What actually moves the needle (and the hacks you can skip)

Create content worth citing

Google's strongest signal is non-commodity, people-first content: a unique point of view, first-hand experience, and a clear structure with headings and short sections. A first-hand take gets cited; a summary of what everyone already said does not. Answer the real question directly, then add the specifics only you can offer.

Keep the technical path clean

To be eligible in AI answers, a page must be indexable and servable with a snippet: crawlable, reasonably fast, readable on every device, with important content in text rather than locked behind JavaScript, and without needless duplicates. None of this is GEO-specific. It is the same clean technical base good SEO has always wanted.

The hacks you can skip

Per Google, you do not need an llms.txt file, you do not need to "chunk" your content into tiny pieces, you do not need special schema.org markup, and chasing inauthentic "mentions" does not help. Structured data is still worth keeping for rich results, but it is not a requirement for AI answers. Put the effort into the content instead.

Then measure

This is the piece classic SEO leaves out: are you actually named and cited, across the engines, over time? A single answer varies from run to run, so the honest signal is a rate across repeated checks, with the before and after when a rival flips to you. That measurement is the difference between hoping and knowing.