GEO in 2025

What is GEO? Generative Engine Optimisation - Optimising content and structure so that generative AI models (e.g. ChatGPT, Google/Gemini generative search etc) will cite and surface your content in responses. It's like SEO but for AI instead of Search Engines.

ChatGPT has over 100 million monthly users ( October '25 ) and it just keeps on growing. It's the same story on the Google homepage, almost anything you ask will lead to an AI response at the top, followed by a "People also ask" section. After that, maybe a map and then some adverts and then you can get down to what used to be search results.

So, if you want to be sure people are finding you for relevant searches then you really need to be displayed in the links of the AI text and returned in interactions with ChatGPT, Claude and other AI's.

Currently there is a move to aid AI in finding and categorising your content at llms-txt. Your site can provide a nicely structured file containing Markdown to guide AI on the core information of your site; what you do, which data should and should not be surfaced in responses; key contact information and more. While this human readable file looks like a good idea to aid language models it's not clear if any of the major AI companies are actually using these files. On the other hand, making one is not an arduous undertaking and there's no harm in it beyond some sunk time. 

Unfortunately you also need to keep it up to date as your urls, contact details and company personnel change. It's not a write once and forget it issue, and if you could easily automate updating it on your site then AI is unlikely to need it to help with interpretation.

What can you do to improve your GEO? 

For now there are a few new twists on the same story it has always been:

• Provide quality original information for humans, if your visitors are clear and what you do and how to navigate the site chances are that bots will like you too.
• Provide a good summary of your content up front at the top of your pages.
• Keep your content up to date and accurate.
  • Implement a strategy & plan to ensure your content is current.
• Write a good, authoritative, blog.
• Add FAQs to present useful info in bite-size chunks.
• Credit your content authors to build your credibility and don't be afraid to link to any 3rd party sites/bios that they maintain.
• Include relevant, and useful, info graphics.
• Short videos are hugely popular and can expand your brand awareness.
• Use good, semantic markup your site so crawlers can easily download it and so that engines can easily categorise and interpret it.
• Add Json-ld to relevant content types and site structures.
  • "Write for a human, package for AI"
• Make your site quick to load - make sure it passes the Pagespeed checks.
• Consider adding an LLMS.txt
• Promote your brand through social and relevant 3rd party sites - Linkedin, Facebook, X, Tiktok, Reddit, Medium, Substack etc Which ones will work depends on where your audience/customers hang out.
• Encourage your customers to provide reviews through Google Business, Trust Pilot etc
• Remember that click throughs are not the same as visibility - your content is now presented by AI, you are reaching users that aren't coming to your site.
• And, as always, don't resort to hacky SEO tricks as they always catch up with you.