What SEO and GEO mean
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the combination of technical and content work that helps a website rank for relevant searches on engines such as Google. GEO (generative engine optimisation) aims to get your brand cited as a source in the answers produced by AI-assisted search and chat tools.
Both rest largely on the same foundations: a technically sound site, content that answers questions clearly, and consistent information about who the business is.
The three pillars of visibility
Lasting organic visibility doesn’t come from a single trick. It comes from steady work across a few areas that reinforce one another.
- Technical SEO: crawlability, indexing, speed, mobile performance, structured data and sitemaps
- Content: service pages and guides that match real search intent and customer questions
- Authority and trust: links from other sites, brand mentions and consistent business details
- Local SEO: Google Business Profile, map results and customer reviews
What it takes to be cited in AI answers
When AI tools generate an answer, they favour sources that are clear, quotable and trustworthy. Content that defines a concept plainly in its opening sentence, walks through a process step by step and uses a question-and-answer structure is well placed.
Your business name, address, service areas and areas of expertise should be consistent across your website, business profiles and industry sources. Structured data (schema) mark-up helps machines understand more accurately what your content is about.
What affects timescales and effort
The current technical state of the site, how competitive the sector is, the number of keywords and questions targeted, how quickly content can be produced and the authority the site has already built all shape the scope. Technical fixes tend to show results relatively quickly; content and authority take longer.
More target markets and languages mean more content and technical work. On multilingual sites, doing separate keyword research for each language works far better than translating word for word.
Common mistakes
Stuffing keywords into copy, creating near-identical pages and writing purely for search engines now do more harm than good. Bulk link packages that promise quick rankings can also damage a site’s credibility.
- Not redirecting old URLs during a site rebuild
- Tracking rankings but never measuring conversions
- Letting the Google Business Profile go out of date
- Starting a content programme and abandoning it a few months in
How fountr approaches it
We begin with a technical and content audit, then draw up a monthly optimisation and content plan based on what we find. Each month we implement technical improvements, publish new content and share rankings, traffic, conversions and AI visibility in a report written in plain language.
