SEO vs GEO... LMAO, STOP IT!

The SEO and GEO bros need to chill. The end goal is still the same.

Thank you to AirOps and North Star Inbound for sponsoring this week’s newsletter, which allows it to remain free for all readers.

Enough is enough.

By now, you already know I have zero issue with a salacious headline or a pointed opinion that goes against the grain. That’s kind of the point of this newsletter. I like saying publicly what a lot of people only say over beers.

But one thing needs to stop.

This whole SEO vs GEO argument.

Our industry keeps falling into the same tired buckets. You’ve got the head-in-the-sand crowd that doesn’t want to adjust. You’ve got the “SEO is dead, all hail GEO” crowd acting like they just discovered fire. Then you’ve got a smaller group that recognizes both things can be true at once: the landscape is changing, the old playbook isn’t enough, and adapting is part of the job.

When I shifted #SEOForLunch away from curating everyone else’s takes and started sharing more of my own, I made myself a promise. I wouldn’t use this platform just to complain unless I could at least offer something useful in return.

I might bend that rule a little today.

Sorry. Not sorry.

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Thank you to this week’s #SEOForLunch sponsor: AirOps

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Who’s Actually Driving This Debate?

One of the dumbest debates online right now is the idea that GEO somehow sits in opposition to SEO.

Call it GEO, AEO, AIO, or whatever acronym people are fighting over this week. The point keeps getting lost. The idea that GEO only matters once SEO is “dead” is nonsense.

Organic visibility has always been fluid. It has always required monitoring, testing, adapting, and thinking with your brain rather than blindly following a checklist. Whether you call it SEO or GEO, the end goal is the same: gain visibility and drive action.

From where I sit, the loudest voices in this debate usually fall into three buckets.

1. “SEO is dead” + early adoption = perceived advantage

This is often the newer marketer who would rather brand themselves as early as possible with AI than deal with the nuances of traditional SEO.

And let’s be honest, traditional SEO is easier to fact-check. There’s more history, more scar tissue, and more proof. GEO is newer, messier, and harder to measure, which makes it the perfect playground for people selling confidence without evidence.

2. The Corporate Leader Seeing Declining ROI

I hate this one because I get it.

For years, companies invested in SEO and saw enough return to keep going. Then AI Overviews show up, traffic gets hit, clicks shrink, and suddenly leadership starts asking a very fair question: why would I keep spending the same amount on a channel that looks less efficient than it used to?

That tension is real. Fear of missing the next big shift often outweighs trust in SEO's long-term value, especially when AI is being shoved into every boardroom conversation in America.

3. “AI is a fad” is just the other extreme

This is the old-school SEO who sees all of this as hype and wants to pretend nothing meaningful is changing.

I get that too. When the rules shift under your feet, denial feels safer than adaptation. And yes, there is some logic to doubling down on SEO while competitors get distracted. But pretending AI-driven discovery doesn’t matter just because it’s messy or hard to measure is still denial.

Different costume. Same fear.

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…And This is Why The “vs” Debate is So Stupid

SEOs are notoriously bad at operating outside their silo. Leadership loves to talk about collaboration, but rarely rewards it in a meaningful way. So instead of solving for visibility across the full search journey, people turn it into a turf war.

That’s when the conversation stops being about strategy and starts being about ego: career positioning, thought leadership bait, who gets credit, who gets budget, and who gets to sound smartest on LinkedIn.

But this was never supposed to be about labels. It was supposed to be about evolution.

That’s why the real issue isn’t SEO vs GEO. It’s lazy strategy.

Nobody wants the more complicated answer because the simple ones are easier to sell. “SEO is dead.” “GEO replaces SEO.” “Just optimize for answer engines.” Clean lines like that sound smart, but most of the time they’re bullshit.

Yes, the environment has changed. User behavior has changed. Search is more fragmented. Discovery no longer happens in one box. AI systems summarize, synthesize, and cite unevenly. Clicks are harder to earn. Brand familiarity, entity clarity, off-site mentions, and community discussion all matter more now.

But the core job has not changed: understand how people discover information, earn visibility where they’re looking, and turn that visibility into action.

What’s changed is how that work needs to show up. Your content can’t just exist. It has to be extractable. Your brand can’t just rank. It has to be recognizable. And your strategy can’t just be “publish and pray.” It has to account for how information is interpreted, summarized, and reused.

That’s the shift. Not replacement. Expansion.

And no, the answer is not “more AI.” The answer is not “ignore AI.” And the answer sure as hell is not renaming the department GEO and pretending you invented the future.

The real answer is a mix of manual work, critical thinking, and AI technology. You still need people analyzing SERPs, reviewing AI Overviews, checking how brands appear in LLMs, and studying citations, reviews, Reddit, YouTube, and other third-party sources. There is still no substitute for actually looking.

You also still need experienced humans deciding what matters, because not every mention, citation, ranking, or AI answer is meaningful. Someone has to separate signal from noise, determine what influences buyer behavior, and decide what deserves investment versus what is just another vanity metric wearing a trench coat.

And yes, AI absolutely has a role, just not as a replacement for judgment.

Use it to cluster topics, identify content gaps, summarize patterns across reviews and forums, analyze brand consistency, speed up QA, and process large sets of query and citation data.

That’s the framework: strong SEO fundamentals; broader visibility across search, citations, communities, and answer engines; human-led interpretation; and AI-assisted execution.

Call it SEO. Call it GEO. Call it whatever helps you win an argument on LinkedIn.

The end goal is still the same: earn visibility, build trust, and drive action.

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Stop arguing about the label and start doing the work.

~Nick

Digital PR matters more in GEO than it did in classic search.

Mentions credible coverage and authoritative links are signals AI systems can draw from.

North Star Inbound runs Digital PR campaigns designed to earn high-quality coverage, then help you turn that authority into measurable growth with SEO and conversion copywriting.

If you want Digital PR that supports visibility and pipeline book a call.