SEO optimizes pages to appear in the organic results of search engines like Google. The goal is rankings, clicks and traffic. GEO optimizes your brand's presence to appear in the answers of generative AIs. The goal is to be cited as a trusted source when the AI answers a question.
In SEO, you compete for positions on a list of results. In GEO, you compete for mentions inside a synthesized answer. The metrics change: instead of "average position" and "CTR", you measure "citation frequency" and "mention sentiment".
In practice, the two disciplines share many of the same actions. Quality content, schema markup, domain authority and backlinks benefit both SEO and GEO. The difference lies in the content strategy: for GEO, you need to create content that answers questions directly and quotably, with concrete data and verifiable sources. Netlinks works on SEO and GEO in an integrated way within the NETLINKS Method, because in practice the AIs pull data from the same channels Google uses to rank.