GEO or SEO: where do you start if you can only do one thing?
Short answer
Start with the channel where your customers already almost find you. If you are in a market where people search for and compare concrete things, SEO makes money fastest. If you are in a market where people ask for advice first (which company, which approach, what should I look out for), that conversation has already moved to the assistants, and you lose ground there without seeing it.
Why the question is so often asked the wrong way
“GEO or SEO” sounds like a choice between two techniques. It is not. It is a choice about where your attention goes in the coming quarter, and that depends entirely on how your customers search. An online shop for bicycle parts and an advisory firm for business succession both have a website and almost nothing else in common.
When SEO comes first
If your offer is concrete and people know what they are looking for, the classic search route stays dominant. Someone who types “shimano 105 brake pads” wants a page with that product, not composed advice. If you get a lot of that kind of demand, every euro is better spent on SEO, and your AI visibility is something for later.
When GEO comes first
If you sell on advice, trust or expertise, something has changed. The question “which company can help me with this” is asked more and more often to an assistant, and it names three to five businesses. If you are not among them, you do not lose a position but the whole conversation. You never see that loss: there is no drop in your statistics, because there was never a visit.
How you measure it instead of guessing
You do not have to decide this on gut feeling. Put the ten questions your best customers asked last year to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and see whether your name comes up. Do that a few weeks in a row, with the same questions, and you have an answer that is harder than any advice. If nothing changes and you are already mentioned, you have no problem here. If you are mentioned nowhere while your market does ask such questions, you know where the coming quarter has to go.
Frequently asked questions
Can I not just do both?
If you have the capacity: do it. This page is about the situation where you have to choose.
How many of my customers already search through AI?
That varies so much per market that any general percentage is misleading. Measure it for your own buying questions.
Does my existing content also work for AI?
Partly. What is often missing is a direct answer at the top and verifiable facts; the topics themselves are usually fine.
How quickly do I see results from GEO?
Count on several measurement weeks. One deviating measurement is noise, not change.
Where does your business stand?
The free scan shows you: within a few minutes you see which answers you already appear in, and who shows up where you are missing.