In this week’s episode of Local Search Tuesdays, I dive into the heated debate around what we should call the process of optimizing for AI and LLM-driven search results. Is it still just SEO—or is it time for something new like GEO or AIO?
I'll explain why renaming SEO might confuse clients and the general public, and why sticking with familiar terms might be the smartest move—at least for now.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m talking about one of the hottest areas of debate in digital marketing right now: What do we call optimizing for LLMs?
Digital marketing is in a state of ridiculous flux right now - LLMs and AI systems are completely changing the way people search for solutions online, and the world of digital marketing is overloaded with “experts” claiming to know everything about optimizing for the new search systems.
One of the biggest debates is what the new methodology should be called. Some swear that it’s still “just SEO”. Some people are calling it GEO - Generative Engine Optimization. Others are calling it AIO - AI Optimization, which gets even more confusing, since Google has AI Overviews, which people also call AIO.
When everyone starts throwing new acronyms around, it only makes things more confusing for the general public. You have to remember, most people out there don’t even know what SEO is or what it stands for, they just know they need to do things to their website so it shows up better in Google.
When we, as an industry, can’t even agree on what to call it, we’re doing ourselves and our clients a disservice. Instead, we should be banding together and holding off on trying to rename something that’s constantly changing.
Even if we could all agree on what to call it, if we call it anything other than SEO, most business owners will have no idea what we’re talking about. It will take the general public years to catch on to the new acronym - and that’s only if we can agree on one. If we keep calling it different things, potential clients will not have any idea what it’s called and it’s going to make things harder for everyone.
If you’re watching and you’re not sure about whether or not it’s still “just SEO”, that’s ok. This stuff is changing so fast that it’s hard to keep track. New tools keep popping up claiming to have the secret sauce, a new expert emerges every three and a half minutes on Linkedin, and all you hear is that basically by the end of next week, no one’s going to get any website traffic anymore.
Regardless of what we call it, it’s still digital marketing. SEO today looks a lot different than SEO 15 years ago. Optimizing for visibility in the AI systems is different, but not THAT different. We still have to create relevant content that answers the questions customers ask. We still need validation from third party sources.
The AI systems are still evolving. The things we would do today to gain more visibility will likely be a lot different than the things we’ll be doing in a few years. So don’t get freaked out by all the new acronyms. We’ll get it figured out, and we’ll all look back on this and laugh someday.
That’s all the time we have left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here: We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
