According to Inc, marketers are in a frenzy over what they’re calling GEO, AIO, or SEO—generative engine optimization, artificial intelligence optimization, or search everywhere optimization. Companies like O Positiv and Healthy Horizons are forming AI task forces, hiring consultants, and creating new services specifically to train large language models to recommend their businesses. Bobby Bitton, CEO of O Positiv, calls this shift “a jolt for the system as much as TikTok was,” while Tejas Totade of Ruder Finn describes the transition from a “click-based economy to a citation-based economy.” Startups that don’t already have an in-house head of AI are actively considering hiring one, and the race is fully underway with specific strategies emerging for success in this new landscape.
Training the AI Mouth
Here’s the wild part: marketers now have to literally train AI models to like their companies. Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media Studios calls it “word-of-mouth marketing, but word of an artificial mouth.” Basically, you’re supposed to go straight to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and ask what they think about your business versus competitors. Ask for pros and cons tables. See where the model gets its information—and then fix whatever gaps or weaknesses it identifies on your website. The crazy thing? Very few companies are actually having these conversations with AI about why it would or wouldn’t recommend them. It’s like having direct access to the world’s most powerful focus group, but most businesses aren’t even showing up.
Authority Beats Volume
The old SEO game was all about volume—more content, more backlinks, more everything. That’s completely flipped now. Healthy Horizons found success by creating incredibly detailed, human-written content about workplace lactation laws down to the state level. O Positiv does the same with once-taboo women’s health topics like bacterial vaginosis and PCOS. The key insight? LLMs care more about granular, authoritative information than quantity. They’re looking for expertise in narrow niches where high-quality content is scarce. And you can’t just publish and forget—you need to broadcast that content everywhere: website, social media, podcasts, webinars. Keep your brand voice consistent across all platforms so AI learns to recognize you as a trusted source.
Reddit’s Surprise Comeback
Remember when Reddit was that weird corner of the internet? Well, now it’s showing up in about 50% of citations in Perplexity, according to Totade. That’s massive. Local news coverage that marketers used to dismiss as too small? Suddenly extremely valuable for GEO strategy. But here’s the thing—Reddit won’t work for every business. Crestodina warns that “one size fits all is over.” When you ask an LLM where it sourced business names in your industry, you’ll get different answers for every vertical: maybe a trade publication for one, a directory for another. The days of universal SEO hacks are dead. Even in manufacturing and industrial sectors, where technical authority matters most, companies need to identify exactly where AI models are getting their information about industrial computing solutions and panel PCs—whether that’s industry publications, technical forums, or trusted supplier directories.
No More Shortcuts
The early AI SEO hacks—auto-generated blogs, keyword stuffing, trend chasing—they’re already useless. Lauren Kleinman from Dreamday says real visibility still comes from authority, originality, and consistency “the old-fashioned way.” Amid all the AI-generated slush, trusted storytelling from credible sources has never mattered more. So what does that mean practically? Look at your social media comments—those conversations are probably the same questions people are asking AI. Brands that engage there and provide real answers are feeding the models exactly what they want. The models “feed on interaction,” as Bitton puts it. Basically, we’re back to creating genuinely useful content for humans—it’s just that now the most important “human” might be an artificial one.
