Opinion

GEO Is Not About SEO Points. It's About Proving You're Real.

Why #1 In The Search Rankings Is Not Enough Anymore

SEO has evolved over the years, and with AI now answering questions for people in various search engines, business owners are now wondering more than ever on what actually makes them more visible. It's not about adding more keywords or being ranked higher. It's about whether an AI model can verify you're real and whether the content you provide is verifiable and helpful. The ones that get cited are the ones that are.

According to an analysis performed by Semrush in September 2025 for over 69M+ Google AI Mode search sessions, 93% of the links provided in the results within the session are not clicked by the end of it. Only 6% to 8% of the links provided during an average AI Mode session are.

Because few searches end up in a click, business owners who want to stay visible and relevant are now left wondering what the best strategy is. The first instinct that comes to mind is to immediately assume that by adding more competitive keywords, they can rank higher in search engines such as Bing, Google, and Yahoo, which has been the norm in the last two decades for search engine optimization (SEO).

But the question they should really be asking themselves is: how helpful can my content actually be to the person, or to the AI, processing it?

Why 27 Thin Content Pages Almost Cost My Presence

I was in a similar situation recently while I was working on the 27 pages that I built for my site. To ensure that my readers understand what I am referring to, especially those who are not familiar with the technical terms, I implemented a concept that generated dynamic pages using a template. Unfortunately, most of the same template text and context was reused across all 27 pages for my services and the cities I service them to. This caused the search engines to flag it for thin content (where there is very little content and/or context to work with) and duplicate content, which is a broader definition for content that is too similar or exactly the same as the other page(s).

Last week, I went ahead and took down the code that was responsible for generating the dynamic content from a file I wrote the content into, realizing that it was never going to be scalable long-term. I ultimately decided to use the CMS (content management system) editor within my software, J.A.L.E. (Job Automation & Logistics Engine), which I previously mentioned in an article discussing whether we are giving up our autonomy to an agentic AI.

Using my experience with SEO, something I've learned and applied while working on the original version of my site, a portfolio showcasing my education, experience, and projects, I manually rebuilt the 27 pages, utilizing the research I did online regarding GEO (generative engine optimization) and AIO (AI Optimization).

GEO allowed me to optimize the content so that AI search engines, such as Google's AI Overview, as well as Bing's Generative Search, can display the results of my site whenever someone, myself included, researches my background, as well as the services I offer, in addition to the articles I've been pushing out from my studio's blog since June 2026.

How can this be applied for businesses looking to stay ahead in the search results to attract more customers and leads?

Three Questions Businesses Must Ask Themselves And Answer

A business looking to take this approach must ask themselves these three very important questions:

1. How verifiable is my business?
2. Who else, besides myself, can vouch for my work and speak greatly about it?
3. How helpful is the information on my site and what lasting impression would it leave on my customers, regardless of whether they search it themselves or an AI recommends it to them?

SEOLocal heavily emphasizes this in an article they wrote in July 2026. Currently, only 1 to 3 businesses get named in a normal AI response, and 88% of Google AI Overviews cite three or more sources to support their claims depending on the user's input. SEOLocal also states that in order to get recommended by an AI search engine, such as ChatGPT or Google's own AI Overview, there are four criteria that can help your business be listed on top:

1. Content that is formatted to answer questions for visitors: this includes asking how much the service costs, what makes the business different from others, etc. Customers love to hear these questions answered as it plays heavily into their decision to utilize your business' services.
2. Schema markup: this is the more technical part of SEO that few understand, but I will break it down for people who don't understand or have an idea of what it is. Basically, a schema markup is like a graph containing information, which consists of your business credentials, the services you offer, the area(s) you serve, etc. Google and other search engines utilize this information to tailor users' preferences, depending on what they are looking for.
3. Consistency in branding: Your presence is not just limited to your website. Search engines always cross reference the information found online, and to ensure the best results and a higher likelihood of your business being in the top results, consistency is key. That means that even the smallest deviation in your Google Business Profile or social media profiles will cause the search engine to not trust the different signals that they're giving out, even though they are part of the same brand.
4. An established digital footprint: While social media helps your business get promoted in addition to the content your website provides, it's not enough. Business reviews, especially positive ones, along with mentions by customers and members of your industry, play a crucial role in the long-term outcome of your business. But search engines don't just analyze the words in the reviews themselves; they also consider context, which is especially crucial if you want to top off the other dozens of competitors in your area that run the same type of business you do. While the number varies, it gives you a rough idea of the work that has to be done to retain and improve your reputation amongst your customer base and the wider industry.

For those who don't understand, let me put it in plain English: make sure your content is easy to understand and answers your customer's questions, be straight on the areas you serve and what services you offer, make sure your website and social media are saying the same thing, and most importantly, make sure people comment on and vouch for your work, not just your marketing strategy.

AI Does Not Vouch for You or Your Work.

This leads to the crux of the matter: AI is not destroying your business. Instead, it's a result of the improvements it has undergone over the past few years, evolving into a mechanism that verifies both the text and context of the content you provide.

An article written by Entrepreneur on July 31, 2026, based on research across 400 business owners in five industries, reveals that businesses where both the owner and their brand were visible to AI saw a 2.5% year-over-year traffic increase. The same research also found that 46% of business owners are not visible to AI, and business owners who had neither their brand nor themselves visible saw a 28% drop in traffic. In other words, if any of the 400 business owners belonging to the 46% category entered a prompt on ChatGPT asking for a recommendation on the best businesses in the area, they would get a result that does not include their business.

There was nothing to lose. Except the lack of presence.

Normally, it would be really tempting to call this entire situation unfair. But blaming a machine or an algorithm won't help you build what you never built in the first place: presence. If there was no founder or context to begin with, especially on your website, then you never had anything to lose.

Why I Rebuilt My Presence

This is why, at the very beginning, I had to decide whether to let my site fade away or do something about it to make my presence known, even if it meant starting from scratch. That is why when I upgraded my site in October 2024, I knew I had to make my own face visible, while also providing context on who I was, where I went to school, what projects I did on the side, etc.

With the rise of my studio, Ruben Arevalo AI & Software Studio, I had to significantly change my content to ensure that it aligned with the latest SEO practices, as well as implement GEO and AIO concepts, concepts I'd never heard of until this year. That was also the case when I decided to reconstruct the 27 pages through my software, J.A.L.E.'s content management system editor instead of applying the dynamic page concept that reused a template. There is still work to do, but I am always ready to evolve the pages where needed.

Conclusion

In spite of everything I covered, the truth is that I am not doing this to chase SEO points. It is about making sure if that if someone, whether it'd be a person, a business, a recruiter, anyone, went looking, they would come across a real human being who works hard every day promoting his presence.

For those of you reading this, stop keyword stuffing, and start being real.

Fakeness does not win you awards. It turns you into a shadow. Period.