Since the turn of the 21st century, marketers have been obsessing about showing up in Google and the corresponding website traffic. Now, as AI search takes hold and generative engine optimization (GEO) becomes the new frontier, does search engine optimization (SEO) still matter for professional services firms?

The short answer is, “A little bit.”

The longer answer is, “It never really mattered all that much for long consideration purchases because virtually no one lands on a website and decides to spend six or seven figures on an advisory relationship, but professional services marketers did SEO anyway because it was the first time in our professional lives that marketing was measurable. Now it matters even less.”

AI Search is not the next evolution of SEO

In our recently released research report on GEO readiness, one in five professional services leaders agrees with the statement that “GEO is just the next evolution of SEO.” This mindset will work for now, but you’ll soon find your brand slipping further and further behind.

The analogy we use in the GEO era is that SEO is like a sparkplug. Without the sparkplug, the car (GEO in this analogy) is largely useless… but you can’t drive the sparkplug to where you’re going. 

Of course, you still need to tend to SEO basics to make your site easy for search engines to crawl, understand and trust. That means clear page structure, useful keyword-aligned content, fast load times and strong technical hygiene.

But keyword-driven SEO content? Please stop.

Begging for backlinks from other websites? Not a good use of your time.

Bending over backwards to please the search algorithms rather than providing the emotion and authenticity that humans crave? A complete misfire.

Really, the overfocus on SEO is a problem of our own doing. Over the last 25 years, we’ve convinced other non-marketing business leaders to trust surface-level metrics that really didn’t matter and they got addicted to the easy metric of website traffic.

Now, we have to wean them off that addiction and move them toward the idea of “share of model”—keeping track of how you show up in the various AI models as opposed to how your competitors show up.

AI search requires a new mental model

We’ve all been trained to drive people to our website but at this stage of the internet, people don’t want to go zigzagging all over the place; they want to consume content where they are. They have their favored few websites, which is where they spend their time and what they trust. Increasingly, one of those favored few websites is an AI answer engine—which means we need to show up there.

SEO mattered because search engines sent people to websites.

GEO matters because LLMs generate the answer themselves.

That means that your firm’s visibility is determined by your total digital footprint, not just your website. Your content must be both concise and complete, and it should be distributed widely … not just on your website.

(A brief aside: If someone tells you that “authority” equals a 1,500-word blog post, we recommend that you fire that person or firm immediately. They don’t know what they’re talking about. “Authority” has never been a math equation; it’s about knowing your shit and saying it in a compelling way.)

GEO is holistic. Messier. More human. And far harder to game.

When we show up, we need to present ourselves as both smart and credible; too often, SEO-oriented content undermines the trust that professional services firms must build with prospects. 

GEO first movers are generating business opportunities

The marketers who have embraced GEO early are already seeing outsized benefits—97% reported that they have at least one inbound lead directly from AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Two-thirds of respondents said they have multiple leads from AI engines.

GEO is not some theory that you should consider for some time down the road. Early adopters are establishing a moat that latecomers will struggle to cross, similar to how early SEO adopters built 15-year competitive advantages. If you don’t get started today, catching up will likely become a grueling and expensive slog.

Growing beyond the SEO mindset

As we move into the future, SEO is a relatively small piece of the puzzle for your firm’s online visibility. The puzzle pieces that make up an effective GEO strategy for a professional services firm include:

• Thought leadership content to demonstrate the power of your experts’ thinking
• Social media (mostly LinkedIn) for distributing that thinking and creating engagement
• Media relations to widely distribute your thought leadership and build credibility and trust by being vetted by reputable media
• Well-formatted and frequently updated content on your website to get your firm cited in LLMs (and, yes, this includes following SEO fundamentals)

There are other potential channels to distribute your thought leadership content and build your online visibility—video, podcasts, etc.—but this list above should be your starting point for demonstrating the depth of your firm’s expertise on the topics your prospects and clients care about.

Having success with GEO demands moving beyond SEO. It demands that we embrace the idea that we don’t know exactly what those irrational human creatures that are our clients are looking for, and focus our efforts on trying to help them. We have to cultivate the human skills that AI cannot replicate—clear thinking, sharp writing, provocative expertise.

This is not easy work. But if you’re willing to do the mental pushups that others will shy away from, you’ll win.