Warning: contains adult references
Thought leadership in SEO is strictly limited to populism – and talking about everything from a brand perspective has always been key. SEO has never been popular in Marketing – and at least 66% of marketers expect that SEO is dead…. unfortunately neither are true though. By all means, if you need SEO to be dead, then you should go back and start your search journey over – similarly if you came looking to find an opinion that LLMs “reward” branding activity.
Engineers building a system that will one day be funded by advertising revenue are not going to do either.
SEO vs. GEO: They’re the Same—It’s Still PageRank (But Now LLMs Fan It Out Wider)
The conversation about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) versus GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is often muddied by myths—things like EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), complex content structures, and endless talk about schema.
Strip all of that away, and one truth remains: the real driver is—and always has been—PageRank, now amplified by how large language models (LLMs) spread queries across the web.
What Hasn’t Changed: Ranking Is Everything
At its core, both SEO and GEO exist to answer a simple question: will your link, your brand, your site be surfaced for a given user query? In both classic SEO and the world of AI-driven generative search, the foundational mechanism for this is ranking.
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Traditional SEO relied heavily on PageRank, Google’s algorithm that prioritized pages based on the number and quality of links pointing to them.
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GEO, or optimization for LLM-powered engines and answer generators, is still about getting included in the sources these models leverage for their output.
Whether it’s a classic blue link at the top of Google Search, or a citation in a generative AI summary, both hinge on a version of PageRank: the more references and inbound links your page has (especially from other ranked pages), the more likely it is to get surfaced—regardless of nuanced judgments about “quality” or content formatting.
What’s New: LLM Query Fan Out
The biggest meaningful shift introduced by LLMs and generative AI isn’t a replacement of the fundamental ranking principle, but a broadening of which results can get pulled in.
What is Query Fan Out?
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Classic SEO: Search results for a query were a tight list—10 blue links, maybe a snippet or two, all determined by ranking and keyword match.
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LLM/AI Search: One question might lead to the model fanning out across multiple related queries, pulling sources and references from a deeper or broader pool of web results.
In practice:
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LLMs take a query, break it down into sub-queries, and aggregate information across top-ranked sources for each, often reaching further than the original Google SERP would have.
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This increases the exposure potential for mid-ranked pages that might not have made top-10 in classic search, but have strong enough link signals to be included in the model’s expanded sourcing.
Why SEO and GEO Remain One and the Same
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Both are based on ranking: Visibility comes from being high in whatever list the engine (search or LLM) considers.
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Both rely on inbound links (PageRank): The fundamental currency of web authority remains backlinks—no need for subjective “quality,” elaborate EEAT, or structured data if enough strong sites are pointing to you.
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GEO’s only major twist is the scale of sourcing: LLM search doesn’t just read the top blue links, but also pulls from a wider spectrum, using ranking signals to determine who gets cited or included in generative answers.
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No formatting or subjective evaluation is replacing PageRank: Schema, heading structure, or even well-organized paragraphs don’t matter as much as the sheer weight of link-based authority.
The Bottom Line
Forget the hype about revolutionary new optimization fields. Whether you’re chasing top organic positions (SEO) or aiming to be cited by generative AI (GEO), it’s all about PageRank—the universal language of the web. The only real update is that LLM-based search “fans out” more broadly, pulling in more pages based on familiar ranking signals rather than introducing a new system of value.
If you want visibility in the era of AI, the baseline strategy is unchanged: build links, earn authority, and your presence will follow—no matter what acronym the industry invents next.
