More people now ask an AI assistant for a recommendation instead of scrolling through search results. Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the work of making your business easy for those assistants to understand, trust and mention. Here is what it involves and what you can do this month.

What GEO means

Search engine optimisation (SEO) aims to get a page ranked in a list of links. GEO aims to make your business the source an AI assistant quotes or recommends when someone asks a question such as "who builds websites for clinics in Pretoria?"

The two overlap heavily, and most of what helps AI assistants also helps traditional search. The difference is emphasis: GEO puts extra weight on direct answers, consistent facts and clear signals about who you are and what you do.

How AI assistants choose what to say

Assistants such as ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Perplexity combine what they learned in training with live web searches. When they search, they read pages much like a search engine does, then pick passages that answer the question directly.

A page that says plainly "We build booking websites for medical practices in Gauteng" is easier to use as a source than a page full of slogans. Specific, factual sentences win.

Seven steps that make your business easier to cite

  • Give each service its own page. One page that lists everything gives an assistant nothing specific to quote.
  • Answer real questions in plain sentences: who you help, where you work, what is included and how to get started.
  • Keep your business details identical everywhere. Your name, phone number, email, address and service areas should match on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories.
  • Add structured data (Schema.org) for your organisation, services, FAQs and breadcrumbs, so machines can read the facts without guessing.
  • Publish an llms.txt file: a short plain-text summary of your site that points AI tools to your most important pages. It is a newer convention and not every assistant reads it yet, but it takes minutes to add.
  • Check your robots.txt file. If it blocks crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended, those tools may not be able to read your site.
  • Earn mentions on other trusted websites. Client reviews, industry directories, partner pages and local news all help assistants trust what your own site says.

What GEO cannot promise

Nobody can guarantee that an assistant will mention your business. Answers change from one question to the next, different assistants use different sources, and they update on their own schedules. Be wary of anyone who promises a fixed position.

What GEO can do is remove the obstacles: unclear pages, inconsistent details and blocked crawlers. That improves your chances every time an assistant looks for an answer in your field.

How we approach it

On our own website and on client projects, we start with the foundations: a page per service, structured data, a sitemap, sensible crawler rules and an llms.txt file. Then we add content that answers the questions clients actually ask, like this article.