My mate Dave runs a small plumbing business in Chelmsford. Good bloke. Excellent with a stopcock. Absolutely terrified of anything with the word “optimisation” in it.
When I told him last month that not only did he need to understand SEO, but that there was now something called Generative Engine Optimisation he should probably know about too, he looked at me the way my cat looks at the hoover. Wide-eyed. Quietly horrified. Considering running away.
So this one’s for Dave. And for every small business owner who has ever felt like digital marketing was designed specifically to make their head hurt.
I promise: GEO is not as scary as it sounds. And by the end of this article, you’ll understand it better than most people who throw the term around at networking events.
So let’s get to it and discover: what is generative engine optimisation?
Quick recap: What did we cover last time?
In last month’s article – Is GEO the New SEO? – we introduced the concept of Generative Engine Optimisation and asked whether it was replacing traditional search engine optimisation entirely. (Spoiler: it isn’t. But it is changing the game significantly.)
The short version: AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI are increasingly answering people’s search questions directly, without sending them to a website at all. Gartner predicts organic search traffic will fall by over 50% by 2026 as AI search assistants take over. GEO is about making sure your business shows up – and gets cited – when those AI systems generate their answers.
This month, we’re going deeper. What actually is a generative engine? And what does any of this mean for a small business owner who just wants more customers finding them online?
Let’s go.
So what actually is a generative engine?
A generative engine is an AI system that generates a written answer to your question, rather than just showing you a list of links.
Traditional search engines – Google, Bing, Ask Jeeves (is that still a thing?) – work like a library index. You ask a question, they point you to the shelves where relevant books live. You still have to go and read the book yourself.
Generative engines are more like asking a very well-read friend. They’ve already read everything, synthesised it, and they just… tell you the answer. In full sentences. With context. Often with sources cited at the bottom.
The most well-known generative AI platforms doing this right now are:
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Google Gemini and Google AI Overviews (which now appear at the top of many standard Google searches)
- Perplexity AI (essentially a search engine built entirely around AI-generated answers)
- Microsoft Copilot (integrated into Bing and Microsoft 365)
When Dave types “best local plumber in Chelmsford” into one of these AI platforms, he’s not getting ten blue links anymore. He’s getting a synthesised AI response that may or may not mention his business – based on what the AI has learned and can find.
That is why GEO matters.
What does GEO mean in practice?
Generative Engine Optimisation – or Generative AI Optimisation, as some people call it – is the process of making your content and your digital footprint more visible and more citable to AI-driven search engines.
Here are the core building blocks, explained through the lens of Dave’s plumbing business:
1. Content that answers questions like a human would ask them
AI searches are conversational. People don’t type “plumber Chelmsford emergency” into ChatGPT. They ask: “What should I do if my boiler breaks down on a Sunday night in Chelmsford?”
Your website content needs to reflect that shift in user intent. Think about the actual questions your customers ask – then answer them, clearly and completely, on your website.
Dave added a simple FAQ page to his site with questions like “How quickly can you fix a burst pipe in Chelmsford?” and “Do you charge a call-out fee on weekends?” Within weeks, he started appearing in AI-generated answers when locals asked those exact questions. He was genuinely baffled. I was insufferably smug about it.
Content structure matters enormously here. Use clear headings, short paragraphs, and logical flow. AI systems assess semantic relevance (a fancy way of saying how well your content actually addresses the topic) so waffle and keyword stuffing now actively works against you.
Top Tip: Write a dedicated FAQ page for your business. Aim for ten to fifteen real questions your customers ask, with concise, honest answers. This is one of the single highest-impact GEO strategies available to a small business right now.
2. Structured Data and Schema Markup
This sounds technical. It is, to be honest. But stay with me.
Structured data is a way of labelling your website content so that AI systems and search engines can understand it more easily. Schema markup is the specific code format used to do this. It tells AI crawlers: “This is a local business. This is their phone number. These are their opening hours. These are their services.”
Think of it as putting a very clear label on every item in your shop so a robot can instantly catalogue it without having to read every word.
AI models rely heavily on structured data to extract reliable information about businesses. If your website content isn’t properly labelled, you’re essentially asking the AI to guess – and it may guess wrong, or skip you entirely.
Top Tip: If you’re on WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math add basic structured data automatically. For anything more specific to your business type – local business schema, service schema, FAQ schema – ask your web developer to implement it. It’s usually a one-off job and the GEO benefit is significant.
3. Entity clarity: Making sure AI knows who you are
This is a concept called entity clarity, and it’s one of the more fascinating aspects of how AI systems process information.
An “entity” in AI terms is a clearly defined thing – a person, a place, a business, a concept. AI systems build a picture of your business from everything they can find across the internet: your website, Google Business Profile, social media channels, online publications that mention you, review sites, directories, and more.
The clearer and more consistent that picture is, the more confidently an AI system will cite you.
Dave’s plumbing business had three different versions of his business name floating around the internet – “Dave’s Plumbing,” “D. Harris Plumbing,” and “David Harris Plumbing Services Chelmsford”. Every directory had something slightly different. From an entity extraction perspective, the AI wasn’t entirely sure these were all the same business.
We standardised everything. Same name, same address, same phone number, everywhere. It’s called NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone) in SEO circles, and it matters just as much for GEO.
Top Tip: Google your own business name right now. Check every listing, directory, and mention you can find. Make sure your business name, address, and phone number are identical everywhere. This single act of digital housekeeping significantly improves your AI visibility.
4. Brand citations and reputation building
Here’s where GEO starts to overlap with public relations and earned media in a way that’s genuinely exciting for small businesses.
AI systems learn from what credible sources say about you. A mention of your business in a local newspaper, a trade publication, or a well-regarded industry website carries enormous weight with large language models – often more than a backlink from a random website.
Research shows that AI systems heavily favour content backed by data and credible citations, which can boost AI visibility by up to 40%. Brand mentions – even without a direct link – contribute to how confidently AI platforms associate your business with authority in your field.
This is where reputation management and public relations become genuine AI SEO tools. Getting featured in local press, contributing expert quotes to industry articles, being listed in respected directories, earning honest reviews on Google and Trustpilot – all of this builds the kind of multi-platform presence that generative AI platforms draw on when constructing their answers.
Top Tip: Identify three credible publications, directories, or local websites in your industry and actively seek a mention or listing in each over the next month. Even a short expert quote in a local business article contributes to your brand citations and AI discovery potential.
5. Technical SEO still matters. And perhaps more than ever
GEO doesn’t give you a pass on the technical fundamentals. Page rank, site speed, mobile optimisation, internal linking, machine readability – all of this feeds into how accessible your content is to AI crawlers and search engines alike.
Answer engine optimization (a close cousin of GEO, focused specifically on being the source AI tools pull answers from) relies on your content being technically clean and easily extractable. If your website is slow, poorly structured, or difficult to crawl, AI systems will simply move on to a competitor whose content is easier to read.
Tools like the Semrush AI Visibility Index and AI visibility score tracking are emerging to help businesses measure how often they appear in AI-generated answers – much like traditional ranking reports track Google positions. These are worth knowing about as your content strategy evolves.
Top Tip: Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights (it’s free). If your score is below 70, fix the issues flagged. Fast, clean, crawlable websites perform better in both traditional search results and generative AI responses.
A GEO checklist for small businesses
To bring it all together – here’s what I’d tell Dave (and you):
- Add a proper FAQ page to your website, answering real customer questions in plain English
- Implement structured data and schema markup – talk to your developer or use an SEO plugin
- Standardise your business details everywhere online (name, address, phone number – identical, always)
- Build brand citations through local press, trade directories, and genuine PR opportunities
- Create clear, well-structured content that addresses user intent directly and completely
- Keep your technical SEO solid – speed, mobile, crawlability
- Expand your multi-media formats – short-form videos, custom graphics, and multimedia content are increasingly indexed by AI systems alongside written content
- Track your AI visibility using emerging tools like Semrush’s AI Visibility Index
The Bottom Line
Generative Engine Optimisation is an evolution of the same principles you’ve been working with before with SEO. You need to be credible, clear and genuinely useful to the people you’re trying to reach.
The businesses that will struggle are the ones that built their online presence on thin content and gaming algorithms. The ones that will thrive are the ones – like Dave, now a reluctant convert – who focus on actually answering their customers’ questions better than anyone else.
Last I heard, Dave’s been getting enquiries from AI-referred traffic he can’t fully explain. He’s choosing not to question it too hard. And I’m choosing to take full credit.
