Related podcast episode (it’s a bit sweary):
I had a conversation with a potential client recently. They’d found me on ChatGPT and wanted to know what I’d done to get there.
“SEO,” I said.
“Yeah, but what did you do specifically to be on AI Search?”
“SEO.”
“Yeah but you must have done something differently.”
“Literally, I did the same SEO I do for my clients.”
They went with someone else. Someone on LinkedIn who offered “AEO and GEO as well as SEO” and charged three times as much.
Fill your boots, mate.
I posted about this on LinkedIn and got some responses that kinda made me sad. People I like and respect admitted, on the post and by DM, they’d “reluctantly” added GEO to their headlines. One said it “took more thought than expected” but they’d done it for “clarity and positioning.” Another said their “skills are better represented” now. A third told me they’d resisted for months but finally caved because they were tired of losing pitches to people offering the same thing with fancier terminology.
And I get it. I really do. When potential clients are choosing someone charging triple your rate because they’ve stuck three letters in their headline, the temptation to play the same game must be enormous.
But it really, really bothers me, and this is why: if your skills haven’t changed, how are they “better represented” by adding a buzzword? If you’re doing the same (good) work you were doing six months ago, what “clarity” does GEO add?
We know better – that’s what makes this worse
If you’ve read anything I’ve written about GEO over the past year, you’ll know I think the whole concept is marketing bollocks. I called it out in “What the fuck is GEO?” back in April 2025. I went after the self-proclaimed experts in June 2025. And in January this year, Danny Sullivan from Google pretty much confirmed what I’d been saying all along – GEO is just SEO with a shiny new acronym. The guidance is the same. The work is the same. The made-up terminology is just marketing.
So when SEOs – people who should know this (and I’m pretty sure they do) – add GEO to their headlines anyway, it pisses me right off.
Not because I’m judging them personally. I genuinely understand the pressure. When grifters are out there charging thousands for “AI optimisation” that amounts to basic content structure, and clients are falling for it, staying principled feels like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
But every SEO who adds GEO to their headline makes the problem worse. Every one of us who plays along validates the lie. We make it harder for clients to tell the difference between someone doing legitimate work and someone who’s repackaged the same services with trendy terminology.
Our job is to educate, not just sell
I know I sound preachy, and I kinda hate myself for it, but I can’t help it (trust me, I’ve tried). Part of being seen as an expert in your field is not just doing the work, but also educating people. Helping them understand what they’re paying for and why.
When a client asks me what I did to appear in AI search results, I tell them the truth: good SEO. When they push back, I explain that optimising for search engines is pretty much the same as optimising for AI search – the fundamentals don’t change just because there’s a chatbot on the other end. When they’re sceptical, I show them the results I’ve achieved without doing anything at all specifically for AI – just the same SEO that works. When the SEO that works changes, then I’ll change what I do, and not until.
That’s harder than just nodding along and adding “GEO specialist” to my invoice. But it’s honest. And in the long run, it builds the kind of trust that keeps clients coming back instead of chasing the next shiny thing.
When we add GEO to our headlines, we’re not educating anyone. We’re reinforcing the idea that there’s something meaningfully different about “AI optimisation” – something that requires separate expertise and justifies separate pricing. We’re telling clients that their confusion is justified, that this really is a whole new discipline, that the hustlebros selling GEO services might actually be onto something.
They’re not. We know they’re not. And by playing along, we make it harder for clients to figure that out.
I don’t have the answer, but I know this isn’t it
I’m not going to pretend I’ve cracked the code on how to compete with people charging triple for identical services wrapped in buzzwords. If I had, I’d be writing a very different post.
Maybe the answer is being louder about calling this stuff out. Maybe it’s writing more content that helps business owners understand what they’re really paying for. Maybe it’s finding better ways to demonstrate value that don’t require playing terminology games.
What I do know is that adding three letters to a LinkedIn headline ain’t it.
Every time someone asks me about GEO, I have an opportunity to explain why the term exists, who benefits from it, and what the work actually involves. That conversation might lose me some clients who want to believe in magic. But it might also build trust with clients who appreciate straight talk.
I’d rather be the SEO who told them the truth than the one who took their money and validated their confusion.
The SEO industry created this mess
If we’re honest, this mess is kind of our own (SEOs) fault. The reason GEO grifters have been so successful is that the SEO industry has historically been terrible at explaining what we do. We’ve hidden behind jargon, made simple things sound complicated, and treated our work like dark magic that only the initiated can understand.
That created the perfect environment for someone to come along with a new acronym and convince business owners that everything they knew about SEO was suddenly obsolete. “Oh, you’ve been doing SEO? That’s cute. But have you heard about GEO? It’s completely different. You need a specialist.”
It’s not completely different. It’s not some new technique that is totally different to what good SEOs have been doing for a decade or more. But when our industry has spent so long being deliberately opaque, can we really blame clients for falling for it?
Adding GEO to our headlines doesn’t fix this. It makes it worse. It’s another layer of jargon, another barrier between business owners and understanding what they’re actually paying for.
So what now?
I’m not going to add GEO to my headline. Not because I’m morally superior, but because I genuinely believe it would make me part of a problem I’ve spent the last year complaining about. I’d feel like a hypocrite, and frankly, I’ve got enough to feel guilty about without adding that to the list.
Will it cost me clients? Probably. Will some of those clients end up paying someone else three times as much for identical work? Almost certainly.
But if I’m going to lose clients, I’d rather lose them while being honest about what I do than win them by playing the same games as the people I’ve been calling out.
To the SEOs who’ve added GEO to their headlines – I’m not trying to pick on you. I’m just sad. Sad that the industry has created a situation where good people feel they have to do this to compete. Sad that clients are being trained to look for buzzwords instead of expertise. Sad that every time one of us plays along, it gets a little bit harder to push back.
I don’t know how we fix this. But I’m pretty sure adding more letters to our headlines isn’t it.
