What SEO and GEO share, the five things AI search changes, and what a Perth business should do first to get named in AI answers.
SEO is the work of ranking your pages in Google's list of results, and GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the work of getting your business named and linked when ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews write an answer. For a Perth business, most of the work is the same, but AI search changes who reads your site, how much other websites' opinion of you counts, and how you measure whether it is working.
Want to show up in Google and in AI answers?
We do SEO and GEO as one body of work for Perth businesses.
We run both together at Enkindle in Osborne Park, as part of the same SEO retainer, and our AI SEO page sets out how we measure it. This post covers what stays the same, what genuinely changes, and what a Perth business should do first.
SEO gets you a position in a list of links. GEO gets you a mention inside a written answer. AI SEO, GEO and answer engine optimisation are three names for that second job, and you will see all three used for the same thing.
The mechanics explain why they overlap. When someone asks an AI assistant a question with web search on, it searches the web, reads a handful of pages and writes a summary. If your site is not one of the pages it reads, and the directories and lists it trusts do not mention you, you are not in the answer.
So GEO is not a replacement for SEO. It sits on top of it.
Almost all of the foundations. An AI assistant that searches the web is still relying on a search index to find pages, so the things that make a site easy for Google to crawl and understand also make it easy for an AI tool to read.
This is why we do not sell GEO separately. If a business has neglected its SEO, there is very little GEO work that will make up for it.
Five things change in practice. None of them throw out the old work, but each one changes what a good page looks like or where the effort goes.
A person skims a page and forms an impression. An AI assistant pulls out sentences and facts it can use without guessing. A page that buries the answer under three paragraphs of introduction still works for a patient human reader, but it gives an AI tool nothing clean to quote.
The fix is answer-first writing: the question as the heading, the answer in the first two sentences, then the detail. Prices, service areas, suburbs and scope written as plain facts, not implied.
In a normal Google result your own page can rank on its own merits. In an AI answer, what other sites say about you carries a lot of the weight. When we put "best agency in Perth" style questions to the engines for our own business, the answers were built mostly from agency directories and "best of" lists written by third parties, not from agency websites.
For a local business that means directory listings, review sites, industry associations and local media are no longer just citations for the map pack. They are often the actual source the answer is written from.
People type short phrases into Google ("plumber Joondalup") and full questions into an assistant ("who is a good plumber in Joondalup for an old house with galvanised pipes?"). Longer questions reward pages that cover a specific situation well, and they open up questions that no competitor has written a page for yet.
A Google results page shows ten organic links plus ads and the map pack, so being fifth still gets you seen. An AI answer usually names a handful of businesses, sometimes one, sometimes none. Being in or out matters more than position.
Most businesses have no idea whether ChatGPT mentions them. That is fixable. You can write down the questions your customers ask, put them to the engines, and record who gets named and which sources the answers came from. Run the same questions again later and you have a before and an after.
Yes, but keep it in proportion. AI search is still a small share of most businesses' traffic, and Google's normal results and the map pack still send most local enquiries. The reason to act now is that the work overlaps so heavily with SEO that doing one well does most of the other.
For local recommendations, the assistants lean heavily on your Google Business Profile and your reviews. If your profile has the wrong categories, an old phone number or a handful of reviews, that shows up in both the map pack and in AI answers. Our local SEO work in Perth covers the profile, reviews and listings for that reason.
The other local check is consistency. Your business name, address, phone number and service list should read the same on your site, your Google Business Profile and every directory you are on. An AI tool that finds two different addresses has a reason to leave you out.
No. Because the foundations are shared, splitting SEO and GEO between two providers usually means two people editing the same pages with different goals. We include AI SEO in every SEO retainer rather than selling it as an add-on.
Our SEO retainers start from $1,000 including GST, billed every 4 weeks, and standalone retainers are rolling with no lock-in. The AI SEO measurement and the answer-first page work sit inside that, not on a separate invoice. The SEO pricing page covers what changes the scope above the floor.
What to be wary of is anyone who guarantees a ChatGPT recommendation. The answers change from day to day and from person to person, so nobody can honestly promise one. What can be promised is a measurement, the work, and the same questions asked again four weeks later.
Rankings and clicks in Search Console still measure the SEO side. For the AI side, this is the method we run for clients:
Google's AI Overviews are the exception. Clicks from them arrive as ordinary Google traffic, so they are watched through Search Console rather than counted separately.
The numbers are small and should be reported honestly. For The Renovation Centre in Osborne Park, visits from ChatGPT went from 9 in the four weeks before the new site and SEO started (10/08 to 06/09/2026) to 26 in the first four weeks after (07/09 to 04/10/2026), from the client's Google Analytics. Those are visits, not mentions.
In order of impact, for most local businesses:
If you would rather have it done for you, our AI SEO service in Perth starts with that baseline and shows you the answers and the sources, not a made-up score.
SEO is ranking your pages in Google's list of results. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is getting your business named and linked in answers written by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. The foundations overlap heavily, so most Perth businesses should treat GEO as part of their SEO, not a separate project.
No. AI assistants with web search build their answers by searching the web and reading pages that are indexed, crawlable and trusted. A site that is hard to crawl or thin on facts loses in Google's results and in AI answers. GEO adds answer-first writing, third-party listings and measurement on top of normal SEO.
They search the web, read a handful of pages and write a summary. For local and agency questions, those pages are often directories, review sites and "best of" lists written by third parties rather than the businesses' own websites. Your Google Business Profile and reviews also carry heavy weight for local recommendations.
At Enkindle Group in Perth, AI SEO and GEO are included in every SEO retainer rather than sold separately. SEO retainers start from $1,000 including GST, billed every 4 weeks, and standalone retainers are rolling with no lock-in. The scope above that floor is quoted to the size of the site and the competition.
No. AI answers change from day to day and from person to person, so no one can honestly guarantee a mention. What a good provider can do is measure where you stand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, do the work that makes you easier to find and cite, and re-run the same questions four weeks later.
