Generative AI SEO Strategy – Do you have one for your business? FIve SEO & GEO strategies for 2025

Author: Krista LaRiviere, COO RTOWN Digital & CBH Agency Partners

I have been “doing” SEO since the beginning of SEO time (circa 1996) including: building and executing services, writing, speaking, and even founded two software companies with SEO at their core. There’s never a boring day in the SEO world since algorithms change every day.

Thanks to the Artificial Intelligence Revolution, there's a new required digital marketing strategy at the table - GEO or Generative Engine Optimization.

With the presence of GenAI in everything digital marketing, SEO continues to survive but now businesses (if you want your brand and business to be discoverable) need to ensure their websites are AI-ready for AI Agents through a GEO Strategy. Examples of AI Agents include ChatGPT and Gemini.

SEO, and now GEO, continue to be about the discoverability of relevant brand content at the right time in your customer’s journey. Artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the customer journey, therefore changing the discoverability of your content.

What does all this mean for your business? How can you be certain your prospects and customers are still finding you? What are your competitors doing for GEO?

AI affects your SEO & GEO strategies in two distinct yet equally important ways:

Machines (AI Agents) - Data & Indexes. This is the content available to algorithms within indexes ,as well as how proprietary algorithms work. In other words, deciding what search results to give the human. The AI Agents are: Gemini (Google), CoPilot (Bing/Microsoft), ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc.
Human Behaviour. Where and how humans are searching and how they are interacting with the search results. The humans are your prospects and customers.

Here are 5 SEO & GEO factors you need to pay attention to in 2025.

Understanding human behaviour is key.

One of my favourite sayings is, “Marketing is all about understanding human behaviour. It is this simple. It is this difficult”.

AI Apps on our devices have changed the way humans want to find information to solve problems and search for answers. I have two AI Apps on my device that I find myself using instead of the ‘Google Search Box’ - ChatGPT and Claude. This one change in human behaviour, multiplied by millions is predicted to produce a 25% decline in Google search traffic by 2026, according to Gartner. How can you ensure your business and brand are being found in AI Agent searches?
Understanding data sources of Large Language Models is also key.

Just like traditional search engines are not created equally, neither are LLMs. Gemini and CoPilot have the advantage of making use of their powerful, decades old, pre-existing algorithms and indexes to return search results. New market entrants, don’t. So, where does ChatGPT get its data?

ChatGPT uses publicly available information and data sources through partnerships including but not limited to Reddit, Stack OverFlow, Financial Times, Associated Press, Shutterstock, and more.

For business owners, we need to understand how and why the discoverability of your brand and business content may differ across LLMs. As a responsible user of AI Agents it is important to understand not only the data sources the particular LLM is using, but also how it is trained and who is training it.
Keywords are still key, sort of.

Keywords are still at the core of all content. A strong and effective SEO & GEO strategy will consist of an on-going keyword research approach to drive enticing content to attract and engage searchers. But first, content has to be indexed and known by search engines and LLMs.

Here’s my main point, without writing an entire blog about keyword research: Within keyword research we now need to consider keyword-based searches, as per usual, at the Google search box (i.e., electric fireplaces) as well as voice-based AI prompts within LLMs Apps (i.e., Give me a pricing comparison of electric fireplaces at Canadian Tire).

Ensure your keyword research includes prompt-based, very long-tail search queries and ensure your brand or business is discoverable for those queries. If not, revisit your content marketing strategy and get to work!
Original content is the key.

ChatGPT and other Large Language Models amaze us with how quickly they can produce answers, analyze data, create images, but it’s important to understand the output is based on pre-existing content and data. LLMs do not and can not have original thoughts. Ask ChatGPT to produce a blog post on 5 Things to Do in Rome and it will draw on previous ideas.

Original content produced by thought leaders in your organization will continue to stand out. I am not saying to not use LLMs to produce content, however I do recommend producing at least one significant, original content item per quarter, and then build out smaller content items (blogs, social posts, etc.) from it. A significant, original content item could be a whitepaper, guide, long-form blog post, etc.
Technical SEO & GEO

Technical SEO and GEO refer to “things” under the hood of your website that affect its discoverability of it; factors the crawlers and robots are looking for to determine if it is indeed a website they want to send a visitor to. So yes, keywords and content are important but so too are the technical aspects of SEO and now GEO.

Here is a list of items you will want to ensure are in place to satisfy both your SEO and GEO strategies.
- Mobile page load speed remains critical
- Meta titles, descriptions, and H1s
- Key information placed high and prominently on the web page
- Add Robots.txt for AI Crawlers.
- Add a llms.txt file.
- Consider the differing crawling timeout limits of each AI agent.
- Test the discoverability of your business with the different AI Agents.

In conclusion, both SEO and GEO are here to stay. Contact RTOWN today if you need our help staying on top of this continual evolution of search engines and generative engines.