emails, and product reviews before ever landing on your website (if they get there at all).

That unpredictable journey demands a smarter strategy. With AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews becoming the new answer engines, success now means building trust before the click and showing up everywhere your customers discover, research, and make decisions.

Google still handles more than 5 trillion searches per year worldwide, so traditional SEO is still incredibly important, but SEO alone is no longer enough. AI models don’t just rank pages; they synthesize, cite, and elevate the sources they consider most authoritative.

A GEO and AI Search Strategy combines SEO with AI search optimization. By feeding both search engines and AI systems the right signals, your brand’s expertise can be recognized, cited, and trusted, no matter where a customer starts their journey.

Ready to Transform Your Search Strategy?

The shift to AI-powered search is happening now. Let's discuss how GEO and AI Search Strategy can position your brand for long-term search success.

  • Where is your audience finding you today—and where are you absent online? We map the real customer journey across AI search results, forums, review sites, and social platforms to uncover visibility gaps and identify your brand’s true authority signals.

    • Multi-platform discovery audit across AI search, Reddit, industry forums, social media, and review sites

    • AI citation tracking in ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity

    • Signal strength assessment of brand mentions and authority indicators

    Competitor intelligence to reveal where industry leaders show up

  • Traditional SEO is evolving, but reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated. Generative search optimization, or GEO, shares many of the same traits as SEO, like an emphasis on quality content, trust and expertise signals, and unique-to-you insights. But GEO moves beyond content creation to technical  optimization designed specifically for the way AI systems process and cite information. This combined method creates assets that both AI models reference and human audiences trust.

    • Answer-first content architecture for AI-preferred query formats

    • Schema and structured data integration for stronger authority signals

    • Expert byline and profile optimization to strengthen E-E-A-T

    • Content formatting for AI consumption and human engagement

  • Search engines and AI models rely on structured data and entity recognition to determine expertise. In short: Do Google and other LLMs know who you are? Do they really understand your brand? We make sure your brand is clearly defined, consistently represented, and positioned as an authoritative source.

    • Refined schema markup implementation

    • On-site entity SEO optimization

    • Structured signals across LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Wikipedia, and review platforms

    • Authority-building connections between brand, experts, and offerings

  • Great content is authoritative, unique, and backed by expertise—and thoughtful integration of AI tools help us produce assets more quickly without sacrificing the Masthead quality you expect from our team. We help you develop strategies for original insights, proprietary research, and definitive resources that AIs want to cite and audiences want to share.

    • Proprietary data and research development for citation-worthy content

    • Expert-driven thought leadership on priority topics

    • Human-first content showcasing brand expertise and perspective

    • Definitive resources designed to become the go-to answer

  • Google’s AI Overviews is reducing click-through rates for high-volume, evergreen queries—but not every high-value query has a strong, trusted answer yet. We identify the white space where AI systems struggle to find reliable sources, then build strategies to position your brand as the authoritative voice in those areas.

    • Analysis of unserved or underserved AI-generated queries

    • Prioritization of opportunities where your brand can gain traction

    • Roadmap for content creation and signal-building

  • New search behavior demands new metrics. We measure how your brand shows up across both AI-driven and traditional search, giving you actionable insights to stay ahead as platforms evolve.

    • AI search visibility monitoring across multiple platforms

    • Citation and authority signal tracking

    • Branded search and direct traffic growth measurement

    • Competitor intelligence and emerging platform analysis

  • AI models elevate brands that others already recognize as credible. Mentions in trusted publications, citations in industry outlets, and authoritative backlinks act as external proof points that strengthen your presence in generative search results. We help you design a PR and brand visibility strategy that maximizes these signals—so when AI systems look for authoritative sources to cite, your brand is consistently in the mix.

    • Identification of the media and platforms most influential in your category

    • Strategy for creating data and stories that generate natural citations in AI summaries

    • Alignment of PR efforts with entity and schema signals to reinforce authority across channels

AI Search Strategy FAQs:

Q. How is GEO different from traditional SEO?

A. Traditional SEO focuses on optimizing your own site to rank in Google’s results through keywords, backlinks, and technical health. GEO takes it one important step further: it optimizes content for how AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews generate answers that satisfy users' search intent. 

The critical difference is that AI doesn’t just look at your site — it looks for external mentions, citations, and validation across the digital ecosystem. That means brands that publish proprietary data, create widely linked resources, and share thought leadership that others reference are the ones most likely to be cited in AI-generated answers. In other worked, SEO may get you ranked, but GEO might get you cited (ideally with a backlink).

Q. Can our brand really influence what shows up in AI-generated search results?

A. Yes, but the strategy looks a little different than traditional SEO. With SEO, you’re primarily optimizing “inward.” That means focusing on your site’s keywords, backlinks, and technical health. With GEO, the real leverage comes from looking outward. That’s because AI models don’t just scan your own website, they pull from a (generally) non-biased digital ecosystem that includes Wikipedia, news outlets like The New York Times or Business Insider, trade and industry publications, 3rd party review platforms, and professional sources like LinkedIn and Crunchbase.

That means influence comes from being consistently mentioned and cited by trusted media and third-party sources, alongside strong on-site signals like structured data and proprietary research. If your brand publishes original data that gets covered by a major news site, contributes expert commentary in outlets like TechCrunch or Adweek, or develops definitive resources that trade media and blogs link to, AI systems are far more likely to treat you as an authority.  LLMs turn to independently developed information (not just what you say about yourself) when providing answers.

While you can’t guarantee external mentions, by aligning inward (SEO) efforts and outward (GEO) signals (bolstered by strong external comms and brand awareness strategies), you meaningfully increase your chances of being surfaced in AI-generated answers.

Q. Why does AI prefer some sources over others?

A. AI tools are trained to mimic human trust patterns. That means they lean toward sources that look authoritative, credible, and widely cited. 

Peer-reviewed studies, well-structured knowledge bases, government and educational sites, and brands with consistent E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals often win. 

But AI also looks for patterns. If your brand is consistently referenced across multiple platforms and cited in content across the web and reinforced with structured data, it’s more likely to appear in answers. In practice, this means going all in on content depth, data-driven insights, and clear authorship, which those carry a lot more weight than shallow blog posts or thin marketing copy.

Q. How can I tell if my brand is already being cited in AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews?

A. Running test queries yourself can give you a quick snapshot, but there’s a catch. Tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AIOs adapt to your past searches. That means results may lean toward surfacing your own brand more often than they would for the average user with no pass connection to your company. To get a more unbiased view, you need to look beyond your personal account history.

That’s where independent tracking tools come in. Platforms like Semrush’s AI tracking, SE Ranking, and Otterly.ai provide a more neutral lens on how brands are actually appearing in generative search. They can show you where you’re being cited (or ignored), how often competitors are mentioned, and where gaps exist.

For the clearest picture, we use AI Signal Mapping, which systematically monitors citations across multiple platforms and benchmarking results against competitors. This approach avoids the bias of personal search histories and highlights the real opportunities to strengthen your brand’s visibility in AI-driven answers.

Q. Do I need to completely rewrite my well performing SEO content for AI?

A. Not at all!  Most strong SEO content provides a strong foundation for AI optimization. It may just need a little refining. 

AI tools prefer content that answers questions directly, includes structured data, and is backed by authoritative signals like expert bylines or proprietary research. These have been good SEO principles for a long time, and it’s possible your content already includes one or two of these hallmarks. If it doesn’t, we may need to reformat your existing content into “answer-first” structures, add schema markup, or enhance depth with unique insights. 

Think of it as evolution, not replacement: you’re building on the work you’ve already done for Google, and adapting it for the new ways people discover information through AI-powered search.

Q. How quickly can I expect to see results from GEO optimization?

A. It depends on your starting point. How well were you performing in search before? If your brand already has strong SEO fundamentals, structured data, and authoritative content, we often see measurable changes in AI visibility within a few months. If you’re starting completely from scratch, building authority signals takes longer…a lot like SEO did years ago. 

The key difference: AI search ecosystems are still in rapid development, so the brands that optimize early often see disproportionate benefits. By laying the groundwork now, you position your brand to be a trusted source in AI outputs long before slower-moving competitors catch up.

Q. Will AI search optimization also improve my traditional Google rankings?

A. Yes, in a lot of cases the two things work in tandem. The steps we take to boost GEO (structured data implementation, authority signal building, creating definitive content) almost always strengthen your SEO. 

Google itself is leaning on AI-powered results, so the overlap between “what works for AI” and “what works for Google” is growing quickly. For example, optimizing schema helps AIs parse your expertise, but it also improves how Google understands and ranks your site. GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO. It’s an evolution that makes your existing efforts more resilient as search behavior changes.

Q. But what’s the point of optimizing for AI search if traffic isn’t always clicking through?

A. Great question. Maybe the question. AI results do often satisfy a user without a click. That’s true. But what we’ve come to discover is that getting that click through doesn’t always lead to a sale. 

Real ROI comes from visibility and influence earlier in the decision-making journey. If your brand is cited as the answer in an AI overview, you’re shaping perception before competitors even enter the conversation. That influence leads to more branded searches, direct visits, and higher trust when prospects finally engage. In fact, we’re already seeing clients benefit from increases in branded search queries like “[Brand] pricing” or “[Brand] reviews.” The ROI isn’t just about clicks, it’s about owning the conversation where decisions begin.

Q. How does Masthead’s approach differ from traditional SEO agency?

A. Traditional SEO agencies often stop at page-one rankings. At Masthead, we see Google search positioning as just the beginning. What matters most is whether your content builds trust, earns attention, and drives action. That’s why we take a GEO and AI-first approach, optimizing not only for Google results, but also for the places where buying decisions increasingly happen: AI tools, forums, review platforms, and beyond.

What sets us apart is our strong editorial DNA. Masthead was founded by journalists, editorial directors, and content leaders who understand how to connect with audiences on a human level.

We use the best available data to shape strategy, but our goal is always to create content that resonates, builds credibility, and motivates people to act. We don’t just chase keywords, we map real customer journeys, close visibility gaps, and craft assets that AI models cite and humans trust. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about the bots, it’s about striking a chord with the people you really want to reach.

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