From the desk of David Utke

Subj: SEO is DEAD!

SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO. The acronyms keep coming day by day. Honestly, it can feel like the industry invents a new term to sell to clients every time a new AI tool launches, just to keep everyone confused and buying new courses or services.

Once you strip away the jargon, these concepts are pretty simple, and they’re not actually replacing SEO anytime soon.

AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini are changing how people find businesses, and understanding these three layers will tell you exactly where you’re winning, where you’re quietly losing revenue, and what to fix first.

Let’s break it down.

Why This Matters

For most of the last two decades, SEO worked like this: write good content, rank on Google, get clicks, convert those clicks into leads or sales. Simple.

That started to change:

• 2015 or so — Google began answering questions directly in featured snippets, so people stopped needing to click through for simple queries.
• 2022 — ChatGPT launched, and a meaningful chunk of search behavior moved off Google entirely.
• 2024 — Google rolled out AI Overviews, keeping even more people on Google’s own results page instead of sending them to your site.
• Today — a large majority of Google searches now end without a single click, because the answer is served directly. That number is even higher inside AI-native experiences.

The upshot: ranking #1 doesn’t guarantee anyone actually lands on your website anymore. AI tools are reading, synthesizing, and answering for the user and if your brand isn’t part of what they’re reading and citing, you’re invisible no matter where you rank.

The Four Layers, Defined

SEO — Search Engine Optimization

This is still the base layer everything else sits on. Classic, reliable, SEO.

At its core, SEO means figuring out what people are actually typing into search engines, making sure that language shows up naturally in your titles, headings, and content, and not breaking your site in the process (site speed, mobile-friendliness, no broken pages).

SEO breaks down into three practical sub-layers too:

1. On-site SEO — Is your content actually useful? Does your site structure make sense? Is it built to convert, not just rank?
2. Technical SEO — Schema markup, clean URL structure, no crawl errors or broken links.
3. Off-site SEO — Backlinks, brand mentions, your presence on LinkedIn, YouTube, and elsewhere.

The vast majority of AI Overview citations pull from pages that already rank in the top 10 of traditional search results already.

So if your fundamentals aren’t in place, none of the other three layers will work either.

AEO — Answer Engine Optimization

AEO is about becoming the direct answer. Like if you’re asking “how do I shock a inground pool?” and getting the answer straight from the AI Overview box at the top of the page, with no need to click anywhere.

If your brand is the source cited in that box, that’s AEO working and t’s the modern evolution of optimizing for featured snippets and “People Also Ask” boxes.

The mechanics haven’t changed much, they’ve just gotten more important.

How to actually do it:

• Find the real questions. Use tools like AlsoAsked or AnswerThePublic, mine your competitors’ paid search data, or — even simpler — pay attention to what your customers actually ask on sales calls, support tickets, and social comments. If five people a week ask the same question, that’s a piece of content.
• Answer first, explain second. Structure your headings (H2s especially) as the literal question being asked, and answer it directly in the first 40–60 words — no throat-clearing, no story before the substance. Then expand with detail underneath.
• Use schema markup (like FAQ schema) so search engines and AI tools know exactly which block of text is the answer to which question.
• Repeat the answer everywhere. AI models don’t just trust your website — they weigh YouTube explainers, Reddit threads, forum answers, and review sites too. The more places your answer shows up consistently, the more an LLM trusts it as the correct one.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimization

GEO is all about getting recommended. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity something like “what’s the best free web host.” The AI doesn’t hand back one blue link.

It reads multiple sources, synthesizes an answer in its own words, pros and cons, who the host is for and cites three or four of them.

GEO is the work that gets you into that exact shortlist.

How to actually do it:

• Build comparison and decision content. If you run a gym, write the “gym membership vs. Peloton vs. working out at home” post. Structure it with clear pros/cons and “who this is right for” sections. AI can reference this sort of content
• Use specific, declarative facts. AI tools love quoting concrete numbers: “memberships start at $49/month” beats “affordable pricing” every time.
• Build topical authority. Don’t publish one post and call it done. You have to build a full cluster of content around a topic so the AI has multiple reinforcing signals that you’re a credible source on it.
• Keep it current. Updated pricing, fresh screenshots, and recent examples all signal to AI tools that your content is trustworthy right now, not from three years ago.
• Structure pages so they don’t compete with each other. If you offer multiple services, give each one its own dedicated page with genuinely differentiated content (different title tags, headings, opening copy, and schema) rather than lumping everything onto one page.

In short, would an AI “feel confident” recommending you the way a knowledgeable friend would?

That confidence comes from transparent pricing, real case studies, honest comparisons, and clear positioning people can trust.

AIO — AI Optimization

AI can’t recommend a business it doesn’t know exists or doesn’t trust. This isn’t about a single page or post.

It’s your entire footprint across the internet: your website, your reviews, your directory listings, your social presence, your PR mentions, even the arguments in your Yelp reviews.

How to actually do it:

1. Structured brand data. Schema markup that spells out exactly what you are and what you do. A real “About” page with specifics (founded year, specialties, credentials) instead of generic claims like “best pizza in town.” Consistent business details (name, address, phone, hours) everywhere you’re listed.
2. Build your authority ecosystem. News mentions, awards, reviews on Yelp/Google/industry-specific sites (these matter more than backlinks now), podcast appearances, directory listings, community Q&A participation. Every one of these is a breadcrumb that tells AI models other people vouch for you.
3. Generate consensus, not just claims. AI trusts what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. Mentions on social platforms, being included in “best of” roundups, people tagging or naming your brand — all of it builds the “is this a real, credible business” signal that determines whether AI is confident enough to talk about you at all.

The Simple Way to Remember It

• SEO gets you found by search engines.
• AEO gets your answer put in the box.
• GEO gets you recommended in the conversation.
• AIO gets your brand understood so AI is confident enough to mention you at all.

Where Businesses Quietly Lose

A few important things to note here.

You rank #1, but never get chosen

You own the featured snippet, but your pricing is vague, your reviews are thin, and your use cases aren’t clear. When someone asks an AI to actually recommend a solution, it picks your competitor instead.

You have the best product, but AI doesn’t understand your brand

If your information is inconsistent across directories, outdated on third-party sites, or contradicted by your own site, AI simply isn’t confident enough to talk about you, even if your product is genuinely better.

Your competitor gets recommended without ever outranking you.

They might have clearer positioning, stronger reviews, or more PR mentions, so when someone asks an AI to compare options, the AI says their name instead of yours even though you rank higher on Google.

My GEO/AEO/AIO Checklist

If you want a real edge, here are seven things that rarely get mentioned but genuinely move the needle:

1. Make sure AI bots can actually crawl your site

AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended are separate from Googlebot and need to be explicitly allowed in your robots.txt. Just as important: many of these bots don’t render JavaScript well.

If your site relies heavily on client-side rendering, your content might look fine to a human and to Googlebot while being effectively invisible to an AI crawler.

This is foundational AIO work that happens before any content strategy matters.

2. Consider an llms.txt file

This is an emerging (and still debated) convention. But consider a plain-text file at your root domain that summarizes what your site or business is and links to your most important pages, meant to help LLMs understand you faster.

Not essential yet, or perhaps ever but this is something that should be on your radar.

3. Actually measure whether you’re showing up

“Track this” everyone says, okay how exactly? In practice that means either using a dedicated AI-visibility tool (Profound, Otterly.ai, and Peec AI are a few worth researching) or manually running a consistent set of prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini on a regular schedule and logging whether and how your brand shows up.

4. Get your facts into Wikipedia and Wikidata

These sources feed a lot of the knowledge graphs that AI models were trained on or retrieve from. For an established brand, getting accurate, well-sourced information into Wikidata, even without a full Wikipedia page, is a distinct, high-leverage AIO tactic that’s separate from your own website’s content.

5. Publish original data

Referencing “your own data” is easy to skim past, but it’s one of the highest-leverage GEO plays available. AI tools love citing a specific number with a clear source.

A survey result, a benchmark, a proprietary stat pulled from your own customer base. It’s also much harder for a competitor to replicate than well-written content, which makes it a more durable advantage.

6. These platforms DON’T all work the same way

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews get lumped together, but they retrieve information differently.

Perplexity does live web retrieval on most queries.

AI Overviews leans heavily on Google’s existing index.

ChatGPT blends its training data with live browsing depending on the mode someone’s using.

7. Treat E-E-A-T as your trust checklist

Google’s Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trust framework overlaps heavily with everything described above as “consensus” and “brand trust,” but it’s worth naming directly because it’s actionable: real author bios with credentials, clear “who wrote this and why they’re qualified” signals, and visible expertise on the page.

It’s a concrete way to build the kind of trust signal AI models are ultimately trying to detect.

Executive Summary

Depending on who you ask, these four layers are either genuinely distinct disciplines worth tracking separately, or they’re really just SEO wearing new clothes.

Personally, I haven’t fundamentally changed how I do anything. I just focus on having a consistent footprint with verifiable, trustworthy content that people (not robots) find helpful.

Till next time. Your man,

-David

PS – Any questions just reach out to me via the contact page.

That single stat should be enough to make you rethink your old SEO strategy.

Let’s be honest, we’re all turning to ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, and Google’s AI overviews for direct answers instead of scrolling through 10-20 blue links.

If your marketing isn’t built for that shift, you’re going to miss out on a growing audience.

That’s where GEO comes in.

What Is GEO?

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is the practice of structuring your content so AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can find it, understand it, and cite it directly in their answers.

Think of it as the next stage of SEO for the AI era.

SEO gets you ranked. GEO gets you quoted

The term is gaining traction with SEO experts and marketers who need a way to separate two different goals: making your content visible to AI, and making your links rank high on a search results page.

You still need SEO. GEO doesn’t replace it.

It simply complements it and opens your content up to a new audience.

GEO vs. SEO: How They’re Similar

SEO and GEO have a lot in common.

Both are optimization tactics built to make your website and content more visible in online searches. Both depend on high quality, relevant content.

Both rely on understanding user intent to drive traffic to your site.

Here’s something worth noting

Most major AI platforms, even the ones not built by Google, Anthropic or Microsoft, still rely on established search engines for their general queries.

That means the pool of information isn’t drastically different no matter where someone asks their question, whether it’s Google, Perplexity, Bing, or ChatGPT.

Your content has just as much potential to show up in a ChatGPT answer as it does in a Perplexity one.

But none of that happens automatically.

Your content has to be optimized so AI models find it understandable and worth referencing.

It needs to be clear, credible, useful, and trustworthy.

It’s not enough to match a user’s question or stack the right keywords. AI search wants a reliable source it can pull from directly.

GEO vs. SEO: The Key Differences

There are four key differences that should shape how you approach content going forward.

1. Target

SEO targets traditional search engine results pages (SERPs – the 10 blue links page). GEO targets AI-generated responses, whether that’s Google’s AI overviews or apps like ChatGPT.

GEO is about getting referenced inside the AI’s answer, not about landing your link on a results page.

2. Ranking Factors

SEO builds ranking through keywords, backlinks, and technical SEO elements that help search crawlers find your content. Quality still matters, but since your content won’t appear on the results page itself, it doesn’t need to be narrative.

That’s why things like alt tags and hashtags work well for SEO. They help the engine recognize and recommend your content.

GEO works differently.

It leverages content structure, authority, and citations to make your content attractive to AI platforms. AI needs to understand your content well enough to cite it as a source and use it to give the user a complete answer.

Your content becomes a resource, not just a recommendation, so it needs real expertise behind it.

3. Traffic

SEO has always been click driven. The whole point was getting someone to click through from the results page to your site.

AI platforms and overviews are designed to summarize information without sending the user anywhere. Because of that, GEO focuses on exposure driven traffic.

You build brand visibility through mentions in AI responses, which can lead to indirect traffic rather than a direct click.

4. Content Strategy

SEO targets your whole website or webpage, using technical SEO, keywords, and backlinks to boost rankings for the entire page. GEO prioritizes the actual content itself.

The goal is making sure that content can be retrieved by AI systems without needing the full page for context.

For strong GEO, write context-rich pieces that stand on their own and are easy for AI to understand and quote. A clear question and answer format works well here.

It lets AI match the question to its query and use your answer as a direct explanation.

How to Actually Optimize for GEO

GEO is here and it’s not going anywhere, so here is how to optimize your content for generative AI:

• Lead with the answer. Open each section with a direct, quotable answer to the question in the heading, then follow up with supporting detail. AI tools tend to pull the first clear statement in a section, so don’t bury the point.
• Use a question and answer structure. Phrase your headings as real questions people would type or speak into an AI tool, then answer them plainly underneath.
• Back up claims with specifics. Data points, named sources, and expert quotes give AI a reason to treat your content as credible enough to cite. My Fiverr example is an obvious example because I’m actually a top rated seller.
• Keep sections self-contained. Each paragraph should make sense on its own, without needing the rest of the page for context. AI tools often pull isolated passages rather than whole pages.
• Don’t ignore the technical basics. Make sure your content isn’t blocked by your robots.txt file, isn’t hidden behind a login or paywall, and loads without relying entirely on JavaScript. If AI crawlers can’t read your page, none of the above matters.

Not everyone agrees GEO is its own discipline

Google’s own developer documentation has pushed back on some of these tactics, saying that for Google Search specifically, this is really just good SEO under a new name, and that things like special AI text files aren’t necessary.

Personally, I’ve not changed my approach to publishing content so perhaps they’re right. I just focus on creating helpful, well thought out content that is organized into logical categories with my YouTube videos included as needed.

Focusing on other platforms like X, IG and email to drive traffic here to davidutke.com.

The main takeaway is that strong, well-structured, genuinely useful content benefits you across both traditional search and AI search. GEO isn’t a replacement for doing the fundamentals well.

Why GEO Matters Now

Perplexity has grown to 15 million monthly users in a short amount of time.

Every Google search you make today is usually topped by an AI overview.

Things are evolving fast and your content strategy has to keep up with where things are headed. The good news is that most of the skills you’ve already built for SEO translate directly to GEO.

Just know what’s changed and is changing.

The old SEO game was about being number one on list of 10 blue links is not going anywhere, but it’s dominance is over. Now it’s also about being a source AI can trust and cite in its responses.

How Do You Know If GEO Is Working?

Ask AI tools your target questions yourself and see whether your content, or your name, shows up in the response.

Do this regularly for the questions that matter most to your niche, and track it the same way you’d track keyword rankings.

It’s less precise than SEO reporting, but it’s the most direct signal you have right now.

Elegantly convert your SEO/GEO traffic – IMPORTANT

Before AI, the whole point of ranking was to convert your traffic to:

• Sign up to an email list and send people down a sales funnel.
• Rank an affiliate post and make commissions day after day.
• Rank for a helpful search term and run display ads (that had no direct monetization route)
• Push a low ticket offer that you’re selling.

I made a ton of money from Amazon Associates from my online teaching site for keywords like “best laptops for online teaching.” That site had 12 or so “money” pages that were functionally listicles, that ranked well for years.

That business model does not work now.

Now I know it’s easy to get caught up in the technical stuff of rankings, citations, and visibility and forget why any of this matters in the first place.

Getting mentioned in an AI response or ranking on page one isn’t the finish line.

The goal is getting people onto your site and converting them into something more than a one-time, one-off visitor.

This is actually where GEO’s exposure-driven traffic can work against you if you’re not careful. SEO sends someone directly to your page with intent to explore.

GEO, by design, often answers the question right inside the AI platform, so the person may never click through at all. That makes it even more important to give people a reason to visit your site directly and a reason to come back.

The best way to do that is to get them on your email list

My general recommendation for email marketing is to signup to Kit.com.

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My preferred email service provider of choice. Advanced funnels, clean user interface, great looking landing pages and an incredibly helpful tagging feature.

Grow your email list today. Email is how you turn a blog or YouTube channel into a business.

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A ranking can disappear overnight. An AI platform can stop citing you the moment it changes how it sources answers. Your email list is the one channel you actually own.

It doesn’t depend on an algorithm, a citation, or a platform deciding you’re still relevant this week.

You could also go straight for a low-ticket offer instead of an email opt-in, but I would proceed with caution.

Someone landing on a GEO explainer is in learning mode, not buying mode. They clicked through with a question, not a credit card.

A popup pushing a purchase at that moment adds friction right when you want them reading or watching your embedded vdeo, and it can feel like a bait-and-switch on informational content.

Email is the lower-friction ask that actually matches that intent. It costs the reader nothing, and it lets you nurture them into a buyer over time instead of forcing a decision on their first visit.

You can also incorporate a “thank you” page that has a one time offer (OTO) as well so you can get the best of both worlds.

A low-ticket offer makes more sense on warmer pages, like a tool comparison or a “best of” roundup, where the reader is already closer to deciding.

It does not have to be either or

Keep the email opt-in as your default CTA, but make the lead magnet itself something with commercial intent built in, like a checklist or template tied to a course or tool you already promote.

That way you build the list and you’re pre-qualifying people who are more likely to buy later or take you up on a one time offer that makes sense to the lead magnent.

In short, getting found and building brand awareness is obviously important, but also give your visitors a clear, low-friction next step once they’re there.

Conclusion

So that’s it for my general breakdown on GEO and why it’s important. If you have any questions of comments simply visit the contact page and drop me a DM or an email.

Till next time, your man,

-David

Not only is this bad UX, you also may be hurting your page rank through poor internal linking and increasing your bounce rate.

So, let me show you how to quickly and easily fix broken links with the help of AI (Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT).

Here’s the workflow in a nutshell:

1. Run a scan with Dead Link Checker (or any of the tools listed below).
2. Copy the report and paste it into an AI tool with a prompt asking it to prioritize what to fix.
3. Work through the list starting with highest priority items.
4. Use the AI’s output to know exactly which pages to navigate to and which links to update or remove.

That’s it. Done.

What used to take hours of manual digging through a confusing report now takes a fraction of the time because you’re letting AI do the thinking while you’re doing the fixing.

Step 1: Find Your Broken Links with Dead Link Checker

The best free tool for this is Dead Link Checker (deadlinkchecker.com) in my opinion. There are a lot of options for this, I’ll list alternatives down below.

1. Go to the site and enter your full domain name.
2. Select “whole website” (not just a single page).
3. Enter the CAPTCHA and click Check.
4. Wait a few minutes for the scan to complete.

You’ll end up with a report showing which links are working and which are returning 404 errors. For example, a site might have 1,846 working links and 154 broken ones.

The problem?

You’re staring at a wall of data with no idea where to start. That’s where AI comes in.

Step 2: Copy the Report and Send It to AI

Once the scan is done:

1. Scroll through the full list of broken links on Dead Link Checker.
2. Right-click and copy all the data.
3. Open your AI tool of choice, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or any other.
4. Paste the data into a new chat.

Use a prompt like this:

“I’m going to give you a bunch of data on the broken links on my site. Tell me which ones to focus on to update so I don’t waste my time.”

The key focus is to tell the AI what do 100% need to fix now and what can safely be ignored.

Step 3: Review Your AI-Generated Priority Report

The AI will analyze all those broken links and organize them into a prioritized action plan.

Here’s an example of what that output might look like:

Highest Priority — Fix These First

• Content 404s: Internal pages you’re linking to that no longer exist. If the content matters, recreate it. If it doesn’t, update or remove the link.
• Broken image sources: Great example, if you previously used Amazon Associates embedded images and that feature was removed, you’ll have a batch of broken image requests to clean up. These are often concentrated in a single blog post, so it’s more manageable than it looks.
• Embedded video 403s: Videos you’ve embedded on your site that aren’t set to allow embedding. Go to your YouTube channel settings and enable embedding for those videos.
• Affiliate and tool links: Outdated links to products or services you’ve recommended that no longer exist or have been moved to a different URL, update these to current URLs.

Medium Priority — Do These When You Have Time

Generic outbound links that are 404ing but aren’t critical. Worth fixing eventually, but not urgent.

Ignore These for Now

The AI will also flag links you can safely deprioritize, often tracking pixels, ad scripts, or external resources outside your control.

Step 4: Fix the Broken Links

Now that you know exactly what to fix and where, here’s how to actually do it.

For internal links (links on your own site):

1. Hover over the broken link in the Dead Link Checker report, the bottom of your browser will show you which page on your site contains that link.
2. Navigate to that page in your CMS (WordPress, Webflow, etc.).
3. Open the page editor and use Ctrl+F to search for the broken URL.
4. Update the link to a working URL, or remove it entirely if the destination no longer exists.

Quick example: If the report shows a link to twosigma.com is 404ing, and mousing over it reveals it lives on a specific post, navigate to that post, find the link, and either update it to a working URL or delete it.

For images:

Find the blog post or page that contains the broken image reference, remove the old embed, and replace it with a working image or remove it altogether.

7 Other Tools to Find Broken Links

Dead Link Checker is a great but it’s not the only game in town. Here are other options depending on your setup:

1. Google Search Console: Go to Indexing > Pages and look for the “Not Found” section. It’ll show you exactly which URLs Google has flagged as 404s.
2. Broken Link Check (brokenlinkcheck.com): Similar to Dead Link Checker. Paste the full report into AI and go from there.
3. Ahrefs Broken Link Checker: Free when logged out, but limited to a handful of results. Good for a quick spot-check.
4. Screaming Frog: Powerful, but the free version caps at 500 URLs. Paid version is unlimited and well worth it if you have a large site.
5. Broken Link Checker (WordPress plugin): Runs passively in the background on your WordPress site. Not as fast or hands-on as the other tools, but useful for ongoing monitoring.
6. Link Whisperer: A premium WordPress plugin focused on internal linking. It also flags broken links and orphan pages. At $8/month for the starter plan, it’s worth running for a month to do a full cleanup.
7. Check My Links (Chrome extension): A browser extension that scans any page you’re on for broken links. Great for checking individual pages on the fly.

Final Thoughts

Fixing 404, broken links is a small, quick win you can do in a hour. Run the report, hand if off to AI and get to work.

Your man,

-David