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The decision on the table is where the next euro of search budget goes. Some shoppers now start product research in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity. Setting up a separate GEO programme duplicates work. Most of what GEO needs is already on the SEO roadmap, so the real question is which parts to prioritise.
What separates generative engine optimisation from SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) aims for a high position in a list of results, and success is a click to your site. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) aims for your content to be used as a source when an AI assistant writes an answer. Success there is a mention, a quote or a link inside that answer, and the shopper may never visit.
That changes what good content looks like. A ranked page has to beat competing pages on relevance and authority. A cited page has to state a clear, specific answer that a model can lift and attribute. Vague marketing copy fails both tests, but it fails GEO faster, because a model has nothing concrete to quote.
Crawlable pages come first for both
Both disciplines start with pages that crawlers can fetch and read. If a storefront sends a near-empty page and builds the content with JavaScript, search engines index it late and some AI crawlers may not see it at all. Server-side rendering removes that risk, and the detail for headless storefronts sits in SEO for single page applications.
Structured data serves search engines and AI alike
Structured data helps both disciplines. Product markup that states name, price, availability and reviews in a standard format lets search engines build rich results and gives AI systems facts they can use with confidence. On a Salesforce storefront this is part of the architecture decisions covered in headless commerce with the Composable Storefront.
Product discovery tells you what to answer
Content that gets cited answers the questions people actually ask, in the words they use. That starts with product discovery: interviews, search data and customer service logs that show the pain points and the language of your buyers. Without it, teams write what they want to say and hope it matches what shoppers ask.
The same insight feeds SEO and GEO at once. A product page that answers "which chocolate gift for a colleague" in plain terms can rank for that search and serve as the source for an assistant's recommendation. One piece of research, two channels.
