How to do GEO for eCommerce brands
If you've spent the last year hearing terms like GEO, AI search, AI Overviews and agentic commerce thrown around, you're not alone.
As platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot become a bigger part of the buying journey, brands are starting to wonder whether traditional SEO is enough anymore.The answer is yes. But it's no longer the whole story.
At Block & Tam, we view Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as an extension of SEO, not a replacement for it. Strong SEO helps search engines crawl, index, rank and surface your content. GEO helps AI systems understand, summarize and recommend your brand.
For eCommerce brands, both matter.
The good news is that if you've been investing in SEO, you've already been laying the groundwork for GEO. The challenge is that AI introduces new priorities and brands that adapt early will be better positioned as AI becomes a bigger part of product discovery.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing your brand and content so AI systems can clearly understand, accurately summarize and confidently reference your business.
Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on rankings, traffic and clicks, GEO focuses on visibility within AI-generated answers.
Think about the difference between these two scenarios:
Traditional SEO: A customer searches Google, clicks your website and completes a purchase.
GEO: A customer asks ChatGPT for the best carry-on luggage for international travel and your brand is included in the answer before they ever visit your site.
Both journeys can lead to revenue. The difference is where discovery happens.
For eCommerce brands, GEO is becoming increasingly important because AI tools are starting to influence purchase decisions long before a user reaches a search result or product page.
How to build a GEO strategy
The good news is that GEO is not an entirely new discipline. Many of the things that make a website successful in traditional search also help it perform well in AI-powered experiences. Technical SEO, structured data, internal linking and high-quality content all contribute to both.
However, GEO places additional emphasis on entity optimization (over strict keyword strategy), content clarity, off-site authority and agentic commerce readiness.
Here's where we recommend starting.
Step 1: Audit your brand as an entity
Before AI can recommend your brand, it needs to understand what your brand actually is.
In GEO, brands, products and categories are all considered entities. An entity is a clearly defined thing that AI can recognize and distinguish from other things.
The first step is understanding how AI currently sees your brand. Ask questions like:
How does ChatGPT describe us?
How does Perplexity describe us?
What categories does AI associate us with?
How are competitors being positioned?
Then compare those answers to how you position yourself on your own website.
For example, if you're a premium travel luggage brand but AI consistently describes you as a general bag company, there's a disconnect that needs to be addressed.
Your entity audit should include both on-site and off-site signals.
On-site entity auditing
Review your homepage, About page, collection pages, product pages and blog content. Your website should clearly communicate:
What your brand is
Who your products are for
What categories you operate in
What makes you different
AI systems rely on clarity. If your positioning is vague, AI will fill in the blanks itself.
Off-site entity auditing
AI models don't rely exclusively on your website.
They also pull information from:
Publisher mentions
Review sites
Reddit discussions
Industry publications
Social profiles
Directory listings
Consistency across these sources matters. If different sources describe your brand in different ways, AI has a harder time confidently recommending you.
Step 2: Perform an agentic-readiness audit on your site
AI isn't just summarizing information anymore.
Increasingly, AI systems are being built to compare products, evaluate options and eventually complete purchases on behalf of users.
This shift is often referred to as agentic commerce.
An agentic-readiness audit helps determine whether your store is prepared for these emerging shopping experiences.
Some of the most important areas to review include:
AI crawler accessibility
Structured data implementation
Product feed quality
Merchant Center setup
Product categorization
Checkout experience
Product attribute completeness
For Shopify brands specifically, this may also include reviewing Agentic Storefront settings, category metafields and product grouping configurations.
While agentic commerce is still evolving, the brands that prepare now will be better positioned as these experiences become more mainstream.
Step 3: Optimize your site so that it’s technically-ready for LLM retrieval
Traditional search engines crawl and rank content, Large Language Models need to understand it. That means making it as easy as possible for AI systems to access, interpret and extract information from your website.
Some of the most important technical considerations include:
Make content available in HTML
Many AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript as effectively as Google.
If important product information only appears after JavaScript loads, AI systems may never see it.
Implement structured data
Structured data helps machines understand key information such as:
Product names
Pricing
Availability
Reviews
Categories
Brand relationships
The clearer these signals are, the easier your content is to interpret.
Improve page speed
Fast websites create a better user experience and are also easier for AI systems to crawl efficiently. As AI search continues to evolve, technical health remains one of the strongest foundations for visibility.
Step 3: Strengthen your site structure
One of the most overlooked GEO opportunities is site architecture. Strong site structure doesn't just help users navigate your website, it helps AI understand the relationship between your products, categories and brand.
Think about how your collections are organized and ask yourself if agents can easily understand:
Which categories are primary categories
Which categories are subcategories
Which products belong to which category
How categories relate to one another
Internal linking plays a huge role here. When related categories consistently link to one another and products are clearly connected to their parent collections, you reinforce those relationships for both search engines and AI systems.
Breadcrumbs, navigation menus and contextual internal links all help create a stronger understanding of your site's hierarchy.
Step 4: Build an agentic-ready content plan
Content remains one of the strongest GEO levers available to eCommerce brands. The difference is that AI systems often prefer content that is easy to extract, summarize and cite. That means creating content that directly answers the questions customers are asking. Some of the highest-impact content types include:
Collection page content
Collection pages help define categories and reinforce category relationships and well-written collection copy can improve both traditional rankings and AI understanding.
Product page content
When it comes to products, the more specific you are, the easier it becomes for AI to recommend your products in response to detailed shopping queries. Product pages should clearly explain:
What the product is
Who it's for
Key materials
Key features
Use cases
Product differentiators
Blog content
Though informational topics covered by blogs are being featured less often in LLMs themselves, they remain one of the best opportunities for AI visibility in traditional Google Search, AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Definition articles, buying guides, FAQs, comparison content and educational resources all create opportunities to appear in AI-generated answers. When someone asks an AI assistant a question, these are often the types of pages being referenced.
Step 5: Think outside of the site
One of the biggest differences between SEO and GEO is how much off-site information matters. AI systems often rely on third-party validation when deciding which brands to recommend and that means your GEO strategy cannot stop at your website.
Some of the most important off-site activities include:
Digital PR
Product reviews
Publisher mentions
Reddit participation
Industry coverage
Brand consistency across platforms
In fact, many AI citations come from third-party sources rather than brand-owned websites. The stronger your off-site footprint becomes, the more confidence AI systems have when recommending your brand.
These signals also help establish the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) that AI systems and search engines use to evaluate brand credibility. Consistent positive mentions, expert reviews, authoritative media coverage, and strong customer sentiment all reinforce E-E-A-T signals, increasing the likelihood that your brand will be cited and recommended in AI-generated responses.
eCommerce GEO optimization tips
Optimizing for GEO doesn't always require major changes. Sometimes small improvements can make your content significantly easier for AI systems to understand.
Structure product details clearly: Product specifications should be easy to scan. Use tables, bullets and clearly labeled sections wherever possible. AI systems extract information more reliably from structured formats than large blocks of text.
Get product descriptions right: Focus on use cases, materials, target audiences and differentiators. The more context you provide, the easier it becomes for AI to match your products to specific user queries.
Use descriptive headings: Strong headings help both users and machines understand page structure. They also make content easier to summarize.
Build robust FAQs: FAQs provide clean, direct answers that AI systems can easily reference and surface in responses.
Create buying guides: Buying guides help answer comparison-based questions and often become valuable citation sources in AI search experiences.
Keep content updated: Fresh content tends to perform better in both traditional search and AI-driven experiences. Regular updates also reinforce trust and accuracy.
Be specific about who products are for: Generic descriptions are difficult for AI to use. Clearly communicating who a product is ideal for can improve visibility for long-tail and conversational queries.
Where organic search is headed for ecommerce brands
Despite all the attention GEO is getting, this is not the moment to abandon traditional SEO.
Ranking on page one still matters. In fact, many of the signals AI systems rely on are the same signals that have influenced organic search for years: technical health, authoritative content, strong site architecture and brand credibility.
The brands succeeding in GEO today are not replacing SEO, they're building on it.
As AI becomes a bigger part of product discovery, eCommerce brands need to think beyond rankings alone. The goal is no longer just to earn a click, it's to become a trusted source that search engines and AI systems feel confident recommending.
The future of organic search isn't SEO versus GEO. It's SEO and GEO working together to help brands earn visibility wherever customers are searching, browsing and asking questions.
Ready to take on GEO for your eCommerce brand? We can help!
