GEO 101 in 3 minutes: a hand-drawn recap

Quick recap. Today's main thread was GEO — and how SEO SEM and paid ads work with it.

Over half of software buyers now ask AI first. And 95% of winning vendors are on the shortlist from day one.

SEO, SEM and GEO answer people who search. LinkedIn pushes to people who don't.

Ads work fast — but stop paying and they drop to zero. SEO and GEO are slow and hard to control but they add up.

The goal now: be described right, be cited then clicked.

GEO, AEO, LLMO, AI SEO — same thing. Google's view: it's still SEO, just extended.

How does AI answer? It splits a prompt into sub-questions searches each one, picks passages, and writes.

Answers with links come from live search that's the layer GEO can move.

You don't need to rank first: cover the sub-questions.

And state your point in the title and first line.

Layer one: technical. If AI can't get in and read your pages nothing else counts.

Layer two: content. The 2023 GEO study found that stats quotes and sources lift visibility keyword stuffing doesn't. Start with who asks and what they ask then prioritise.

Layer three: off-site — what others say about you. LinkedIn, Reddit YouTube and trusted media get cited a lot.

Keep it accurate remove outdated info and fix redirects.

Then measure mention rate share of voice and citation share.

A prompt set run by hand is a fine start.

For SAP partners, it's about the shortlist: keep tier competencies and case studies consistent everywhere.

And it works best together. SEO is the foundation: if search can't find a page AI rarely cites it.

SEM search terms show which words convert hand them to SEO and content. And in some markets, ads in AI answers are open go first.

Get read. Get cited. Get chosen. Thanks, everyone.