The era of AI has brought about a drastic shift in online user behavior. It’s also ushered in a new consideration for elevating your brand across digital platforms.
In this episode of Politely Pushy, Jennifer Devine from Freshwater Creative unpacks the nuances, importance, and implementation of SEO, GEO, and AEO.
Click To Read Transcript
0:05 I’m Eric Chummy. And this is Politely Pushy. Welcome to Politely Pushy, folks. I’m your host, as always, Eric Chemi.
0:11 Today, we’re talking about GEO or AEO as some like to call it. It’s the modern-day 21st century, 21st century
0:19 equivalent of SEO, and I’m here with Jenn Divine, who works with Bospar in a number of capacities, helping make great
0:26 websites, video content online. uh you know material for companies that are
0:33 looking to expand their their public relations, expand their media footprint
0:38 and get the world to understand who they are and what they do. And we’ve been talking off air a lot more recently
0:44 about the SEO thing almost doesn’t matter anymore now. It’s what is the what does the ChatGPT engine think
0:50 about how your website works or what do they think about what your company does? And that’s really changed how you’ve had
0:56 to do business and how you’ve had to work with clients. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Oh, thanks for having me, Eric. Glad to
1:03 be here. When when did it all change? Because we know ChadGPT has been out about three years now, but when was it like, oh, we
1:11 need to completely change how we’re making websites, how we’re putting material out there. Um, you know, it was a a slow burn, so
1:18 to speak. We’ve really seen a large shift in behavior this past year.
1:24 um where you know users are are more widely adopting these platforms and integrating
1:31 them into their um search behaviors. So rather than going straight to a Google
1:36 or a Bing, you know, they’re firing up ChatGPT or code and and entering their queries and searches and taking the
1:43 content and responses that come back into consideration in their decision-making process. So, you know,
1:49 we we knew it was something that was um you know, and we adopted a lot of tools, AI tools in in our own work and
1:55 deliverables prior to that, but really the um adoption got on our radar early
2:02 early this year. And is there a difference between GEO,
2:08 AEO? To be honest, I only started hearing about these terms in just the last few weeks, really, like last couple
2:14 of months, and I I’m I’m still feeling I’m way catching
2:19 up on this stuff, right? Because I I use AI tools all the time now, but I don’t know what the what the proper
2:26 lingo is anymore. So So what are we all saying? What do we say to sound like we’re current? Well, you know, it was up
2:34 for debate um for for quite some time and I don’t think it’s a debate that’s
2:40 quite settled yet. A lot of the larger agencies started using GEO and put a
2:46 stake out there for Generative Engine Optimization. You do come across an
2:52 Answer Engine Optimization or AEO as well. Um the delineation between the two
2:58 is a bit blurry but often you will hear people say the Answer Engine Optimization is in browser. So the uh
3:06 Google AI overviews and and and those sorts of things that you’re seeing the AI within the browse browser searches
3:13 and then the generative engine is when you’re searching in platform so directly in a ChatGPT or direct directly in
3:21 DeepSeek or what have you. Now, is it, you know, like I said, is it is it final? No. I know. I think we might see
3:28 some some changes that come over time, but right now, those are the the terms
3:34 that are that are um highly used. There’s a great um post on Reddit just
3:39 in the digital marketing section three months ago, not very long ago, digital marketing on Reddit. Somebody says SEO
3:46 is old news? Right now there’s AIO, GEO, AEO, WTF is going on. Right. So, it’s
3:54 interesting to see all of a sudden it just felt like we got into the summer here and people got over LLMO was was out
4:01 there for a while and and is still, you know, these are these are terms, you know, depending on if you’re in the
4:08 industry or out of the industry. Um, you know, marketing professionals are are
4:13 getting more familiar and and using these terms. Um but like I said, lots of
4:18 room for for change still to happen. AIEO, who knows where it’s going to land,
4:24 but um right now we seem to be centralizing on GEO and and um AEO of
4:31 course partnered with SEO because SEO is still important. It hasn’t gone away. Um
4:36 and you they’re very complimentary to each other. So that’s something that I’m always stressing with clients is, you
4:41 know, we’re not this isn’t a complete do-over. Um it’s it’s not that SEO is dead. Um really it is another
4:49 consideration in search behavior and and findability online.
4:55 So how did the change happened? Was it you going to clients and saying we are going to design your site differently
5:01 now or was it clients coming to you and saying we want you to design it differently?
5:07 Well, I think AI um and the the changes that it’s brought on uh through through
5:13 customer behavior has been on a lot of people’s radar, our clients included.
5:19 So, it’s been a combination of a um you know, both of those types of scenarios where we’ve set up meetings with our
5:25 clients just as a a touch base. Say, is this on your radar? What have you been doing? Um if it’s not on your radar, how
5:31 can we help? because it’s important that you’re aware of and and um shifting your
5:37 focus and and are including these types of um considerations in your in your
5:43 strategies. So, um a large variance across the board. Um some are, yeah, I
5:49 know I know it’s coming. I’ve got a lot on my plate. Um I’ve been trying not to have to consider it, but I know I have
5:54 to. and then others who are on top of it and and you know working with um current
5:59 vendors or partners or or in deep consideration how do we accommodate this in our strategies moving forward.
6:06 How does it even work though? Like we understood before Google has their algorithm and it’s a little bit of a
6:12 black box but but we knew if you had good content there were certain ways of optimizing the pickup there but now it’s
6:19 it’s harder to know well what are these models doing? How how fresh is their information? What are they looking at?
6:25 What are they valuing? What what you know is their equivalent of a page rank for example in terms of importance of of
6:32 the content? Because then they’re just making up answers. It’s not consistent. Right. Before it was your ranking, but
6:38 you could get people to your page. Now people aren’t coming to your page and they might make up different answers
6:44 each time someone asked the same query. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, with SEO, you were you were more in control of of if
6:51 you got to that first page or if you if you you know, your site was indexed and and started ranking highly, at least
6:57 what it was showing was uh pulled directly from your own content. Whereas
7:04 with the with the AI engines, they are formulating responses based on different
7:11 sources. So they um they have a core base of of knowledge that um is
7:17 consistent and that is the the content that they learn from and then they have
7:23 in session capability where when the user is querying they can access real
7:29 time um websites that then are pulled in for consideration but not a direct
7:36 regurgitation. it is inputed into the the formulation of the response that comes back. So a
7:44 lot of the same principles that that are that are good practice for SEO are good practice for uh GEO and AEO as well.
7:52 great content um you know structured in a way that’s that’s easily
7:58 read easily consumed by humans um so that that these AI engines can get to it
8:04 quickly and and um understand the structure of it and what that the type of content that it is uh in session
8:11 queries when it’s out grabbing information is going to grab from those top ranked sites and and and highly
8:17 credible sources as well. We have determined in our research and and through um you know through a lot of the
8:25 reading that we’re doing as well that um each platform kind of has its own flavor and own preferences for where it’s
8:31 citing or or sourcing the information that it’s getting in session. Um so we
8:36 want to be on top of that and aware of of where it’s pulling its sources. Um, but if you’re following best practices,
8:42 great content, engaging content that’s adding value, that’s structured, um, um,
8:48 and and easily digested from, uh, from that perspective, your schemas are there, then then you’re going to be in
8:54 good shape and and all of that kind of works together. Um, that’s why I was saying SEO, AEO, and GEO are are um
9:02 still all on on the playground. What did you have to do to learn the skills? So, it’s not like there’s a
9:07 class that you’re taking, right? you’re actively working with clients, you’re doing all this. How did you learn? Okay,
9:12 this is what we need to do differently now. Well, lots lots and lots of reading. Um,
9:18 you know, no different than the kinds of behaviors that we have in place around um the algorithm changes that you
9:25 mentioned with with Google. You know, you’d get a lot of activity and a lot of it was interpretation. So you’d run some
9:31 tests uh you know what across the different platforms um what could it be
9:37 that’s influencing the uh information that’s being pulled in and and considered in the responses. So um you
9:45 know looking at the the sources the um
9:51 the preferences reading a lot of the industry articles and and looking to those experts as well who are all very
9:58 curious and and interested in what’s going on and how does this impact the the work and the strategies that put
10:05 they’re putting in place. Can you tell as you surf the web, can you tell if there are sites that oh, they’ve
10:11 definitely started to optimize for AI engines now? Like how can you see in how
10:16 they’re designed or set up or organized or what content they’re presenting?
10:22 probably not as obviously as a poorly optimized um SEO site where you get the
10:29 you know a human can spot that stuff right away where the keyword density is overloaded. The um the just the
10:36 structures of the site feel awkward and and it feels like it’s more for a bot or
10:43 a um you know a scraper than it than it is for a human. Um, again, when content
10:49 is done really well, it it it should be human first. Um, and the engines look
10:56 for a lot of the same things that humans look for. Uh, you know, in best practice in in UX design is allow the user to get
11:04 deeper into content if they want to provide the summaries, you know, quick bullet points and they can skim and scan
11:11 it and then choose to go deeper if if they want if they want to download that PDF. It’s very similar for the uh AI
11:19 platform. So when you’re experiencing a site, if it’s well done and they’re they’re considering um you know the
11:26 content that they want to be digested and formulated into the responses, you’re not really going to see that. Um
11:33 but it’s not all about the the the site itself. So much more of what we’re
11:39 seeing with GEO and AEO is about that third-party content and and can they
11:46 site and source third party content that helps them validate um the response that
11:52 they’re going to be getting for accuracy. So that’s why it plays into a
11:58 lot of the uh media and and um PR strategies that we put forward for our
12:04 clients. Yes. So talk more about that. Talk about how that’s all related, like the PR and
12:11 media strategies, how it relates to the content that you’re doing, third party validation. What’s what’s an example of
12:17 a really coordinated effort that you’ve seen do a good job in the past few
12:22 months? Yeah, I mean really um a a a great
12:27 example of the importance of this work was um when Real Sense launched from
12:33 spun out of Intel. So at the beginning of that, you know, unfortunate situation where u many moons ago there was a a a
12:42 product line within Real Sense that had been discontinued and unfortunately um somebody
12:48 misinterpreted that that Real Sense itself the the unit within or the division within Intel had been
12:55 discontinued or closed down. So when we were let’s clarify someone listening. So so
13:01 Intel said they were they were shutting down a product but people got confused and thought they were shutting down an
13:07 entire division. And now that division a few years later is the one that they’re trying to spin out.
13:13 Yes. Absolutely. Exactly. That’s exactly it. And um unfortunately
13:20 when we started querying within the engines you know what are we dealing with here? Of course on Reddit we’re saying you know what’s the um you know
13:27 what what is the understanding out there um as we’re forming our strategy for the launch and we found that you know a lot
13:35 of individuals believed that in Intel RealSense uh was no longer and when we
13:42 went into the into the uh AI platforms chatGPT specifically was a hard one to
13:49 crack is that it believed yes I know what Intel RealSense is but it’s no
13:54 longer operating and the um
14:00 strategy behind that is like we have to we have to launch a company that a lot of people and this main um AI platform
14:07 that people are heavily using to source their information is giving inaccurate
14:13 feedback. So um we had to come up with a strategy for the launch that would that
14:20 would help address that. And to formulate that strategy, we did a lot of
14:25 comparative um querying and and analysis to find out where first of all where the
14:32 inaccuracy was coming from. We were able to pinpoint the the source of that. um include that in you know include that in
14:39 um that individual in reach out to them and say hey listen we’re this is RealSense
14:45 is launching out spinning out of Intel um and and you know we would like
14:50 to include you in in some of the information so they could they read it wrote an article like Intel was RealSense
14:57 was dead thank god it’s not dead anymore and and um
15:03 bring that individual into the conversation so that when the launch went out um the
15:11 the platforms were able to access that content and and pull that into its responses like yeah maybe we were um
15:18 maybe that was part of what happened in the past but now there’s a correction and and actually identify oh hey there
15:27 was a misunderstanding um that is now that is now corrected and and we’ve seen um you know it’s an
15:34 ongoing battle these platforms They’re changing a lot but we have seen a shift. It is now aware of um of the of the spin
15:41 out the the independence of of RealSense but we are still seeing a lot of combination of the brands together where
15:47 we’re seeing Intel RealSense versus RealSense the independent organization that they now are.
15:54 That’s fascinating. You can you can imagine that’s going to be a little bit of an ongoing uh project here going
16:00 forward to make sure that they eventually get every engine search and AI to to fully understand what they are
16:06 now. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s I mean it’s ongoing um like you had mentioned with the algorithms these platforms
16:12 change they update um and they do it very rapidly. So staying on top of that and and continuing to audit and and be
16:19 aware of what the shifts might be um helps inform our strategies with the
16:24 clients for sure. So if I’m let’s say you know a pre-IPO
16:29 SAS you know CEO or founder what is the minimal minimum viable let’s say minimum
16:36 viable GEO AEO like what what would they need minimally that you’d want to ship in a website refresh this quarter let’s
16:42 say before the end of the year minimum a really well formatted and
16:47 thought out about page um it’s about page okay yeah it’s pretty basic it’s not anything
16:53 that is Um, you know, but it’s often an an afterthought. Oh, nobody cares about
16:59 our about page. Nobody really looks at it. Um, I’ll tell you from from the the
17:05 masses of sites that we look at the analytics, the about page, the team page are often the most visited. Um, and it
17:13 is so important for for these AI platforms. It is the first page that it
17:19 will go to um to look through who is the leadership team, what was the year of founding, uh what are the main what is
17:26 what are the main values um products, services and offerings of the organization. It will then branch out
17:32 from there and validate. But um if a site does, you know, doesn’t have a well thoughtout about page and about section
17:39 um it’s left to determine that information on its own from other sources.
17:44 Because it’s funny that you mentioned that because I was going to ask you what are the other important parts of a page
17:50 that matter. And then you said, you know, about is number one. You know, there’s the FAQ, maybe there’s a product
17:56 page, there’s a pricing page, there’s a leadership page, but you think about is the number one.
18:01 Well, for for the basics, absolutely. um to to understand um the presence and
18:09 have an accurate summary of um an organization that about page is really
18:14 really important. structured data. Um, and that’s what you’re touching on with the FAQs,
18:21 um, you know, product, uh, product, uh, data. If you are an e-commerce site, um
18:27 making sure that you have the proper schema and you have the depth of content um in that Q&A response format is is a
18:36 great way to help these engines digest and and understand uh more about the
18:42 company and and the type get answers to the types of questions that people are querying about in within the platforms.
18:49 What about thought leadership? Right? We talk so much with companies about putting out your content, putting out your owned content, right? You’re
18:56 writing your articles, your blog posts. How much of that how much of that matters? It really matters when you are
19:02 considering um their appetite for expertise and expert quotes. So um for
19:09 example, if you can get um you know put forward as an expert in a certain space
19:16 and media will reach out for you for input or or um information or insight
19:21 about a specific happening or an occurrence. um having that quote placed
19:27 even if the full article isn’t about you, but having the quote placed um from
19:32 an individual within the organization um will often be highly cited and and
19:38 brought in and considered within the responses as well.
19:44 What about it’s so good to hear these details, right, of what what has to happen.
19:49 How do you get the real world proof, right? customers some other kind of
19:55 validation so that engines trust you, right? So it’s not just some, you know, many sites, you know, you click on a
20:00 site and you realize this is just such a nonsense fake made up site that only exists to get on Google. So how do you
20:06 get that proof, right? To to make sure that’s real. Yeah. So for um get the proof that the
20:14 recommendations are real. Is that what you mean? The company’s real, the product’s real, the people are real, the leadership’s
20:20 real, the articles are real. Yeah. we’re finding um a lot of reliance and a lot of site um site and um sources
20:28 are uh awards. So again that third-party content if you have leadership awards or
20:34 or um recognition within your space or recognition from um specific campaigns,
20:41 anything like that that’s third party where you’ve received that recognition is is very important. Um as well as
20:48 listings, you know, Crunchbase what are your profiles? there’s consistency within um what’s showing up within the
20:54 profiles that you have set up. We have seen a lot of um you know glass door
20:59 information and and LinkedIn depending on the platform. So they each have their own own flavor and preferences but
21:06 ensuring consistency across the areas where your organization is showing up is
21:12 very very important so that it can uh verify and and know that that this
21:18 information is true. What about let’s say a company gets a top tier placement,
21:23 they get a big tier one story, right? What should they do with that so that somehow it helps them in in the AI
21:29 world? Like how do they how do they promote that or highlight that or make sure that that it is really truly
21:35 associated with them? Yeah. And a lot of this is going to be familiar from from the SEO world where
21:40 you’re looking at can you get a backlink top tier? Probably not. they they tend not to do a backlink into into the owned
21:48 asset or the or the website, but getting um getting mention of that onto your own
21:54 website, linking to the article and making those connections. So that again going back to it needs to be easy
22:01 because um you know like humans uh you you want to be able to get the
22:06 information quickly and and sort of digest and and read the connections very quickly to what um you need to access.
22:13 the AI platforms are the same. Getting a link to your site um making that that
22:19 connection so that they can build the you know the content and and see the relationships between them um is is
22:26 really really important. So promoting it on your socials, getting it on your website and and using that to your
22:31 advantage um so that connection is really really clear is is really where we would say use it. Right? If you’ve
22:39 got it, use it. Is there anything else formatting wise that matters? Like, oh, doing more with tables, doing more with
22:44 alternate text on images, things like that to help get the content across. Yeah. Yeah. The um so making sure that
22:53 you have the um you metadata and alt text on on uh you know, back to the old
22:59 school practices for SEO. Um those are it’s all really really important because again it it builds out the understanding
23:06 and connection within uh you know what’s being said uh what’s being um made
23:13 available to the engine so that it can access and and determine is this related or not
23:19 and then hallucinations how do you prevent that? Is it disclaimers certain links certain page patterns? How do you
23:25 reduce misquotes? Well, you know, the hallucinations and they these platforms
23:31 and answer engines um love to have answers. So, they they do not like not
23:36 being able to to find the information and that’s when we find they tend to want to make things up because first and
23:43 foremost they want to have an answer. If they can’t find the answer, they will make up an answer. So, ensuring that
23:51 that information is consistent and accurate and available um across the
23:57 board in many in many ways um is is the best way to help help stop that from
24:06 happening. You know, we in in a lot of our searches and and research that we were doing, you know, it was making up
24:13 um you know, specific to Bospar, who were the founders of Bospar. Curtis always showed up, but you know, randomly
24:20 there’d be just other names. The CTO of of Bospar, some person that didn’t
24:27 exist. So, we needed to make sure that, you know, and that’s when we started seeing some of the initiative around um
24:32 adding some more information to the team pages and and location pages on the site. So, there’s just more clarity and
24:39 and and easier for the um for the engines to to source that information
24:44 and know that it’s accurate. And then how long does it take to see the work,
24:49 the effort? How long does it take to see it pay off where hey now when you ask that question again RealSense is
24:55 correctly described or Bospar leadership is correctly described because it’s not going to be immediate. It’s not going to be same day, same
25:01 week, same month. No. Well, part of it is um part of it is
25:06 about how often the platforms update their their core knowledge base and part
25:12 of it is making sure that that new content is indexed back to that traditional SEO um search optimization
25:20 uh world so that it is accessible and and the information that they’re
25:25 accessing in in session for the queries um is indexed and and and rankings. So
25:32 it’s a combination. We don’t have an exact timing on it. We know that it can take uh you know we have tools uh in in
25:39 our toolkit to um ask Google to to more quickly index new pages and and those
25:45 sorts of things. Um but the rest of it that core learning database just depends
25:51 on how often the platforms are updating the the core information. So fascinating. But what else do you see
25:58 in terms of advice when you’re having conversations with clients? What are the the most typical,
26:04 you know, three things? Hey, you definitely got to do this or the three mistakes that you see a lot of companies make. What’s a very common playbook in
26:11 terms of things that they need to do and things that they’re really screwing up? Yeah, we talked a little bit about the about page. Um there are a lot of big
26:19 players out there that I think assume um everyone knows our details and our
26:26 information and so the about page is just a real quick couple of couple of paragraphs some you know not not
26:33 important details. So the about page again not putting the a time effort or
26:39 or attention into that presence on your main site. the profile pages that might
26:45 have been spun up um eons ago that weren’t maintained uh for
26:51 accuracy. They might be listing old team members, even old executives, old board members. We’ve seen um a lot of that
26:59 information get pulled in. Um it’s hard to keep on top of all of those things. So even even an individual might have
27:07 spun up something a couple years ago. they might not even be with the company anymore, but here is a source that that
27:13 is getting pulled in um for for inaccuracies in the responses that that
27:19 we’re seeing. So, um doing a a scrub across uh profiles, making sure those
27:26 are accurate. If you don’t have access, get access to them and and and get them cleaned up. uh the about page and then
27:34 really not having you know proper schema on on the website for um your
27:41 organization, the FAQs, the type of information, um lack of uh lack of
27:46 structure within, you know, within the data schema and uh the schema itself that you have on your website.
27:53 It’s a lot to do. I’m sure they’re keeping you busy. Yeah. And a lot of it right now is um
28:00 you reassuring people that if you’ve been if you’ve been um following best
28:06 practices and and SEO’s been on your radar, then you’re you’re in pretty good shape. Um now there’s a bit more that
28:13 you need to be taking into consideration. Um but not to panic. Uh you know, these can be layered on and
28:19 and addressed in in a a planful manner. this isn’t this isn’t uh anything to be
28:26 panicked about. There is uh some clarity and help and assistance that we can that we can put forward for them.
28:32 Do you find that you have to completely start the website over from scratch or
28:37 do you tweak let’s say someone worked made a site with someone else now they’re coming to you as they want to get better visibility and all this
28:44 stuff. Do you go into that code and look at and think, “Oh my gosh, this is so problematically set up that that we need
28:51 to start this thing all over again.” Or can you fix what’s there? Um, that would, you know, less so from a
28:58 a geo perspective, more from a site performance, usability, UX perspective
29:04 is that we might be coming back and saying, you know, this site is um is
29:10 just really going to need a lot more help. it’ll be faster for us to clean this up um and and start from scratch if
29:18 it’s well done and there there just wasn’t attention paid to priming for SEO
29:24 or um you know content structures thinking about how we are actually creating content that’s adding value and
29:30 deeper understanding to um for our audience to the services and and and
29:36 offerings that we have then we can work within the existing platform. Um, often
29:42 times you building a a website is a is a very large expense for an organization
29:47 and you know there’s been more than a handful of clients that have come that we’ve spent a you know a lot of our
29:54 budget is already spent on redesigning but we’re finding that performance-wise or what have you. It’s it’s not doing
30:00 well and we can work with we can usually work with that. And then I guess lastly since we’re
30:06 talking about it, what about all the AI tools that say, “Well, you don’t need to hire Jennifer. The AI is going to make
30:12 the website or the AI is going to write the code, right? What what if we cut you out altogether and just have an AI make a site that is designed for AI to read
30:18 it?” Yeah. Well, you know, we’re not quite there yet, thank goodness. Um we we do
30:24 use a lot of AI tools. Uh but we find that no matter um how we’re employing
30:29 those tools, there’s still uh human touch and and human analysis and and um
30:36 insights that are required to really make them uh do you know get them to a place where things need to be. Um so you
30:45 know we have seen that before. We’ve I mean we’ve we’ve been up against that for a very long time even with the site
30:51 builder sites, you know, the Wix and the and the you know, and they’re great to a degree, but what we find is our clients,
30:58 you’ll hit the wall way too fast because there’s always a degree of customization or um level of of branding, visual
31:07 experience, user experience that can’t be attained within those platforms. So
31:12 um and it’s the same thing with AI. it you they it just won’t it won’t get you
31:18 to where you need to be. Um using the using just tools because there’s
31:24 expertise and um you know a view into uh
31:29 user behaviors and things that just need to be considered uh when you’re when you’re working at that that higher level
31:36 and and you have um you know a sophisticated audience that you’re connecting with.
31:41 Fascinating. Jennifer, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much for Yeah. giving me a little uh explainer here on
31:47 on the future of what’s going on with how a lot of these sites are are being made and and what that’s going to mean for content, how it all relates.
31:53 Yeah. Thanks so much, Eric. I really enjoyed it and um appreciate your time as well.
32:00 Thank you to my guest and thanks for listening. Subscribe to get the latest episodes each week and we’ll see you
32:05 next time.