More of your customers are asking an AI instead of scrolling a list of search results. They type a question into ChatGPT, Google’s AI answers, or Perplexity, and they get a short recommendation back with a few names in it. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of making sure your business is one of those names. If that sounds like SEO with a new label, it is close, but the target moved, and a small business that gets in early has a real edge.
I am Morgan McKell. I run Strategy Zoo in Pocatello, and I help service businesses get found, whether that is on Google or inside an AI answer. Here is the plain version of what GEO is and what you should actually do about it.
What generative engine optimization actually is
Traditional SEO tries to rank your page in a list of blue links. GEO tries to get your business mentioned and recommended inside an AI generated answer. The AI reads a huge amount of the web, then writes back a summary that names a few options. GEO is making your business clear, credible, and easy for that AI to understand and quote. Same goal as always, getting found by people who need you, but the thing doing the finding is now a model writing an answer, not just a page of results.
Why a small business should care now
Two reasons. First, this is where attention is moving. When someone asks an AI who to hire and gets three names, the businesses not in that answer are invisible for that search, the same way page two of Google is invisible. Second, it is early. Big competitors are slow to adapt, and a focused local business that makes itself easy for AI to understand can show up in answers well above its weight. Google lays out how its own AI features work in its guidance on AI in Search, and the direction is clear: this is not a fad to wait out.
How GEO is different from regular SEO
The fundamentals still matter. Clear pages, real expertise, a fast and crawlable site, accurate business information. GEO adds a few emphases on top. AI answers lean on content that states things plainly and answers real questions directly, so a page that gets to the point beats a clever one. They lean on credible, consistent information about who you are across the web. And they favor genuine expertise and a real author over anonymous filler, which is good news for a named local expert and bad news for a faceless content mill. If you want the step by step for showing up in AI search specifically, I wrote that up in how to show up in AI search.
What strategy has to do with it
Here is the part the tools will not tell you. GEO is not a button you push. Before any of it helps, you have to be clear on who you serve and what you are actually known for, because that clarity is exactly what an AI needs to recommend you confidently. Vague positioning produces vague pages, and vague pages do not get quoted. This is the same idea behind our whole approach to AI marketing for small businesses: get the direction clear first, then the tools and tactics work. AI without strategy is just guessing faster, and that is as true for GEO as it is for anything else.
What to do first
You do not need to chase every AI platform. Start with the basics that GEO rewards. Make sure your site clearly says who you help, where, and what you do. Answer the real questions your customers ask, in plain language, on your own pages. Keep your business information consistent everywhere. And put a real name and real expertise behind your content. If you are not sure your positioning is clear enough for an AI to recommend you, that is the place to start, and it is what we do first at Strategy Zoo.
Get the direction clear first on a Clarity Discovery Call. Thirty minutes, we find where you are stuck, and you leave knowing what to fix so both Google and the AI engines can actually recommend you.
