Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring digital content so that it is accurately surfaced, correctly attributed, and meaningfully cited by AI-powered search systems, including ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews.
The difference between GEO and SEO
Traditional SEO optimizes for how a crawler indexes and ranks a page. GEO optimizes for how an AI model understands, summarizes, and credits that page when generating an answer. The signals are related but not identical. Both reward clear, well-organized content with strong factual grounding, but GEO places additional weight on structured data, semantic markup, machine-readable content indexes, and context that helps a model attribute a claim to the right source.
The connection between accessibility and GEO
Accessible and GEO-optimized web content shares more in common than most practitioners expect.
Descriptive alt text
Alt text written for screen readers is also the natural language description that an AI model reads when it encounters an image. Good alt text serves both audiences.
Semantic HTML and heading structure
A logical heading hierarchy helps both screen reader users and AI crawlers understand a page’s structure and relative importance. Heading structure is a signal; visual styling is not.
Clear, specific language
Content written in plain language with specific, verifiable claims is easier for both people with cognitive disabilities and AI models to process accurately.
Structured data markup
Schema.org markup gives AI crawlers explicit, machine-readable context. This is also a best practice for assistive technology compatibility.
llms.txt: the practical GEO implementation
A growing practice is publishing an llms.txt file at the site root, a curated, Markdown-formatted index that tells AI crawlers what content is worth citing and how the site is organized. accessiBe publishes /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt as part of its platform strategy. The llms.txt file provides AI search systems with a curated map of hub content. The full companion provides a Markdown concatenation of hub pages; the format AI models process most reliably. One file at the site root, maintained alongside content updates, meaningfully improves how AI search represents accessiBe’s platform.
