GEO Survival Guide: Evolving Your Focus and Metrics to Succeed

If the only constant in life is change, the rapid evolution of GEO certainly hits the mark. SEOs that once poured most of their mental resources into appeasing a singular search engine are now faced with a new paradigm: AIOs, AI Mode, and multiple generative engines. To make things even more challenging, all have moderate to distinct nuances in how they work and how to show up. 

One thing is clear to the SEO industry. We're all in a new game. How people query and consume information is changing daily. AIOs and LLMs have caused impressions to spike and clicks to drop. We aren’t going back to the era of 10 blue links, high traffic, and easier paths to ranking. Fighting back against this paradigm shift is futile. Evolving strategies, success metrics, and toolsets is the key to future-proofing and keeps brands from getting left behind. 

SEO best practices of the past are now a baseline expectation for LLM, AIO, and AI Mode appearances. 

SEO strategy is evolving–and with that, marketers need to develop a new set of skills. A well-optimized site with broad topic coverage and minimal technical errors won’t get you the clicks and SERP visibility that it once could. 

To succeed, marketers need to consider site structure, content relevancy, content freshness, ICP alignment, off-page signals, structured data, site speed, and EEAT. In addition, SEOs need to understand the nuances of the different LLMs and ensure that they are running gap analyses to improve their chances of showing up in multiple AEOs. 

Technical best practices are now a near requirement to get surfaced in LLMs. The overarching theme for LLM crawl and retrieval is contextualization. Content won’t be able to be effectively retrieved if the site is difficult to crawl, and even more difficult if the content is out of alignment with the needs of the ICP.

Organizations that do not dedicate resources to pruning irrelevant content, improving site structure, creating frictionless UX, and aligning content to JTBD frameworks will experience some struggles. 

Content needs to go beyond the surface of being “helpful” and meet users at their hair-pulling pain points.

TOFU (top of the funnel) content used to drive significant traffic (and not always the right traffic). This shift does not mean that TOFU content should be abandoned or removed altogether. It means that TOFU now serves a very different purpose than it used to. 

To maintain consistent AIO appearances (and to get retrieved by LLMs), your TOFU content as well as your content library need to be updated at a regular cadence. Pieces should not go more than 18 months without being refreshed and re-evaluated for relevancy. TOFU content freshness betters the chances that your brand is consistently showing up in AIOs and/or the traditional SERPs. 

What does this mean? The bar is a lot higher nowadays. Let’s talk about why relevancy is gaining even more spotlight than before. Google’s June updates appear to be yet another continuation of the Helpful Content Update. Instead of targeting the tangential, irrelevant piece á la shrug emoji, this update went a layer deeper and went after niche topics. Specifically, niche topics that are disconnected from a brand’s core capabilities and offerings. Zapier, centered on automation, lost significant page 1 positions for terms centered around link shorteners, ChatGPT, website builders, and video editors. Zapier and other SaaS companies have been penalized because the reality is, they don’t actually do these things.

TOFU content still plants a seed for brand awareness in the upper funnel. However, it’s the calculated JTBD and ICP-centric content that keeps a brand top of mind through the decision-making process. 

JTBD and ICP content need to be a core component of your strategy

Marketing roles rarely operate in a silo, so it makes sense that JTBD content needs to speak to how new solutions impact the greater whole. Business challenges are often multi-faceted, criss-crossing through layers of workflows and the greater organization. This is what makes JTBD and ICP content so valuable–it’s calculated and precise.

JTBD-style content enables broad coverage of the target persona’s pain points, key responsibilities and needs, and industry challenges. It’s intended to elicit an emotional response and act as a mirror into their experiences. This content is built for humans who are experiencing the exact challenge the content lays out and provides solutions connected to the brand’s product. This is the content that will thrive in today’s new search paradigm. It’s made by humans for humans. 

Done well, JTBD and ICP-aligned content should educate your audience about the specific problems they're trying to solve and guide them toward the right solutions. Your goal is to help users understand not just what you offer, but why it matters to their particular situation, which makes the buying decision feel natural and straightforward.

Your off-page reputation can burn you if you don’t monitor the narrative 

Review sites were always important for decision-making. Now, they’re tightly interwoven and an unmissable step. LLMs are using these signals from across the web to contextualize sentiment around your brand. Negative buzz in UGC like Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, bad press in competitor comparison articles, and less-than-stellar reviews hurt your chances of showing up in LLMs.

While you can’t control the narrative per se, you can monitor and influence in the areas that are within your control. This is where distribution and LLM gap analyses play a role. Content distribution, whether through owned or paid channels, allows the opportunity for brands to own their narrative. Brands that consistently show up and share their voice stay top of mind when users are getting ready to make a buying decision. 

If users are citing issues with specific features or functionality, create help topics to alleviate friction for those issues. You can query LLMs about your brand to extract this data, encourage happy users to leave reviews, and actively engage in online communities to support struggling users. 

Old, established success metrics won’t convey the true impacts of the GEO era

Traditional metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and traffic remain valuable, but they're gradually losing their role as the definitive measures of SEO success. The emergence of Search Generative Experience (SGE) and ChatGPT has fundamentally altered the search landscape. AI-powered search features are capturing clicks that previously went to websites, while impression volumes surge without corresponding traffic gains. Many brands are experiencing traffic declines of up to 40% year-over-year, directly impacting revenue.

This represents the most significant shift in search behavior we've seen in over a decade. SEO professionals who haven't evolved beyond traditional metrics and developed skills to connect SEO performance to broader business outcomes are finding themselves at a disadvantage.

The landscape demands new approaches: success metrics have evolved, strategic priorities have shifted, and the skillset required for effective SEO has expanded. While creating valuable, user-focused content remains central to SEO strategy, how we measure and demonstrate that value has fundamentally changed.

Traffic needs to be efficient

Now that clicks are harder to get, traffic efficiency is the focus. Getting the right traffic has always mattered, but maximizing on-page engagement for the traffic that you do bring to your site matters even more.  

While AIOs and AEOs can generate clicks, that number is significantly lower now that information that was once consumed in a long-form blog is returned in bulleted points generated by LLMs. MOFU (middle of the funnel) and BOFU (bottom of the funnel) are significantly more competitive as LLMs return links for these queries, and your brand’s appearance depends on far more evaluation points than the traditional SERP. 

This is why attribution is critical when you’re determining just how efficient your traffic is. It’s not enough to say that more relevant traffic=more conversions. You need to go a layer deeper. Look at channels carefully to determine which ones perform the best, and work to answer the question “why?” This will help refine how you allocate resources to each channel. 

More importantly, is your data clean and tidy? If the answer is no, then you could be spending inefficiently on a channel that is deceptively A+, but a B- at best. 

Here is where we’re focusing as success indicators

At Ten Speed, we use the C.L.E.A.R. framework to evaluate how organic success is laddering up to business impacts. It helps us center all of our strategic recommendations around the most critical business KPIs.

• Conversion - What kind of leads come directly and indirectly from all of our organic inputs?
• Loyalty - Are we fostering brand loyalty and at the same time, retaining customers through our content? 
• Engagement - How and where are people interacting with our company and brand?
• Awareness - How is our holistic online visibility and brand awareness growing?
• Reputation - Are we establishing ourselves as a top authority in our competitive ecosystem?

The framework described above relies on accurate first-party data to measure success effectively. Strong attribution is paramount to having the right resource allocations in your content strategy. 

This is the 10-k-foot view of the more granular metrics that we’ll explore below. The C.L.E.A.R. framework enables us to examine a mix of Authority Content, Research Reports, Guides, Core Pages, and Blogs, and distribute them in a way that will be most effective for our clients. 

New metrics to focus on in an AEO Era

Like Heraclitus said, “...the only constant in life is change.” So why would SEO metrics and tactics remain the same forever? With less traffic, we need to focus on metrics that indicate engagement, brand awareness, share of voice, and LLM visibility. Search has evolved, so the metrics we focus on have to evolve, too. 

Engaged sessions

Engaged sessions indicate the user is resonating with your content because they came, they browsed through a few pages, and completed a key event. 

New users

This indicates that your brand is attracting new eyes–a signal that you’re showing up in more of the right places. 

Site section performance

SEOs apply their analyses across multiple site sections, ranging from the core pages to demo pages to the content library. Measure how each section is performing in the AEOs and keep refining for maximum impact. 

Traffic from LLMs 

If you are getting LLM traffic, this is great news, and you can continue to maximize it. If you aren’t, it’s time for a competitive analysis to understand what gaps you need to fill to show up. 

Branded clicks

Branded clicks indicate that you’re showing up in the upper funnel and being remembered in the decision-making process. 

Engagement rate

This is the percentage of engaged sessions against the traffic to your site. Pay close attention to it —it’s an indicator of alignment and relevancy. A low or declining score could mean that your content is not clicking with your ICP. 

AIO keyword by page

While AIOs aren’t going to get you clicks, not getting AIO appearances can create significant challenges for your lower-funnel visibility and brand awareness. This is because losing TOFU coverage is going to impact a brand in the consideration and evaluation stage. Ergo, if your company has not shown up throughout the process of solving for pain points, it won’t be part of the buying decision stages. Make sure to assess which pages show up in AIOs and see if it’s necessary to expand TOFU coverage or maintain it. 

LLM traffic sources 

While most modern LLMs handle complex, long-tail queries, each model varies significantly in processing and response generation. Understanding your LLM traffic sources can help you optimize content for greater visibility across AI-powered searches. Understanding your LLM traffic sources can help you optimize for greater visibility in these searches. 

Multi-channel traffic (LLM, Direct, Organic)

Organic traffic alone is no longer a complete success indicator. Cookie opt-ins can cause organic traffic to count as direct, and LLM traffic reaches your site after performing queries, but not from traditional search engines. It's best to combine these three metrics for a clearer picture of site performance and user behavior. Cookie opt-ins can cause organic traffic to count as direct, and LLM traffic is still reaching your site after performing a query, but not from a traditional search engine. It’s best to combine these three to have a clear picture of site performance and user behavior.  

Tying it all together: Surviving in a GEO world

SEO best practices are now baseline expectations for appearing in LLMs and AIOs. To begin optimizing for AI visibility, run a content decay analysis across your marketing site, conduct a gap analysis, review your site's structure, and implement schema markup where appropriate.

SERP coverage tactics of the past still apply for GEO, but the bar is higher. SEOs need to communicate the importance of new success metrics, the importance of off-page reputation, the greater need for authoritative content, and the importance of on-page user experience. All of these ladder up to business impacts, and SEOs are getting a more impactful seat at the table. 

Ready to evolve your success metrics?  

At Ten Speed, we help B2B companies create high-impact content assets that focus on building strong connections with ICPs throughout their search journey. 

If you’re ready to revamp your metrics for success, let's talk.