When your customers turn to AI to answer their questions, how do you ensure your solution is the answer they receive? A study by the Pew Research Center showed that seeing an AI summary at the top of your search results could cut click-through-rates by nearly half. LLMs (large language models) are reshaping how people discover new products and services. This means that your SEO strategy needs to shift to a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) strategy. The good news is this has created a new opportunity to utilize media – earned and owned – to establish yourself and your business as a trusted industry authority.
Trust, Visibility and Credibility
LLMs don’t “crawl” your website like search engines do. Instead, they create responses based on licensed sources, training data, APIs, and content that is publicly available.
Imagine you ask your closest 50 friends if the sky is blue. Now imagine 47 of those 50 friends answered that yes, the sky is indeed blue. You would see that as a strong enough pattern that the three friends that said the sky is pink can be disregarded. Putting it very simply, that’s how LLMs work. They gather all pertinent information and synthesize based on pattern recognition.
Linguistic Authority – LLMs measure linguistic authority over structural, meaning that backlinks aren’t as important as covering a topic fully and naturally including relevant content
Depth is key – Gone are the days of briefly outlining the “Top 5 Tips”. Diving deeper into relevant context will set you up for greater GEO success by creating contextual links and establishing you as an authority.
Writing for humans – LLMs are trained to mimic human judgement. That means that creating content that works for humans also works for AI.
How does Public Relations fit into GEO?
The more content around a topic that establishes your business as a solution to a problem the more opportunities for contextual depth, engagement, and pattern creation.
Strategic Media Relations & Placements – To create a successful GEO plan bring your communications team to the table right away. Take a moment right now and look at your business plan for the year. What are the key milestones you expect? Do you have product releases coming up? Will you be making a large donation to a local non-profit? Make sure you have a media plan around each of these.
Prioritize Expert Commentary – LLMs like experts, so set yourself up as one. Beyond the press release, set up leaders in your organization for interviews. Traditional news is a great, but also explore leading influencers in your industry.
Owned media – Don’t underestimate leveraging what you own. Whether it’s your website, LinkedIn or Reddit, deeply discuss topics related to your industry often. Be sure to weave in relevant content to your business and clearly state who the author is.
Prepare for the Crisis
Now, you’ve spent a great deal of time creating owned media and placing earned media, all establishing you and your business as a trusted source that AI will pull from. Don’t waste that because of a reputational crisis. Protect the trust signal that AI relies on with a comprehensive crisis communications plan.
The landscape is constantly evolving
As AI continues to evolve, the team at Ohlmann Group is here to help craft, implement, and measure your new GEO strategy. Let’s talk!
