Mint Position

Can SEO and GEO Strategies Work Together for Better Results? How to Win at SEO 2.0 

Dan Marriott

Question: How do I integrate GEO with SEO?

If you’re currently asking yourself this, you’re already operating in what we call SEO 2.0, where being visible means being both ranked and cited.

You’ll know that your page can sit comfortably on Google’s first page and still be invisible where it matters most – inside AI-generated answers. 

Search algorithms still rank pages, but large language models (LLMs) select sources.

This gap is probably creating new pressures if you’re heading a growth-focused team, including:

The last point is key: if GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) isn’t in your stack yet, someone else’s brand is filling that gap.

In this guide, we define SEO 2.0 and show how GEO fits into it. We’ll look at how this shift is changing how we create content, and lift the lid on how to adapt your strategy so that you appear in both rankings and AI search results.

We’ll cover

Want to see how SEO 2.0 can get you more customers? Book a no-cost consultation with the Mint Position team, and we’ll explain how our multi-engine optimization will get you noticed across both traditional and AI search.

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GEO vs SEO: Why this debate misses the point

Spend five minutes on LinkedIn or any digital marketing forum, and you’ll find marketers talking about how GEO is uprooting SEO; that we need to rip up the content playbook and start again. 

Yet, this is a misreading of how search is actually evolving.

Mint Position realized early on that this “GEO vs SEO” debate was misguided. We found that without solid SEO foundations, you could optimize for AI all you like, but if there’s nothing original and substantial behind it, then it will simply get washed away in the flood of meaningless AI content.

“AI tools don’t rank pages – they synthesize answers from sources they trust”, says Justin Calderón, Mint Position’s founder. “To be cited, your content has to be genuinely authoritative, not just optimized.”

how do i integrate geo with seo

Expert research (as well as our own real-world results) supports our approach. 

Recent studies show that generative engines overwhelmingly rely on high-ranking, authoritative pages as their primary source material – or top SEO-ranked pages.

An Ahrefs analysis of 1.9 million pages found that 76% of AI Overview (AIO) citations come from pages already ranking in the top 10 of search engine results pages (SERPs). The chart below shows that URLs cited in the top three AIO positions tend to rank highly in organic search, with median positions generally falling within the top five results. 

The Correlation Between Top AIO-Cited URLs and SERP ranking

Source: Ahrefs

In short, traditional SEO isn’t going anywhere: what’s changed is how that visibility is distributed. The rise of generative AI has extended SEO, rather than replacing it. 

This new framework is what we’re now calling SEO 2.0.

Can SEO and GEO strategies work together for better results? Welcome to SEO 2.0

SEO 2.0 is the shift from optimizing for a single channel to optimizing for an entire search ecosystem, resulting in a new marketing strategy we call Multi-Engine Optimization. 

Traditional search engine optimization was laser-focused on keyword ranking, which meant improving SERP visibility through:

The goal was clear: appear as high as possible on Google Search and drive more organic traffic.

This still matters, but it’s no longer the full picture.

Today, we must split that visibility between search engines and the AI-powered systems that your customers are using more and more, like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT.

SEO 2.0 sits at the intersection of both.

The SEO foundations are there, including high-quality content, strong E-E-A-T signals, clear content structure, and meeting user intent, but we must now build on them so that AI systems trust it and reuse it. 

In practice, this means moving from a model based purely on search rankings to one focused on brand visibility across the entire search landscape – from search engines to AI assistants, forums, and beyond.

“Integrating SEO and GEO requires designing content for two goals: discoverability and concise, verifiable answers,” says Ritwick Dey, CTO and co-founder of Panto AI Inc, an AI code review tool. 

The highest-performing brands don’t choose between SEO and GEO, but instead put them into the same framework, which is what SEO 2.0 is all about. 

SEO 2.0: How do I integrate GEO with SEO? (A step-by-step framework) 

SEO 2.0 is achievable for any brand, but to do it well, you’ll need to follow a proven path to get the best results.

Here are the best practices for integrating GEO with SEO strategies that have helped Mint Position earn #1 citations for our customers.

1. Start with a GEO audit and map intent across search and prompts

You can’t optimize what you can’t see. Before you change your strategy, you need to see the version of your brand that AI is already telling your customers.

A GEO audit is the best way to start gathering your evidence. Straightforward and effective, this check shows you how you’re showing up across LLM platforms like ChatGPT, including:

Once you have this foundation in place, you can spot those high-impact content gaps that many teams miss. This will form the basis for a roadmap for your new GEO content strategy – where you start to become a source that LLMs start to trust and quote.

Quick action your business can take

Run 10–15 high-value prompts in ChatGPT for your core topics, note which sources are cited, and identify one competitor that appears repeatedly – then create a page designed to replace their top-cited page.

2. Create content that’s trusted enough to be cited

This is where you must show that your content is more than just hitting keywords and trying to capture clicks, but offering something unique and reliable enough for AI models to cite. 

This means moving toward content that functions as a primary source. If your page could be replaced by 10 others with the same information, AI algorithms are unlikely to use it.

“If your content is bloated, generic, or overly keyword-stuffed, it might rank – but it won’t get cited,” says Firdaus Syazwani, founder of Dollar Bureau, a personal finance platform. “Generative engines reward clarity, expertise, and extractable insights.”

So, what does this look like in practice?

To use Firdaus’s three pillars:

  1. Clarity. AI models don’t read like humans; they scan for meaning. Clear, direct writing reduces ambiguity and makes content easier to interpret and reuse. Defined terms, logical structure, and concise answers increase the likelihood that your content is understood, trusted, and cited.
  2. Expertise. Experts help you “surface content that is genuinely new to the internet”, to quote our founder Justin in his recent article on Journalistic SEO. AI algorithms prioritize sources that contain this.
  3. Extractable insights. AI engines need these unique insights to be structured data so that they’re easy to parse, understand, and extract citable passages from. Content structure, schema markup, and crawlability are key here (we’ll cover this shortly). 

The shift may seem like you’re writing just for AI, but it also helps you raise the standard of the content that your human readers will see. If it’s more trustworthy and easier to engage with, then people are much more likely to buy from you.

Quick action your business can take

Take one existing page and upgrade it into a “citation-ready” asset by following these steps:

  • Add a clear two-to-three-sentence answer at the top
  • Include one original insight or data point
  • Interview two or three experts to opine on the subject
  • Structure it with clean headings for easy extraction.

3. Make your content machine-readable

AI systems also pick up on content that is technically well-structured. They’re designed to overlook messy and sluggish webpages that lead to a poor user experience. 

This means aiming for:

When your content is easy to parse and less ambiguous, it becomes easier to trust, extract, and cite across both search engines and AI-driven platforms.

Quick action your business can take

Add an FAQ section or article schema to one key page this week and ensure your headings clearly reflect the questions you’re answering.

4. Build brand visibility across the sources AI actually uses

You can give your expertly crafted content a huge boost with a brand visibility strategy that gets you into those valuable sources that AI systems draw from. 

These include authoritative mentions and reviews by trusted publications and industry platforms, which build credible third-party signals. The more you get cited by these sources, the more your brand is reinforced as a reliable reference point.

“AI engines do not take a brand at face value,” says Cassie Wilson Clark, fractional content strategist and host of the Found in AI Podcast. “Most of what influences AI search engines happens off-site. They look to third-party sources to double-check that a brand is who they say they are.”

Cassie’s point is particularly relevant because it underlines how valuable digital PR is, whether that’s brand or link exchanges, or traditional mentions in media. 

This dynamic becomes clear when you look at how citations actually distribute in practice.

Mint Position became a top-cited domain on ChatGPT for fintech SEO-related prompts, thanks partly to a link exchange campaign we carried out with other valuable sources.

The image below shows that we are the most-cited domain in this category, which strengthens our likelihood of being repeatedly surfaced across AI-generated answers.

Mint Position is the Most Cited Domain on LLMs in Fintech Content Marketing

This creates a compounding visibility effect when twinned with a strong presence across publications, directories, expert roundups, and trusted platforms. Once your brand sits within this trusted layer, the chances of AI systems citing you start to rise.

Quick action your business can take

Reach out to a highly cited domain to get featured on one list or publication in your niche this month, and build from there.

5. Measure visibility across search and AI and close the gaps

Like a navigation system, SEO 2.0 requires ongoing tracking, testing, and refinement to perform at its best.

Once you put it into place, you’ll need to track performance across your most valuable prompts again, which means repeating the first step of the process. You can then compare your current metrics to where you left off, and if you’re catching up with competitors. 

Performance shifts quickly. AI models evolve, sources change, and results can fluctuate daily, particularly across platforms like ChatGPT, so you should ideally produce regular reports. 

Mint Position, for example, performs monthly GEO monitoring so that we build a live feedback loop that informs our next move.

Quick action your business can take

Track 25–50 high-value prompts, review citations monthly, and adjust your content and distribution to strengthen or defend your position.

Find new customers in both rankings and AI platforms with Mint Position 

AI-driven search is the new gatekeeper that decides which brands get seen by the people that matter. 

Those that get waved through all have one thing in common: they’re providing clearer, more useful answers that both humans and bots can trust, and they’re built on a solid SEO foundation. 

Mint Position is a content marketing agency for SEO and GEO with proven results in helping businesses through the gate. Our multi-engine optimization marries high-impact marketing strategy with journalistic content creation so that your brand performs across rankings and shows up in AI answers.

The key? Constructing trust signals across both your site and the sources AI checks before it cites anything. 

When that’s in place, visibility starts to compound. We’ve helped brands move from being one of many results to becoming the answer itself.

In SEO 2.0, you don’t just chase clicks – you build trust at scale, and let the visibility follow.

Ready to see how SEO 2.0 can help your brand grow? Mint Position’s GEO Audit is the first step toward getting you noticed across both organic and AI search results. 

FAQs

Can GEO replace traditional SEO?

No. We understand why people are concerned that their hard work at SEO is about to become undone, but GEO is simply an extra layer on top of traditional SEO, not a replacement. 

You’ll still need your excellent indexed content, backlinks (with brand mentions naturally tied into them), and technical signals, just with a GEO pass that gets you into AI-generated results.

Do I need both SEO and GEO for my website?

Yes. We have a name for this: SEO 2.0, which is a multi-engine optimization approach. SEO gets you ranked, while GEO makes you visible to AI discovery models like ChatGPT.

Do them both well, and you increase the chances of standing out ahead of your rivals. 

Is Generative Engine Optimization a part of SEO now?

Increasingly, yes. GEO is a new layer of SEO that you’ll need to integrate into your current strategy.

What are good alternatives to traditional SEO for generative AI?

Alternatives is perhaps the wrong way of thinking about this: instead, think extensions. GEO encompasses all of these, including optimizing for conversational content, earning citations, and building brand mentions. 

Should I focus on SEO or GEO for my website?

You shouldn’t choose, but combine them into one strategy so that you get noticed across multiple search channels.

A combined approach delivers stronger, more resilient visibility.

Who first used Generative Engine Optimization terms?

The term “GEO”  emerged recently alongside the rise of AI search and doesn’t have a single confirmed origin. It’s been popularized by SEO and AI marketing communities because it has proven its worth in helping brands get into LLM answers.

What are the best practices for integrating GEO with SEO strategies?

Follow the six steps we outlined above, but remember: to do it well, you’ll need to make sure you have solid SEO foundations.

For help with both of these areas, we recommend you talk with a trusted SEO 2.0 agency like Mint Position.

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