GEO: how to optimise your content for AI-powered search engines?

The age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived, revolutionising the way people search for information. As AI-powered search engines grow in popularity, concerns about their impact on referral traffic are increasing. 

This article offers practical tips for optimising your content to perform better in AI search results through a process called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). Built on the foundation of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), GEO requires robust SEO practices to achieve success. Fortunately, many of the strategies covered here will simultaneously enhance your SEO efforts.

How Do AI Search Engines Work?

The first step in Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is to understand how AI search engines function and the type of content they prioritise. Unlike traditional search engines that display a list of links, AI search engines summarise information from various sources, including links for users who wish to explore further. Effective GEO ensures AI can interpret and feature your content prominently, increasing its visibility within the generative responses produced by AI search engines.

Screenshot from the AI search engine Perplexity.

What Sort of Content Do AI Search Engines Favour?

• In-Depth Content That Aligns With User Intent: AI has a contextual understanding of the keywords, meaning that it analyses the entire query and has an understanding of synonyms, related terms and colloquial language. AI prioritises content that matches the intent behind user search queries. Detailed and well-researched content is more likely to be recognised as valuable by AI. Rather than focusing solely on exact keywords, AI search engines deliver diverse and relevant results that reflect the true purpose of the user’s search.
• Natural Language. AI search engines rely on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to evaluate and interpret content effectively. Writing in natural, conversational language enhances both readability and the likelihood of your content being prioritised by AI systems.
• AI search engines prioritize content based on EEAT: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. To demonstrate compliance with this standard, focus on consistently publishing up-to-date content, revising older material as needed, ensuring high content quality, providing detailed author bios, referencing and linking to credible sources, and maintaining an active, professional presence on social media platforms.
• Structured Data Markup: Optimising your content with Structured Data is essential for enabling AI search engines to better interpret and categorise it. By clearly defining the format of your content—such as an article, table, or FAQ—you improve its relevance and accessibility for both AI-driven and traditional search engines like Google.

How to Tailor Your Content For AI Search Engines?

• Include Natural Language Queries: Including prompts in your content—such as questions (“How do AI search engines work?”) or instructions (“How to do GEO step by step”)—makes it easier for AI to interpret your intent. To perform effectively in AI search engines, your content must directly address these natural language queries. Ensure your language is conversational, engaging, and easy to understand throughout your content.
• Perform Keyword Analysis: AI search engines use NLP to understand the context of queries, but it remains vital to identify the keywords your audience would use. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner and AnswerThePublic can uncover commonly used search terms. Long-tail keywords—more conversational and specific phrases—connect better with targeted audiences. Roleplaying as a potential user or using AI tools like Perplexity can help generate natural queries and identify follow-up questions. Integrate keywords naturally into your content and avoid keyword stuffing, as this can negatively impact your content’s perceived quality.
  
• Following the EEAT principle:
  • Produce High-Quality Content. Ensure your content is informative, easy to read, and in-depth. AI search engines can differentiate between high and low-quality material. Incorporating data and statistics enhances credibility and relevance.

• • Provide Concise and Direct Answers. Address queries clearly and include the question within the answer to boost relevance.
  • Keep Content Up-to-Date. Regularly updating your content is essential. Algorithms favour fresh, relevant information, and maintaining older content demonstrates ongoing expertise.
  • Maintain a Consistent Tone. A consistent brand voice builds credibility and authority.
  • Establish Authority. Author bios showcasing qualifications and expertise strengthen perceived authority. Using authoritative language further reinforces credibility.
  • Be Credible. Well-researched content with links to trustworthy sources ranks higher. Citing credible references enhances reliability.
  • Maintain an Online Presence. Active online presence boosts authority. Generate backlinks, encourage discussions, and use review pages to create online buzz and increase visibility.

How to Structure Your Content?

Structuring your content helps you perform better in search results and enhances the readability of your content.

• Use Schema Markup. Categorise your data (e.g., table, article, Q&A section) to help search engines understand its structure and relevance. Implementing Structured Data Markup increases your chances of appearing in featured snippets or AI search engine results. Google offers tools to simplify the process. 

A featured snippet showcases a direct answer to a query posed to a search engine.

• Ensure skimmability. Use headers, bullet points, tables, and visuals to make content easy to skim and summarise, aligning with what AI models prefer.
• Leverage Visualisation. Visualising data with diagrams and charts makes complex information more accessible. AI tools like Perplexity often favour visual content.
• Format Content in Lists or Q&A. Content formatted in a list or Q&A format performs better in AI search results because it matches how AI search engines present information.
• Use Headings Effectively. Limit each site to one H1 heading, and use keyword-rich subheadings to enhance search engine understanding.
• Include Summaries and Conclusions. Brief summaries or conclusions provide quick answers, appealing to AI search engines.
• Append URLs with Text Fragments. Text fragments highlight relevant passages within your content to a search engine, which increases your chances of being included in a featured snippet or generative results.

Ensure Your Site Health is Up-to-Bar

Ensuring your site's health is critical for good SEO and GEO. Site health means that your site's technical aspects are up-to-date and “healthy”. Ensuring good site health includes the following aspects:

• Ensure That Your Site is Mobile-Optimised. Most search queries happen through mobile devices these days, therefore ensuring that your site works well through mobile devices is essential for a good ranking.
• Optimise Page Speed. Pages that take too slow to load rank badly. Page speed can be made faster by compressing images, utilizing cache and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Have Good Site Security. Your site needs to be secure, both to prevent legal ramifications and to ensure good search engine ranking. HTTPS and SSL certificates are essential.
• Have an Up-to-Date Site Map. Ensure that your site map is up-to-date and contains only relevant URLs.
• Functional Links. Check for broken links and ensure a strong internal linking structure.
• Utilise Alt Tags. Add descriptive alt tags to all images to enhance accessibility and search engine understanding.
• Eliminate duplicate content. Ensure that your site has no duplicate content.
• Optimise Meta Descriptions. Write unique, keyword-rich meta descriptions (122-155 characters) for each page to enhance search visibility.

Using SEO audit tools like SiteGuru can help monitor your site’s health, identify improvement areas, and optimise content for better search rankings.

How to Use AI Tools to Help Rank in AI Search Engines?

• Content Analysis Tools: Services like MarketMuse and Clearscope analyse your content and provide actionable suggestions to improve search rankings.

• Content Generation: AI can assist in creating content but should be used as a helper rather than a replacement. AI cannot replace human creativity and the content it generates will be generic and thus will not rank as well as a content piece written by a human copywriter or journalist.
  

• Content Scheduling and Analytics: AI tools can analyse trends and customer behaviour to identify the best times for posting and track audience responses. This helps pinpoint areas for improvement and identify the type of content that resonates best with your audience.

Monitor Your Performance

Measuring and tracking results is crucial to assess the effectiveness of your GEO efforts and refine your strategy for better outcomes.

• Stay Updated: As AI search engines evolve, algorithm changes and code updates can impact rankings. Regularly update your strategies to maintain top visibility.
• Track Metrics: Monitor key performance indicators, such as:
  • Click-Through Rates (CTR): Evaluate how often users click on your links.
  • Traffic Sources: Analyse where your traffic originates to assess platform effectiveness.
  • Bounce Rates: Track the percentage of visitors leaving your site without interacting.
  • Time on Page: Measure how long users spend engaging with your content.
  • Conversion Rates: Assess how effectively your content drives desired actions.
  • Social Media Engagement: Monitor likes, shares, and comments to gauge audience interaction.

By measuring these metrics, you can fine-tune your GEO strategy to ensure sustained success and adaptability to new trends.

Key Takeaways

• Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) builds on strong SEO foundations to improve content visibility in AI-powered search engines.
• AI search engines prioritise in-depth, natural, and structured content that aligns with user intent, adheres to EEAT principles, and includes natural language queries.
• Content structure matters: Use headings, summaries, schema markup, and skimmable formats like lists or Q&A to enhance visibility and readability.
• Site health is critical: Ensure mobile optimisation, page speed, security, updated sitemaps, and functional links to boost rankings.
• AI tools can assist in content creation, analysis, and scheduling but should complement, not replace, human creativity.
• Monitor performance metrics regularly to refine your strategy and adapt to evolving AI algorithms.

These steps ensure your content thrives in the age of AI-powered search.