The Practical Guide to LLM Marketing - GEO strategies

In the previous article, we covered the impact of AI and LLMs on search behaviour and briefly touched on the ways in which advertisers appear within LLM responses.

Following on from this, in this article, we are going to dive more specifically into the practical steps that can be taken to improve AIO and LLM visibility.

How can I optimise my marketing for AI search?

You may have seen GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) appearing overwhelmingly across your LinkedIn feed, the latest term coined to describe these emerging AI strategies.

Don’t worry – this isn’t something completely new that will take years to learn. GEO follows the same core principles as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation):

1.     Relevant Content

2.     Off-Page Optimisation

3.     Technical Setup.

Together, these principles effectively nudge the AI crawlers to use your website’s content to generate a response. Relevant content signals topical authority, off-page optimisation builds trust and credibility, and technical setup makes your site easier to crawl.

However, there are a few caveats to be aware of:

• GEO places more of an emphasis on relevant content and off-page optimisation, and much less weight on technical setup, compared to SEO

• GEO’s off-page optimisation refers to mentions, whereas SEO refers to backlinks

This slight difference is ultimately because LLMs and search engines are designed to do different things. Search engines are built to direct users to external websites, making technical setup (referring to things like page speed, connection security, and engagement signals) more critical. On the other hand, LLMs are designed to generate consolidated answers, making relevant content and off-page optimisation more critical.

What can I do to appear in LLM responses?

There seem to be new GEO strategies circulating online every day, though there are few proven approaches.

Most are essentially guesswork – based on inference from experiments rather than knowledge of how the algorithm works or being confirmed by LLM providers.

However, many of these guesses are still highly plausible. Following significant research, we have gathered a list of strategies that we believe deserve attention:

Hopefully, this has given you a good foundation of GEO. The final installment of this series will cover how best to apply and measure such strategies.

If you would like to see how your business benchmarks with our AI trackers or discuss your company’s approach to AI disruption in search marketing, please contact us.