Has SEO Really Changed? Or Is GEO/AIO Just Clever Marketing?

Every week, another agency emails me with a “we’ve optimized for GEO” pitch.

Every conference panel warns that “SEO is dead.”

Every LinkedIn post declares that “traditional ranking strategies are obsolete.”

But here’s what I’m actually seeing:

SEO hasn’t fundamentally changed. Behavior has.

And that’s the only thing that matters.

THE HYPE VS. THE REALITY

Let me be direct: A lot of the panic around SEO is just clever marketing dressed up as industry insight.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is a real term for optimizing for LLMs and AI search results. AIO (AI-Optimized) is another consideration that involves optimizing for the AI ecosystem as a whole. But they’re not the revolution people are selling them as.

The revolution is simpler: Your ICP stopped Googling and started asking Claude.

That’s not a new algorithm. That’s a behavioral shift.

And yes, it changes how we think about content. But not in the way everyone thinks.

WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED

The old customer journey looked like this:

1. Problem emerges
2. Go to Google
3. Click through 5-7 results
4. Read blog post
5. Decide

The new customer journey looks like this:

1. Problem emerges
2. Open ChatGPT/Claude
3. Get a synthesized answer from multiple sources
4. Ask clarifying questions
5. Decide

That shift is massive. But not because the content needs to change. Because where the content lives and how it gets discovered has changed.

Your prospect isn’t Googling “how to set up Shopify.” They’re asking Claude: “Give me a step-by-step guide to setting up a Shopify store for a high-volume wholesale business. What are the biggest mistakes people make?”

Claude synthesizes the best content available and serves it back.

Your SEO-optimized blog post still matters. It just matters differently.

THE CORE HASN’T CHANGED (BUT THE DISTRIBUTION HAS)

Here’s what’s still true:

• Quality content that actually helps your audience wins
• Content that’s clear, specific, and well-written performs better
• Content that answers a real question (not gaming an algorithm) has staying power
• Content that people want to save, share, and reference matters

Here’s what’s different:

• Your content needs to be saveable (works well when copy-pasted into a prompt)
• Your content needs to be quotable (Claude pulls specific lines and attributes them)
• Your content needs to be optimized for AI discovery (showing up in LLM training data matters)
• Your content needs to work across multiple distribution channels (not just organic search)

The core of good marketing content? Unchanged. The way it moves through the world? That’s what shifted.

THIS IS A STRATEGY PROBLEM, NOT A TACTICS PROBLEM

Here’s where most teams get lost:

They panic about GEO/AIO and ask: “How do we optimize our blog for Claude?”

That’s the wrong question.

The right question is: “How does our actual ICP research and learn right now? And are we creating content that works in those channels?”

If your ICP is:

• Asking Claude questions → your content needs to be AI-discoverable AND synthesizable
• Scrolling LinkedIn → your content needs to work in that format
• Asking peers in Slack communities → your content needs to be shareable and quotable
• Watching YouTube → your content needs to work in video form

Most teams skip this step. They optimize for a channel without confirming that’s where their customer actually is.

And that’s a Strategy failure, not an SEO failure.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY

This ties back to something we talk about constantly: Do you actually know your ICP and their journey?

Because the customer journey isn’t the same for everyone. It’s changed differently depending on who you’re trying to reach.

A software developer researching “how to set up OAuth” is going to Claude.

A CMO researching “how to structure a marketing org” might be:

• Reading LinkedIn articles
• Asking in Slack communities
• Watching video case studies
• Listening to podcasts
• Reading books
• Asking their network

If you’re only optimizing for Google rankings, you’re missing most of the journey.

Here’s the strategic question you need to answer:

1. Where does your ICP actually research? (Google? Claude? LinkedIn? Slack? YouTube? Podcasts? All of the above?)
2. What content works in each channel? (A 2,000-word blog post works for Google. A 200-word LinkedIn post works for LinkedIn. A quotable insight works for Slack.)
3. Does your content strategy account for that? (Or are you still optimizing everything for Google rankings?)

THE PRACTICAL SHIFT

What we’ve changed at Disruptive:

Before: Write long-form, SEO-optimized blog posts and hope they rank.

Now: Create core content that:

• Is clear and helpful enough to rank
• Is synthesizable enough to be useful in AI (works when Claude pulls it)
• Is quotable enough to be shared in Slack communities
• Is adaptable enough to work in multiple formats (blog, LinkedIn, video, podcast snippet)

Same core message. Different distribution strategy.

We’re not abandoning SEO. We’re expanding how we think about where content lives and who discovers it.

TAKE THIS AND USE IT MONDAY

🎯 Map your actual customer journey:

1. Pick one persona from your ICP
2. Trace how they actually research (not how you think they do)
3. Note every channel they touch
4. Ask: Where are we NOT showing up?

📊 Audit your content:

1. Take your top 10 pieces of content
2. Test them: Are they AI-synthesizable? Quotable? Shareable?
3. Identify gaps: Which formats are we missing?

💾 Shift your strategy:

Create ONE piece of content that works across multiple channels:

• Core idea (saveable, shareable, quotable)
• Blog version (SEO-optimized)
• LinkedIn version (conversation-starting)
• Slack version (quotable insight)
• Video version (if relevant)

THE REAL INSIGHT

SEO hasn’t changed. Behavior has.

And the teams winning right now aren’t the ones obsessing over GEO or AIO terminology. They’re the ones who actually understand how their ICP researches and learns, and they’ve built a content strategy to meet them there.

That’s not a tactics shift. That’s a strategy shift.

And it all starts with knowing your customer’s actual journey—not the one you think they have, but the one they’re really living right now.

— Chad de Lisle
Head of Marketing, Disruptive Advertising

P.S. — I spoke about this on the SEO On Air roundtable discussion. The consensus was the same: the panic is marketing, the behavior change is real, and the fundamentals still matter. Quality content that helps your audience will always win—it just needs to work across more channels now.