The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity is changing how people discover and search for information online. According to Statista, “[I]n 2024, around 15 million adults in the United States claimed to have used generative artificial intelligence (AI) as their primary tool for online search. By 2028, this number is projected to reach over 36 million online users.” This makes paying attention to generative search optimization (GEO) all the more important. While PR is an important piece of the GEO puzzle, it alone cannot lead to true success.
Effective GEO requires a comprehensive digital visibility strategy rooted in SEO. While PR is an important piece of the puzzle, PR alone cannot lead to true success in AI search. Is your law firm ready for this new age of generative AI?
What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the process of optimizing your content and website to perform well in AI-generated search results. This involves optimizing your website so you can become visible in AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, to name a few.
Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Generative Search Optimization (GEO)
Traditional SEO and Generative Search Optimization vary in a few ways. Let’s dive into some of the main differences between the two.
Where GEO and Digital PR Overlap
Digital PR is a crucial piece of your GEO strategy. In order to show up in generative AI search results, your firm needs to be known. How does an AI search engine know your firm? With the help of PR, of course! Digital PR helps to build your law firm’s credibility and thought leadership across the internet. Securing brand mentions in high authority publications such as Law.com can help your firm to show up in AI search results while also boosting the trust of your law firm for potential and current clients. In fact, when a brand is frequently mentioned in high-quality, trustworthy content, it increases the likelihood of AI models recognizing and including the brand in their responses.
Moral of the story? The overlap of GEO and Digital PR is something to keep in mind when your firm is looking to optimize and show up in generative AI search results.
Where Digital PR Falls Short for GEO
While Digital PR is a crucial piece of your GEO strategy, it is not the end-all be-all. In fact, Digital PR falls short in a few critical ways.
Lack of Structured Data on Your Website
A comprehensive GEO strategy relies on the use of structured data, also known as schema. Structured data is a piece of code that lives on your website that informs web crawlers what your content is about. There are myriad types of structured data you can add to your site to help crawlers understand your content better. It is also worth noting that structured data has been helping law firms show up in Google’s AI Overviews.
No Control Over Third-Party Websites
PR is third-party exposure, meaning you have no control over what the third-party publisher does for their website. A prime example of this is that the New York Times, which would be a huge PR win, has actually blocked OpenAI’s crawler, meaning that OpenAI (parent of ChatGPT) can’t use content from the publication to train its AI models.
Obviously a mention in the NYT is a massive PR win, full stop. But this means that a mention of your firm in the New York Times won’t be included in a crawl from ChatGPT to determine your authority. Some other publishing websites have also followed suit, so it is important to diversify your digital PR efforts across all different types of publications.
No Topical Authority
AI search engines reward websites that have in-depth content about specific topics (aka topical authority). When it comes to GEO law firm websites are required to create robust, interlinked content around a niche. For example, if you are a family law firm, you’ll want to build topical authority through the content living on your site around the different areas of family law, such as divorce, child custody, and child support, to name a few.
While PR campaigns help support your content and build authority, they are often episodic and don’t fully contribute to the topical authority required by GEO that would live on your website through service pages, blogs, FAQs, and more.
Lack of Attribution and Optimization Loop
When it comes to PR, it can often be hard to show direct attribution of website traffic gained from the exposure. You can look at metrics such as domain authority, share of voice, and unique viewers per month, but that won’t give you the full picture of how that is impacting your GEO performance.
The other shortcoming with PR is that there is a lack of an optimization loop. AI search engines are known to reward fresh, up-to-date content. This means that digital PR wins will give you a brief advantage, but over time, those articles mentioning your firm will be outdated.
Why SEO and Digital Visibility Are Core to GEO
SEO and digital visibility are core to GEO – without one, you cannot have the other.
SEO and GEO go hand in hand because if you are optimizing for one, you are helping the other. Many of the “traditional” SEO best practices still apply to GEO. Some of the most important aspects of GEO include:
- Technical site health
- Brand recognition
- Topical authority
- Crawlability
You’ll notice that the aspects listed above can be tied back to traditional SEO best practices. For example:
- Technical site health → Technical SEO
- Brand recognition → Backlinking
- Topical authority → Optimized content marketing
- Crawlability → Technical SEO
The fun part about GEO is that you are no longer just trying to optimize and show your content to search engines and humans. With the growing importance of AI Engines, you need to ensure that your site is accessible to all three players in the space. If you want to learn more about optimizing for AI, check out this downloadable guide, which outlines the key strategies for optimizing for AI crawlers.
It’s important to note that digital PR is still a key factor when it comes to improving your digital visibility. So while it is not the largest piece of the GEO puzzle, it still serves a valuable purpose in completing the full picture.
How to Build a GEO Strategy
Building a comprehensive GEO strategy is essential to laying the foundation for your firm in regard to the future of where traditional SEO is headed. Here is how you can start building a GEO strategy:
1. Audit Your Site for AI-Readiness (crawlability, schema, content depth)
- Ensure AI search engine crawlers can access your website
- Submit your sitemap to search engines
- Check that your robots.txt file isn’t inadvertently blocking critical pages or directories.
- Explicitly allow AI bots to crawl the site
- Implement schema throughout the pages on your website
- Confirm that your site structure is clear and organized
- Audit existing content to evaluate content depth, freshness, and performance
2. Develop Authoritative Content Clusters Around Key Topics
The next step to your GEO strategy is to develop authoritative content clusters around key topics (topical authority). This involves creating content that:
- Is in-depth
- Uses natural language
- Targets long-tail and semantic keywords
- Demonstrates EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
- Focuses on user Intent
- Is kept up to date
3. Build Citations and Brand Mentions From Trusted Domains
Step three of your GEO strategy involves building citations and brand mentions from trusted domains. This is where your digital PR comes into play. Some ways to build your citations and brand mentions from trusted domains include:
- Being cited in legal directories such as Avvo, SuperLawyers, and Justia
- Working with journalists in your field to be quoted as a source for an article or news segment
- Guest blogging
4. Monitor Inclusion in AI Engines
Next, you’ll want to monitor the inclusion of your brand in AI engines. Since all of this is so new, many tools beloved by the SEO community are trying to find ways to incorporate data from AI engines into their software. To monitor, you can use tools such as SemRush, or you can even play around with the AI Engines to see if your firm is coming up for relevant searches.
5. Optimize Continuously
Lastly, you want to make sure you are constantly optimizing your content and staying up to date with the latest and greatest of GEO, as it is constantly evolving. Be sure to keep your content fresh and authoritative by going back and optimizing continuously. We often recommend firms to do a content audit once a year to evaluate the performance of existing content and form a data-driven strategy based on what content is working and what may no longer be working or may be outdated and could use a refresh.
PR Can Support GEO. SEO Powers It
Digital PR can support GEO, but SEO is ultimately the driving force behind it. PR is useful in building credibility and trust while also boosting your firm’s exposure, however, it is only the spark that will help ignite the fire. GEO requires many of the building blocks, consisting of a traditional SEO strategy. It all boils down to three buckets for success:
- Content
- Technical Performance/Optimization
- Authority
If you want to be found in the age of AI, it is going to take a lot more than just mentions within different online publications. It takes a comprehensive strategy and dedication to optimizing your site to win in GEO.
Most importantly, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your law marketing efforts; don’t just rely on PR. Even the best PR campaigns can only perform so well if your website isn’t optimized to increase visibility and show up within AI and traditional search engines. It’s going to come down to how much real estate you have across the web. Be sure your firm is seen EVERYWHERE.
Is Your Firm GEO-Ready?
GEO is still new and is constantly evolving, so law firms that adapt early can gain a strong advantage. With the ever-evolving landscape of AI Search, it’s important to stay ahead of what is happening so your SEO/GEO strategy can adapt.
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