As much as many of us wish that SEO could stay as simple as choosing the right keywords, recent developments reveal that SEO goes so much deeper than that in 2026, facing competition like GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization.
However, this isn’t cause to worry just yet.
What isn’t going anywhere? Google.
LLMs like ChatGPT are giving the storied search engine a run for its money, but not enough to dethrone it completely. The idea of the search engine being rendered obsolete is far from reality. For right now, it is still the most efficient engine. With that in mind, it’s important to optimize SEO as much as possible in the new year with GEO in mind.
What are the key things about SEO to focus on moving forward in 2026?
- Remember to update all old content.
Old content can work to help you instead of slowing your website down. For example, giving a facelift to old blog posts can enhance overall visibility, especially if old topics start trending again. For the articles that won’t be able to help you in any way, it would be best to delete them and start fresh. In terms of GEO, refreshing old content gives you a leg up whenever users search on LLMs.
- Focus on creating quality content.
Poor quality content limits SEO crawlability and causes LLMs to overlook it. Therefore, creating balanced, well-written, and interesting content will increase the organic ranking of the article and guide AI to recommend your product.
- Prioritize user experience.
When the UI of a website is pleasing and easy to navigate, people are more likely to stay on the website or on a specific page. If people have to wait forever for a page to load, they’ll leave. If people are confused by the navigation, they’ll leave. The goal is to not have a high bounce rate. Essentially, Google receives “positive signals” from websites with fantastic UI because people actually want to see the site and are taking precious time out of their day to stay there. Rankings improve based on this. Clear structure is easily discoverable. LLMs take this to mean that the site is trustworthy. It also makes for good GEO.
Other articles I read:
https://www.semrush.com/blog/generative-engine-optimization
https://neilpatel.com/blog/geo-vs-seo
2 Responses
I think the LLMs can be the best reason that a website gets a lot of traffic, if an LLM gets used to citing a website then that site will get traction from people who prioritize LLMs.
I like your point about refreshing old content instead of automatically deleting it. I think we can often reuse old content; it just needs to be polished and more focused on SEO and GEO.