GEO and SEO share the same fundamentals: reachable, clear, well-structured content. What changes is the goal. Ranking first no longer guarantees the click when an AI answer sits above your result, so GEO targets being cited in that answer, not just listed below it.
The tactics that work are not exotic: answer-first structure, citable facts, clear entity signals, and consistent presence on the sources engines trust. The Princeton-led study that coined the term (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024) found GEO methods can boost visibility in generative-engine responses by up to 40%, with sources, quotations, and statistics among the most effective. There is no secret checklist and no required markup. Anyone selling a separate six-figure GEO budget is usually reselling solid SEO with a new acronym.