GEO vs traditional SEO: a working operator's guide for 2026

## The short version

Traditional SEO optimizes for blue-link rankings on Google. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) optimizes for being cited inside AI answers on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. They share ~60% of the playbook — clean HTML, fast pages, semantic markup, internal linking — and diverge sharply on the other 40%.

## Where they diverge

| Dimension | Traditional SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Primary signal | Backlinks | Entity authority + extractability |
| Content shape | Long-form prose | Answer blocks + structured data |
| Update cadence | Quarterly | Weekly re-audit |
| Success metric | Position 1–10 | Cited in AI answer |

## 6 things to do this quarter

1. **Add a 40–80 word definition block** at the top of every important page, wrapped in an element with id="definition".
2. **Ship FAQPage schema** on informational pages with 5+ question-led headings.
3. **Publish /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt** at your domain root.
4. **Allow all major AI crawlers** in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended).
5. **Build a comparison page** for each major competitor.
6. **Create a /press-kit page** with Organization schema for AI engines to extract canonical brand facts.

Most local businesses can implement all six in a single afternoon. The compounding starts within 14 days.