What is Generative Engine Optimisation

The digital marketing meta has been clear: win at Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The goal was to build a single, towering skyscraper of authority—your website—so that Google would place it at the top of its ten blue links. This was a game of depth. You focused your resources on your domain, building its authority, content, and backlinks.

That era is over.

Welcome to the age of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). With the rise of AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, the game has fundamentally changed. When a user asks a question, they don't get a list of links; they get a synthesized answer. And to create that single answer, the Large Language Model (LLM) scans a vast landscape of information. It's not uncommon for an LLM to parse 50+ sources to form a confident conclusion.

Suddenly, having the single tallest skyscraper isn't enough. You need to be the trusted name mentioned positively in every neighborhood. Winning now requires a wide strategy.

The Two Pillars of Modern Search: Foundation and Narrative

GEO recognizes this new reality by balancing two critical components: your owned assets and the public conversation. You cannot succeed with just one.

1. The Foundation: Your Authoritative Source

This is the evolution of technical SEO. The goal is to make your own digital properties—primarily your website—perfectly structured, authoritative, and legible for AI crawlers. This involves:

• Rich Schema & Knowledge Graphs: Implementing structured data (like Product, FAQ, and Organization schemas) to give LLMs a clear, machine-readable profile of who you are and what you do.

• Authoritative Content: Developing content that directly answers the key questions your customers are asking, strengthening your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals.

• RAG Optimization: Ensuring your site is easily crawlable for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, which LLMs use to pull in real-time information to answer queries.

This foundation is crucial. It’s the factual source an LLM needs to validate claims6. But on its own, it's like having the world's best library with no one to recommend its books.

2. The Narrative: The Digital Word-of-Mouth

This is where GEO truly departs from traditional SEO. LLMs are designed to reflect human consensus. For trusted, qualitative recommendations, they look beyond corporate websites to the places where real people have conversations: forums, social media, and especially Reddit. Your brand's "narrative" is the story being told about you in these crucial online communities. If you aren't part of that conversation, you're invisible when a high-intent buyer asks an LLM, “Which brand is best for X?”.

But how do you build a widespread narrative, especially if you're a challenger brand fighting an incumbent or a market newcomer starting from scratch? You can't afford to wait years for it to develop organically.

Manufacture Your Narrative with Lindy GEO

This is where a targeted, strategic approach to shaping the public narrative becomes your unfair advantage. At Lindy, we solve this problem directly with our GEO Narrative Word-of-Mouth Package.

We've built a syndicated network of over 150 established, high-karma, aged Reddit accounts to engage authentically in the internet's most important communities. This isn't a spam campaign; it's a subtle, long-term strategy to build genuine credibility where it matters most.

Our process involves:

• Contextual Mentions: Strategically positioning your brand as a helpful solution in relevant problem-solving discussions13.

• Comparative Entries: Ensuring you are fairly and positively represented when users ask for "alternatives to" a market leader14. This is critical for challenger SaaS companies stuck in a paid ad war they can't win.

• Question Seeding: Asking the questions your brand is uniquely positioned to answer, creating organic opportunities for your strengths to be highlighted.

  
  

For a market newcomer facing the "cold start problem," this service is the entire game. We manufacture your "Day 1" reputation, creating the user-generated data that both humans and LLMs use to establish trust in a new brand. The result is a powerful narrative that guides LLMs to see you as the best option, which simultaneously boosts your organic presence and builds a lasting brand.

The Feedback Loop: Why Wide + Deep is Unbeatable

Focusing only on your foundation means LLMs will still look to Reddit for the "real story" and might not find you19. Focusing only on narrative is like building a reputation on hearsay; without an authoritative source to back it up, an LLM's confidence in recommending you will be low.

The Full Stack GEO approach creates a powerful feedback loop. Our Narrative campaign generates the social proof and conversational data that LLMs crave. This, in turn, drives them to your website—the Foundation—to find the authoritative, factual source they need to validate and cite that information.

The search landscape has changed. To win, you must be both the definitive source and the consensus choice. It's time to stop thinking only about depth and start building width.

> > Curious what Reddit threads are defining your brand? Get a Free LLM Brand Audit. We’ll test 50+ critical queries across major AI platforms to show you your current visibility and sentiment—no strings attached. [Contact Us for Your Free Audit]