Georgina brings clarity and strategy to everything she writes. She creates content that feels good to read and gets results. She also supports our copy team, sharing ideas and helping them sharpen their skills. Outside of work, she’s usually deep in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or fussing over her cat.
A few months ago, a Redditor asked: “I’ve been hearing a lot about Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) lately. Does SEO have any influence on GEO?”
One person replied:
“I stopped thinking in keywords and started thinking in prompts.”
That line sticks because it’s true. Search is changing. But it also hides a trap: people hear “GEO” and assume “SEO is dead” and then they quietly bin blogging, because they’re tired and want simpler answers.
Bad news: it’s not that simple.
Good news: blogs still matter. In some ways, they matter more than ever.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means helping your content show up inside AI-generated answers (or at least get cited as a source).
That includes experiences like:
GEO does not replace SEO, which is about helping your content show up in classic search results.
Because a lot of AI experiences still depend on the web being crawlable, indexable and readable.
Google is unusually blunt about this. Their guidance for AI features basically says: use the same foundational SEO best practices and make sure your page is indexed and eligible to show a snippet. There are no extra special technical requirements just for AI Overviews.
GEO is often talked about like it’s a brand-new thing. In reality, it’s SEO adapting to AI search.
The twist is that AI tools don’t always use the same sources you see at the top of Google. Sometimes they pull from different pages entirely, so ranking well doesn’t guarantee you’ll get mentioned.
And AI Overviews aren’t shown on every search. Google only shows them when it thinks they’re helpful, so they won’t appear all the time.
Which means the truth is messy:
This is why “SEO is dead” takes are lazy. They’re usually written by someone selling a course, or someone having a dramatic day on LinkedIn.
A blog used to be “the thing that ranks, gets clicked and converts.”
Now it’s also the thing that:
AI can summarise. It can’t replace proof.
If your site has no substance (no clear POV, no useful explanations, no evidence), you might still get mentioned occasionally. But you’ll struggle to build trust, and trust is what turns curiosity into pipeline.
“You’re not just writing for rankings anymore.
AI tools often prefer simple, structured formats like FAQs and bullet points because they can answer lots of micro-questions cleanly.
Google also explains that AI Mode and AI Overviews can use a “query fan-out” technique (multiple related searches across subtopics) to build a response, which is a fancy way of saying: your content can be found through side doors, not just your main keyword.
That’s a big deal for blogging.
Because it rewards teams that cover a topic properly, over time, with consistency.
This is the mindset shift I agree with from that Reddit thread:
If you want content that works for both SEO and GEO, aim for these outcomes:
A real question your buyers ask.
The kind that shows up in meetings and in prompts.
Strong headings. Short sections. Clear definitions.
A quick summary near the top. (Yes, this is also just good writing.)
A single good post helps.
A cluster of genuinely useful posts around one high-stakes topic helps a lot more. It’s good content hygiene, and it gives you options.
Show your working. Reference sources where it matters. Keep it up to date.
Google’s “helpful, reliable, people-first” guidance is still a solid north star here.
Google Search Console currently rolls AI features into your overall numbers, rather than giving you a clean “AI Overviews” dashboard. That makes it harder to separate what’s happening in classic search vs AI-driven search experiences.
So yes, experiment. But don’t expect perfect reporting yet.
This is why “SEO is dead” takes are lazy. They’re usually written by someone selling a course, or someone having a dramatic day on LinkedIn.
Because time is doing the work for you.
This is the bit that matters most for senior decision-makers.
Always-on marketing means you keep showing up, consistently, with useful content. Not because you love blogging. Because buyers take time. Trust takes time.
A blog you publish today might not do much this quarter.
But it can:
HubSpot’s own stats (and CMI’s data) still show content marketing is tied to demand and lead generation for a lot of teams.
Always-on is how you stack the odds in your favour, without needing a constant paid budget to stay visible.
This is why “SEO is dead” takes are lazy. They’re usually written by someone selling a course, or someone having a dramatic day on LinkedIn.
Here’s the model that makes sense for a lot of growing businesses right now:
Strategy, positioning, messaging, audience pain points, content pillars, campaign structure, measurement plan, and what “good” looks like in your world.
Basically: the stuff that’s expensive to get wrong.
Once the strategy is clear, your internal team can produce consistently, with support from AI tools (ChatGPT for drafting, Perplexity for fast research with citations, Google Search for live intent signals, and so on).
In an ideal world, your agency still handles delivery too, so the strategy doesn’t get lost between the plan and the posts.
If budget means production needs to sit in-house, it can still work. Let AI help you stick to the guardrails and get first drafts moving, then bring your agency in to review and steer so everything stays aligned.
If you only do SEO like it’s 2018, you’ll miss how discovery is shifting.
If you only do GEO tactics without SEO fundamentals, you’ll struggle to get found and indexed.
If you stop blogging (or producing any kind of content regularly) because AI summaries exist, you’ll starve your future visibility (in Google and in AI answers) and make it harder for buyers to trust you.
So yes, it’s changing fast.
But the play is still the same. Be genuinely useful and keep showing up.
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