SEO for AI: what it is and how to position your brand in artificial intelligence search engines

SEO for AI, also called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), is the discipline of optimising your brand and your content so that AI search engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) understand you, cite you and recommend you. It does not replace traditional SEO: it extends it into a scenario where the answer is no longer a list of blue links, but a text generated by AI.

Direct answer: doing SEO for AI means getting the fundamentals of traditional SEO right (a crawlable, fast and indexed website) and adding what the models value: clear answers, well-structured content and, above all, evidence (data, quotes and sources). That is how AI comes to use you as a source when someone asks about what you offer.

The shift is real. According to Bain & Company, close to 60% of searches already end without a click to any website, because the user is satisfied with the AI summary. Their conclusion is clear: SEO on its own is no longer enough. In this guide you will see what SEO for AI is, how it differs from traditional SEO, how it works and how to apply it step by step.

What SEO for AI is

The expression «SEO for AI» is used in two senses. It is worth separating them:

• Optimising for AI (GEO): working on your website and your content so that the models cite and recommend you. This is the dominant sense and the one that generates the most business.
• Using AI to do SEO: relying on artificial intelligence tools to research, write or audit. It is an accelerator, not a strategy.

This guide focuses mainly on the first one, GEO, because it is the one that changes the rules of the game. If what you are looking for is the technical foundation (how the website should be built for all of this), we cover it in website with AI.

From SEO to GEO: what exactly changes

Classic SEO optimises to appear in Google’s list of links. GEO optimises to be the source that AI uses and cites when it writes its answer. The difference is not cosmetic:

The good news: GEO does not replace SEO, it is built on top of it. Google has confirmed that its AI features rely on its usual search index, with no separate crawler and no special markup. A solid SEO foundation is the prerequisite. We go deeper into the concept in what Generative Engine Optimization is (in Spanish).

How SEO for AI works

AI search engines do not make things up: they retrieve and synthesise information from sources they can crawl. They choose what to cite based on relevance, clarity, freshness and domain authority. To get into that answer you need three things: that they can crawl you (correct robots.txt and indexing), that your content is easy to extract (clear structure) and that you demonstrate authority. AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot) are controlled from your robots.txt; if you block them, you disappear from that surface.

Important: you do not need special markup or to rewrite your whole website «for AI». What you need is useful, well-structured and crawlable content. In the case of Google AI Overviews, it has also been observed that they tend to highlight pages that already rank well and that offer a clear, extractable passage answering the question. AI rewards exactly what a good human reader rewards.

Which AI search engines should you appear in?

Not all your customers ask in the same place. These are the AI engines that today decide a good part of a brand’s visibility:

• Google AI Overviews: the AI summaries inside Google. They use the usual search index, so your classic SEO has a direct influence.
• ChatGPT: the most used assistant, with built-in web search. It crawls with its own bots and cites sources in its answers.
• Perplexity: a conversational search engine that always shows and links its sources. Being cited here brings qualified traffic.
• Gemini and Copilot: the assistants from Google and Microsoft, built into their ecosystems (Workspace, Windows, Office).
• Claude: very present in professional and business environments.

The good news: you do not need a different strategy for each one. They all reward the same thing, crawlable, clear, structured content with authority, so work done well translates into visibility in all of them at once. If you want to understand how one of them reasons internally, we explain it in how Claude works.

How to do SEO for AI: the levers that work

Here there is data, not opinion. The study that defined Generative Engine Optimization, led by researchers at Princeton, measured which techniques increase your presence in AI answers. The improvement, of up to 40% more visibility, came from four elements:

• Adding quotes from sources and experts.
• Including statistics and concrete data.
• Citing sources that are reliable and linking to them.
• Writing with clarity and fluency.

And, above all, what did NOT work: keyword stuffing and an artificially «authoritative» tone did not improve anything. Translated into an actionable strategy:

• Answer first. Place a direct, self-contained answer at the start of each page.
• Structure for machines. Hierarchical headings, lists, tables and structured data (schema).
• Provide evidence. Verifiable data, quotes and sources for every important statement.
• Keep content fresh. AI prioritises up-to-date sources: reviewing and improving your pages keeps them a valid reference.
• Build a brand entity. Real authorship, Person and Organization schema, consistent mentions. We detail it in how to get AI to cite your company.

SEO for AI does not bury classic SEO: it crowns it. If your content does not deserve to be cited by a human expert, an AI model will not cite it either.

Albert Puig Navàs, Co-founder · CPO at cronuts.digital

Using AI to do SEO (the other sense)

The second meaning of «SEO for AI» is practical: using artificial intelligence as a tool to work better. It helps with keyword research, drafting, topic clustering, detecting technical errors and analysing data at scale. With one non-negotiable condition: human review. AI speeds things up, but the strategy, the judgement and the verification of the data are still yours. Google does not penalise content created with the help of AI as long as it adds real value; it does penalise empty content published in bulk. On how to integrate AI as infrastructure and not as a gadget, we wrote about AI in marketing agencies.

Do you need an SEO for AI agency?

You can start on your own: the fundamentals (useful content, structure, schema, authority) are within your reach. Turning to an SEO for AI agency makes sense when search is a critical channel for your business and you need speed, judgement and sustained execution. A good agency does not promise you «to show up on ChatGPT» as if by magic: it audits your current visibility on Google and in AI search engines, fixes the technical foundation, builds your brand’s authority as an entity and measures real results, knowing that ranking is a matter of months, not days. If that is what you are looking for, it is exactly what we do in our SEO and GEO service, and if you want criteria to compare providers, we gather them in how to choose a B2B SEO agency (in Spanish). And if your company is in Barcelona, we also work as an SEO consultancy in Barcelona (in Spanish).

Common mistakes in SEO for AI

• Treating GEO as something separate from SEO. Without a technical foundation and indexing, there is no visibility in AI.
• Keyword stuffing. It does not work on Google and even less in AI models.
• Publishing unreviewed AI content. Without data, sources or judgement, they will not cite you.
• Relying on an llms.txt file as a shortcut. Google has confirmed that it does not use it for ranking.
• Forgetting the brand entity. If AI does not know who you are, it does not recommend you.
• Not measuring. Without tracking mentions and rankings, you are optimising blind.

How we work on it at Cronuts

At Cronuts we integrate SEO and GEO into a single strategy: a solid technical foundation, content with authority and measurement of your visibility both on Google and in AI search engines. We start with a website ready for all of this (we explain it in website with AI) and continue with ongoing search work. And since visibility is only worth something if it turns into customers, we combine it with conversion optimisation (in Spanish).

If you prefer to delegate it, see how our SEO and GEO consultancy works with B2B companies: audit, technical foundation, content with authority and measurement.

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