Around 252,000 new websites are created everyday & more than 8.5 billion searches are done on google every 24 hours. That means 99,000 searches per second. Now imagine that you are a new business that wants to increase your website ranking & content’s on Google Search Results. Daunting, isn’t it? But that also means that other businesses have already been doing that for a long time.
So what methods these other companies have been employing & can we use them for our business too? Absolutely! The secret is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. SEO is the process of optimising your website & its content according to the guidelines provided by Search Engines, like Google, Bing, Yandex etc.
But SEO is not the only method of ranking your website anymore. Due to the development of AI technology & various Generative tools, businesses also have to worry about various generative engines referencing their data as well. That means optimising your content for Gen-AI Engines alongside SEO.
But what is the difference between these two & how does one optimise their content for either? This blog aims to provide the necessary details needed to decide which is more suitable for your business.
Search Engine Optimisation: Overview & Benefits
Search Engine Optimisation is a very old, but proven method of organically improving the visibility & traffic of your website. Businesses pay thousands, even lakhs to SEO experts for managing the SEO of their websites. It revolves around 3 major pillars:
- On-page SEO: Mainly consisting of optimising the contents present on the website. Such as images, content, heading & sub-headings, meta tags, SEO keywords & so on.
- Off-page SEO: This consists of all the SEO practices that are done to increase the credibility of your website on the outside of your website. Like creating backlinks, guest posting, brand mentions, social signals etc. There exists a thing called Local SEO, which is a sub-part of off-page SEO but is specifically done to improve your visibility in your locality.
For example, when searching for restaurants, people often use the terms, “near me” or “near [location]”. Local SEO is for such queries, to make sure that your business comes up after someone searches for it online.
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO handles all the necessary technical requirements that are required by the search engines. Such as, your website loading speed, size, mobile-friendliness, layout shift etc. It is an extremely crucial part of SEO, since if your website takes a long time to load or doesn’t support mobile-friendliness, then its ranking will be hampered significantly.
Benefits of SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation is without a doubt very beneficial for any business that wants to increase their organic traffic. But what exactly are these benefits that I have been pestering you about since the beginning?
- Reliable:
Search Engine Optimisation has been in use for decades & is a proven & trusted method for increasing your website reach & traffic. If you have done proper research & optimisation for your website, then quantifiable results will also be visible eventually.
- Increases Credibility:
People have been using search engines for many years & trust it as their sole solution provider when looking for information online. If your page is able to rank on the first page of the search engine result page (SERP), then that will automatically increase your website’s credibility for the people.
- High Conversion Rate:
People come looking for solutions for their problems online. And they are often in need of specific solutions for their niche problems. If your business that can provide the solution for this problem also ranks on the first page of SERP, then the chances of your website gaining that conversion also increases significantly. Thus, improving your websites overall lead generation & digital marketing efforts.
Generative Engine Optimization: Overview & Benefits
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), like SEO, is a form of optimising your content for generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Bing Chat etc. Unlike SEO, where key focus is placed on keywords for ranking, here the focus is towards curating your content towards a more conversational tone in a way that can be understood & picked up by AI tools, such as using Schema Markup or Natural Language Processing(NLP).
But since GEO is still very new in the market, SEO specialists are still conducting A/B testing on various methods to figure out what works the best. However, so far the methods which have proven to work are:
- Content Structure: Structuring the content of your website or any piece of media in an orderly manner eases the understandability of it. Utilise bulletins, numbered lists, proper heading & sub-headings with right <H1>/<H2> tags.
- Structured Data: The language in which we process the data present on a webpage is different to the language a machine does. So in order to make your data easy to understand you will have to employ schema markups & natural language processing on your webpages.
- Keywords: While it is said that Gen-AI tools don’t solely rely on keywords, it is still advised to utilise proper keywords on your websites.
- Refining & Updating Regularly: Just like SEO, Gen-AI tools also prioritise latest information. So updating your content to reflect the latest trends & news should be done at the earliest.
Benefits of GEO:
- Expansion of AI Chatbots:
As AI technology is expanding, the use of AI chat bots like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Perplexity, etc. is expanding. From using it like a search engine for common queries, to businesses adopting AI tools to make their work more efficient, the expansion of chatbots has been extremely drastic. A change in how users access information is in order & businesses need to adopt this trend to stay relevant to their customers.
2. Increased Engagement:
Today’s consumers want products that cater to their needs regardless of how personalised they might be. And AI-tools are doing exactly that. Features like personalised responses, contextual recommendations, and conversational interfaces help businesses create deeper connections with their audiences.
3. Voice Search & AI Assistants:
The use of AI powered voice assistants has also seen an upward trend, especially since its integration with other AI chatbots. The reason being that now users can opt a more natural & conversational tone while requesting for a query online & thus, these chatbots are also prioritising content with a conversational tone.
Sustainability & Suitability
Whenever any new version or method of conducting a particular work comes out, the future of the old one is put in question. Fortunately, for SEO & GEO, the case isn’t that severe. SEO is not going anywhere, even with the constant changes in the way we search. GEO’s appearance is in fact a boon for business which can open another door towards reaching their customers directly.
Businesses that want to target customers through traditional search engines, high conversions, user queries etc. then it is better to stick to Search Engine Optimisation, but if you are seeing traffic towards your website from AI chatbots then taking action on it & optimising your content towards GEO might prove more suitable for your business. However, businesses should integrate both SEO & GEO optimisation into their websites to future-proof their digital presence & making their website future-proof.