Branding in an AI World: What GEO Is, and Why AI-Written Content Won't Get You There
Marketing has never been an easy profession, even if it looks like anyone can do a bit of it. Real marketing connects every edge of the organization: the product, the market, customer behaviour, content, sales and distribution. And in the end it touches the finances too, on both the cost side and the revenue side.
Until recently there was a clear separation between the app or SaaS product and the company website. The site was relatively static: product pages, some information, a blog. Most of the content was written to promote the keywords of the product or service. The goal of ranking on Google was simple: build brand presence in the search results, on the assumption that visitors arriving from Google convert better than visitors from other sources.
Now we are moving to something else. The goal is no longer just to appear first on a results page, but to be inside the answer the AI systems generate.
This is called GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimization.
The problem: everyone wants to be there
The payoff is obvious. Visibility becomes preference, and preference becomes revenue. So how do you actually win?
1. Change how you write on the site
Stop thinking about SEO alone, and start thinking about SEO with GEO built into it.
2. Distribute content through channels that talk about the brand
We used to publish on external sites for links and a bit of exposure. Today it is a necessary part of the process. LinkedIn, professional blogs, interviews, PR, industry sites, relevant communities.
On your own site you are making claims about yourself and about the quality of your service. Elsewhere, someone else is making those claims about you, and that carries far more weight in GEO.
I can speak to this from building the Traiy site. I put in all the right infrastructure: structured data, a clean content architecture, versions in two languages. But what actually moved the needle was content published outside the site that referenced it and pointed to it. On-site optimization is necessary. It is not sufficient.
3. Relevance and constant updating
This is the most important one, and it is where GEO differs most from classic SEO. On Google, a good page can hold its position for years. A generative engine works differently: it pulls current information in real time, and what it sees now outweighs what it found a year ago. A site that stops moving stops being a source.
Why AI-written content won't do GEO for you
If your plan is to produce dozens of articles using AI tools, you will most likely not show up. The reason is simple: you are handing the engine exactly what it already has. The obvious, the familiar, the material already sitting inside its knowledge base.
There was a time when promoting a family lawyer meant writing dozens of articles around that phrase with long-tail variations. That is no longer enough. You need a new claim, real experience, your own data, a point of view that does not already exist in the base. You need to connect points nobody has connected and say something with weight behind it.
We used to try to make the engine understand that our page was relevant. Now we have to make it understand who we are.
GEO is therefore not another technical layer of SEO. It touches the core of branding. Branding has always been about what people think of you. Now there is a second question: what the machines think of you.
In practice
Make sure today that your marketing lead or SEO lead has started GEO work, and that a share of the site's resources is allocated to it. Whoever starts now, while the field is still forming, buys the advantage cheaply. You already know this from SEO: the ones who locked in the top position held the advantage for years, and those were years of very high margins.