SEO & GEO
VISIBILITY IN THE AGE OF AI
traffic is down but visitor quality is up – we explain why and how you can adapt
AI has created a perfect storm:
more content competing for less traffic;
more risk compounded by less trust
With more content competing for less traffic — and less trust — SEO is no longer enough to ensure visibility
Before AI, technical SEO — keywords, backlinks
and structured content — got you crawled and seen
Now with AI, SEO will only get you crawled — being seen takes qualitative criteria, not technical ones.
to get seen, content must demonstrate
trustworthiness and value
SEO is essential for being crawled, but content won’t be seen unless it demonstrates trustworthiness and unique value. Google has two concepts for these: E-E-A-T (trustworthiness) and Information Gain (unique value) — now the criteria LLMs follow too.
EEAT: ONLY TRUSTWORTHY CONTENT WILL BE INDEXED
AI has led to a crisis of verifiability. “EEAT” — Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust —
is Google’s formula for trustworthiness that seeks to combat the threat of unverified content.
In practical terms it means content that is independently verifiable. For example :
Experiences : case studies with identifiable locations and personnel
Expertise : PDF certifications and performance reports
Authority : links to 3rd party sites that corroborate partnerships
Trust : independent rating like TrustPilot and client testimonials
INFO-GAIN: ONLY UNIQUE CONTENT WILL BE PRIORITISED
Trustworthy content doesn’t mean interesting content. AI has created a glut of generic content. INFO-GAIN is Google’s patented formula for combatting it. It evaluates the relative interest value of content : the extent to which it complements or challenges the consensus with new data, technologies or perspectives. For example:
Products: a unique patented technology, manufacturing process or application
Thought leadership : a unique perspective on future developments and challenges
Sales: a unique value proposition or service package
Together, EEAT and Info-Gain form what some
call GEO : Generative Engine Optimisation
Despite popular opinion, GEO isn’t technical — bots still crawl data the same way. SEO already covered that.
What’s new is that the criteria for selection have become qualitative.
GEO determines whether AI simply
recycles your content as an
anonymous source…
….or actually cites your brand
and links to it
According to recognised sources,
visits from AI-generated answers
convert 4.4 more than visits from
traditional search engines.
TELL ME MORE!
We have two articles that explain EEAT and INFO-GAIN in depth.
They are on our Industrial Magazine but are relevant to manufacturers in all sectors.