The growth of AI in search is changing SEO. With new featured snippets and AI summaries in search results, updating your optimization strategy is crucial to stay on top. Here are key GEO tips to help boost your online presence in this evolving landscape.
According to experts at Gartner, 25% of all searches will be AI-driven by 2026, making generative engine optimization more important than ever before in your website’s growth journey.
Generative engine optimization is the practice of optimizing content for generative AI engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search.
With more than 190 million people using ChatGPT for their search queries every day, those who do not prioritise AI-powered search in the coming years are likely to see a knock-on effect when it comes to site engagement and ranking.
In fact, 47% of brands still lack a deliberate GEO strategy, indicating a gap in preparedness for AI-driven discovery.
With this in mind, we’ve put together a guide to generative engine optimization in 2025, packed to the brim with ten top GEO tips for search engine success.
GEO Tip 1: Understand the Role of AI Search Agents
Before you begin your GEO journey, it’s important to first understand the role of AI search agents in a modern-day search engine scene.
AI agents are intelligent search assistants that aim to take the search experience beyond traditional keyword matching and instead provide users with results based on content and intent.
Leveraging a combination of machine learning and natural language processing, AI search agents significantly enhance the efficiency of online search by retrieving, analysing, and organising information in seconds from multiple sources.
Experts at Pew Research analysed AI’s effect on the search engine experience and found that Google searchers who were delivered an AI overview were much less likely to click on top SERP results.
With this information at hand, it’s important to remember that when it comes to GEO success, your strategy should be less focused on securing that top spot on the results page and more concentrated on appearing in a generative overview or featured snippet.
Luckily, this guide will teach you how to do just that.
GEO Tip 2: Restructure Your Approach
Let’s begin by moving away from the classic keyword search and focusing on information density.
Generative engines favour comprehensive answers over keyword stuffing. The key is to structure your content to directly answer user intent and context.
Instead of keyword stuffing, you’re more likely to get recognised by an AI-powered search engine when you structure your content to answer a query simply.
To do this, prioritise concise paragraphs (2-3 sentences), bullet points and numbered lists when writing out your content. This makes it much easier for AI to scan and extract key insights.
For example, Omnisend’s guide on creating a WooCommerce order confirmation email is an excellent example of this.
Throughout the article, the content is structured into scannable bullet points and nuggets of direct information that can answer user queries with ease.
GEO Tip 3: Optimise Content for Conversational Queries
Over 70% of all search queries are for long-tail terms. If you want to make your content more popular with an AI algorithm, it’s essential to adapt your question and answer sections to fit a conversational tone.
Use language that reflects how a user may ask a question in person and be sure to lengthen your keyword phrases dotted within the text.
GEO Tip 4: Build Topical Authority
Securing a spot in a featured snippet or AI overview for a popular topic is extremely challenging. Think about how many websites already have the answer to ‘What day was Queen Elizabeth II born?’
The key here is to start building topical authority for niche topics. To do this, we suggest using the pillar and cluster strategy.
This involves creating cluster content centred on a broader topic within a pillar page. This pillar topic then links all cluster content together.
The more angles you cover on a niche topic, the more authority you build yourself as a key speaker on the subject matter.
Related article: Creating Content Pillars: Step-By-Step Guide With Examples
Free tool: Analyze your target audience, brand voice, content pillars and competitors. Try it now.
GEO Tip 5: Leverage Structured Data & Semantic HTML
In order to reinforce your chances of success, don’t forget the importance of a schema and FAQ markup.
For example, schema markup is a code, also known as structured data, which can be added to a website's HTML to provide search engines with more context about its content. This makes it easier for generative engines to take snippets of your content to answer user queries.
Structuring your content with Schema helps LLMs parse and reuse your blog posts, FAQ sections and product descriptions with ease.
Semantic HTML is also a great option to consider. These HTML tags help define the purpose of the content they are connected to, making your website code more understandable for generative search engines. These HTML tags also help provide a meaningful description of your content’s role within a webpage.
GEO Tip 6: Begin Contextual Internal Linking
Intelligent linking is the key to boosting your chances of appearing in a generative search.
By incorporating statistics and links to internal/external data sources, you can immediately please AI algorithms that seek to provide users with direct answers to specific queries.
Related article: Contextual Linking for Better SEO
GEO Tip 7: Optimise for Brand Mentions, Not Just Backlinks
Those of you coming from the SEO world will know just how vital link-building is when working on your ranking strategy.
However, when it comes to generative search, many AI algorithms prioritise brand mentions over links.
The more an authoritative source mentions a brand, the more positively it scores in an AI-powered search result.
Frequent brand mentions, therefore, result in more features in AI summaries and increased brand preference in featured snippets.
To increase your brand mentions, you must pursue more opportunities to generate high-quality contextual mentions within your industry. Some tactics to consider include regularly publishing thought leadership, partnering with respected brands and even releasing PR campaigns that aim to get your brand featured by journalists in top publications.
Related article: Boosting Brand Visibility Through Content
GEO Tip 8: Write with Summarisation in Mind
Generative engines are built on summarisation models. They like content that can be summarised in 2-3 lines for a quick-fire answer.
To make your content more attractive to AI-powered search engines, opt for bullet points over long-form paragraphs and end each point with a concise takeaway.
A great way to increase your chances of success is to include your own article summary section, right at the top of the page, which can be done using AI-powered SEO tools.
As you can see in this blog post from Victorious, they have included a summary box just after the introduction that summarises the outline of the piece in bullet points. An AI algorithm can quickly scan this and pull some of these summarised points for featured snippets.
Related article: Using AI Tools for SEO Success
GEO Tip 9: Monitor Your AI Mentions and Citations
A great way to monitor your success is to track your own AI mentions and citations. See which topics you’re scoring highly for, how many clicks you’re getting from various LLMs and use these insights to keep adapting your strategy.
Tools like Ahrefs allow you to monitor how the AI citations count and see how often your domain was linked in AI results. Trackable LLMs include Google AI Overview, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.
Other tools such as RankPrompt and Keyword take this one step further, providing you with regular alerts, sentiment analysis and competitive share of voice stats. This helps you determine how your brand is portrayed in an AI-generated response, giving you more opportunities to edit your content for the best chance of coverage.
GEO Tip 10: Test Your Content in Generative Engines
Last but not least, once you’ve taken our previous GEO tips on board, it’s time to test out your chances in a real generative search.
Prompt AI tools with your target queries and analyse what content gets surfaced.
If your content is ignored, you may be targeting a popular topic or industry, or your strategy may need some reworking.
Adjust your content based on what AI summarises, paraphrases, or ignores. The key is to ensure your brand's voice remains strong in AI overviews or featured snippets, especially if you are encouraging consumers to engage with your site as a direct result of your feature in a generative search.
Wrapping Up
Digital content discovery is ever-evolving, and your SEO strategy should be too. As we enter the era of generative search, we encourage you to go beyond traditional optimization tactics and embrace GEO.
The future will consist of optimising for both humans and AI, especially if you want to find your brand mentioned in an AI overview.
Following our ten actionable tips, you’ll be creating content that attracts AI attention in no time.
