Getting found online has always been important. But the landscape has shifted in a meaningful way over the last few years. It is no longer enough to optimize your website for Google alone. AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity are now a significant part of how people find businesses, get recommendations, and make decisions. Optimizing for both traditional search engines and these AI-generated answers is what separates the businesses that show up consistently from the ones that do not.
The good news is that the fundamentals of good SEO and good GEO overlap significantly. Here are ten things every business website should have in place.
Article last updated May 2026
- A clear and logical page structure
Search engines and AI engines both rely on your page structure to understand what your content is about and how it is organized. Every page should have one H1 heading that clearly states the topic of that page. Supporting sections should use H2 and H3 headings in a logical hierarchy. Using heading styles interchangeably for design purposes rather than structure is one of the most common mistakes we see and it creates real confusion for the crawlers trying to make sense of your content. - Optimized title tags and meta descriptions on every page
Your title tag is what appears as the clickable headline in search results. Your meta description is the short summary beneath it. Both should be written intentionally with your target audience and relevant keywords in mind. They should accurately describe the page content and give a prospective visitor a clear reason to click. Leaving these blank or auto-generated is a missed opportunity on every single page of your site. - Fast load times and strong Core Web Vitals scores
Site speed is a direct Google ranking factor and it affects how AI engines evaluate your site quality as well. Pages that load slowly lose visitors before they ever engage with your content, which signals to search engines that your site is not delivering a good experience. Core Web Vitals, Google’s specific performance metrics, measure load speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Every business website should be monitored against these standards on a regular basis, not just at launch. - Mobile optimization
Even if the majority of your traffic comes from desktop users, Google evaluates your site using mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings. A site that looks polished on desktop but breaks down on mobile is being penalized in ways that are not always obvious. Font sizes, button spacing, navigation, and page layout all need to be reviewed and tested on mobile regularly. - Strategic keyword and topic alignment
Every page on your website should be built around a clear topic that your target audience is actively searching for. This does not mean stuffing keywords into your copy unnaturally. It means understanding what questions your ideal clients are asking, what language they use when they search, and making sure your content answers those questions clearly and completely. For GEO specifically, AI engines favor content that demonstrates genuine expertise and directly addresses the questions users are asking. - Properly optimized images
Images contribute more to your SEO than most people realize. File names should describe what the image actually shows rather than defaulting to a string of numbers from your camera roll. Alt text should be added to every image, describing the content clearly and naturally. File sizes should be compressed to under 300KB where possible to avoid slowing down your page load times. These are small details that compound significantly across a site with dozens or hundreds of images. - A clean and logical URL structure
Your URLs should be short, descriptive, and easy to read. A URL like yourdomain.com/services/custom-web-design tells both visitors and search engines exactly what the page is about. A URL like yourdomain.com/page?id=4872 tells them nothing. For blog posts and articles, remove dates from your URL structure so that evergreen content does not appear stale to search engines as time passes. - Internal linking across your site
Linking between pages on your own website serves two purposes. It helps search engine crawlers discover and understand the relationship between your pages, and it keeps visitors navigating deeper into your content rather than leaving after reading one page. Every article you publish should link to relevant service pages or related content. Every service page should connect logically to supporting content. A well-linked site signals topical depth and authority to both search engines and AI engines. - Google Search Console connected and your sitemap submitted
Google Search Console is a free tool that gives you direct insight into how Google is crawling and indexing your site. It shows you which pages are indexed, which have errors, what search queries are bringing visitors to your site, and how your pages are performing in search results. Submitting your sitemap through Search Console ensures Google can find and index all of your pages efficiently. If you do not have this set up, it is one of the first things to address. - Content that demonstrates expertise and answers real questions
This is the one that matters most for GEO and increasingly for SEO as well. AI engines do not just index keywords. They evaluate whether your content is genuinely useful, authoritative, and trustworthy. Content that goes deep on a topic, answers the questions your audience is actually asking, and reflects real expertise in your industry is what gets surfaced in AI-generated answers. Thin, generic content that covers a topic at the surface level is being increasingly filtered out. The businesses that show up in AI answers are the ones that have invested in content that earns its place.
Putting It All Together
None of these ten things are complicated on their own. But getting all of them right across every page of your site, and keeping them current as your site grows and algorithms evolve, is where most businesses fall short. SEO and GEO are not launch checklist items. They are ongoing disciplines that require regular attention.
If you are not sure where your site stands across these ten areas, a website audit is a good place to start. And if you are ready to build a site with all of this baked in from day one, that is exactly how we approach every project.
Learn more about our website marketing and growth services or explore what goes into a custom website build with M|J Creative.
