SEO and GEO
SEO helps your page rank in a list of links. GEO helps an AI assistant choose your page as a source when it writes an answer. Many AI tools still draw on classic search indexes, so good SEO remains the foundation.
7 practical steps
- Answer the question first. Start each page or article with a short, direct answer, then go into detail.
- Make the text readable without JavaScript. Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. If your content only appears after scripts load, they may see an empty page. We prerender every page as plain HTML.
- Use clear headings. 1 topic per section, with headings phrased the way people ask.
- Add structured data. schema.org markup tells machines who you are, what you offer, where you are and when an article was published.
- Keep company details consistent. Name, address and contact details should match on your website, your Google Business Profile and in directories.
- Allow AI crawlers. Check that your robots.txt does not block crawlers such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, unless you want that. Which bot does what is explained in AI crawlers and robots.txt.
- Publish real expertise. Prices, processes, examples and honest answers are more useful than generic marketing copy, for people and for machines. More in how to write content that AI assistants quote.
What about llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed convention: a short text file that summarises a website for language models. It is not an official standard yet and support varies, but it is quick to add and does no harm. Our websites include one.
How we handle it
Every Website Sprint includes the SEO and GEO setup: prerendered pages, structured data, a sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt and Google Search Console. Before launch we go through our launch checklist.
Questions and answers
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. GEO builds on SEO. A page that search engines cannot find or read is also hard for AI assistants to use.
How can I check whether AI assistants know my company?
Ask a few assistants the questions your customers would ask and look at the sources they name. Repeat it every few months.