The S-E-T Framework: Structure, Explainability, and Trustworthiness in GEO GEO Strategy

The Big Shift: Why Your Old SEO Playbook Is Becoming Obsolete

Beyond the Ten Blue Links: Welcome to the Age of AI-Powered Answers

The way customers in India find businesses is undergoing a seismic shift. Imagine a potential client in Delhi planning an event. A few years ago, they would have typed "caterers in Delhi" into Google and scrolled through a list of ten blue links. Today, that same customer is more likely to ask their phone, "What are the best budget-friendly caterers in South Delhi for a small party?". Instead of a list of links, they get a direct, summarised answer. This is the new reality of search, powered by Artificial Intelligence, and it demands a new strategy.  

This new field is called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. It’s crucial to clarify what GEO means in this context. It is not about geo-targeting, which focuses on location-based advertising, nor is it about geostrategy, which deals with geopolitics. Generative Engine Optimization is the art and science of making a brand's content the primary source for the direct answers provided by AI systems like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Gemini. 

Think of it this way: traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was about getting an invitation to the party. A high ranking meant a industry was on the list. GEO, on the other hand, is about becoming the guest of honour that everyone at the party wants to quote. The goal is no longer just for a link to be seen, but for the information to be used and cited directly by the AI. This is especially critical in the Indian market, where over 750 million people use the internet primarily on mobile devices, often preferring conversational voice queries, and where 70% of Gen Z already turns to generative AI for quick answers.  

SEO vs. GEO: Understanding the Fundamental Differences for Your Business

To succeed in this new era, businesses must understand that GEO is not just an extension of SEO; it's an evolution. The strategic focus has fundamentally changed.

• From Keywords to Conversations: Traditional SEO has been heavily reliant on targeting precise keywords, like "best hotels Kerala." GEO, however, is designed for the conversational, natural language queries that users now prefer. It optimises for questions like, "What are the best hotels in Kerala to stay for a family?" This requires a more in-depth understanding of user intent, not just the words they type.  
• From Content for Humans to Content for AI & Humans: For years, the mantra was "write for humans, not search engines." GEO modifies this. Content must now be created for machines first—structured in a way that AI can smoothly parse, understand, and summarise. Only then can it be presented effectively to humans as a direct answer.  
• From Backlinks to Broader Authority Signals: While backlinks remain essential, their role as the primary signal of authority is diminishing. GEO considers a much wider array of signals to determine credibility. AI models are trained on the entire web, giving significant weight to unlinked brand mentions in reputable articles, the sentiment of online reviews, and expert discussions on forums like Quora and Reddit.  

This represents a paradigm shift from a strategy of discoverability to one of authority. The primary goal is no longer to earn a click, but to be cited by the AI as the definitive source of information. This shift has a democratising effect; websites with lower domain authority but exceptionally well-structured, authoritative content can now be featured in AI-generated answers, creating an opportunity for smaller, expert-led Indian businesses to compete with larger incumbents. However, this also means that once an AI model identifies a few trusted authorities, it may repeatedly feature them, making early adoption of a robust GEO strategy a critical competitive advantage.  

The S-E-T Framework: Your Blueprint for GEO Success

The Three Pillars of a Future-Proof Digital Strategy

Navigating this new landscape requires a clear, actionable plan. At Public Media Solution, we have designed the S-E-T Framework to guide businesses toward GEO success. This framework is built on three interconnected pillars: Structure, Explainability, and Trustworthiness. Mastering these three areas ensures a brand becomes the clear, confident, and correct choice for AI engines looking for information to share with users.  

Pillar 1: Structure - Building a Foundation AI Can Understand and Process

For an AI to trust and use content, it must first be able to read and comprehend it flawlessly. The Structure pillar is the technical foundation that makes this possible.

Making Your Website Machine-Readable with Structured Data

Structured data, often implemented using Schema markup, is a form of code that explains what the content is about. Think of it as adding detailed tags to the information on a website. It’s like putting a price tag, ingredient list, and nutritional information on a product in a supermarket; it gives the shopkeeper (the AI) all the context needed to understand what is being offered. For Indian businesses, this has practical applications: an e-commerce site can use Product schema to define the price and availability of its sarees, a Mumbai-based restaurant can use Restaurant schema to detail its menu and opening hours, and a healthcare portal can use MedicalCondition schema to clarify the nature of its medical articles.  

Technical SEO for a New Breed of Crawlers

The fundamentals of technical SEO are more important than ever in the age of GEO. AI models use specialised web crawlers, like GPTBot and Google-Extended, to gather information. A website’s robots.txt file must be configured to allow these bots access. Furthermore, a fast-loading, mobile-friendly website is non-negotiable in India's mobile-first market. A secure HTTPS connection is a basic signal of professionalism and trust. Finally, a well-organised site architecture, using topic clusters and descriptive URLs, helps AI models understand the relationships between different pieces of content, establishing a brand's topical authority.  

Pillar 2: Explainability - Crafting Content for AI Summaries and Direct Answers

Once the technical structure is in place, the content itself must be crafted to be easily explained and summarised by an AI. This pillar focuses on content strategy and formatting.

Answer the Question First: The Inverted Pyramid Method

This classic journalistic principle is now a cornerstone of GEO. Content should provide the most critical information—the direct answer to a user's likely question—at the very beginning of an article or section. AI models often extract these introductory sentences to use as quick, direct replies in their answers. This approach is powerfully complemented by using question-based headings (e.g., "How Can I Improve My E-E-A-T?") and creating dedicated FAQ sections marked up with FAQPage schema, which allows AI to identify distinct question-and-answer pairs.  

Making Your Content "Snippable" and Easy to Digest

AI models look for concise, self-contained pieces of information, or "snippets," that they can easily extract. Content must be structured for skimmability, using quick paragraphs, bullet points, and numbered lists. It's also vital to embed "snippable facts" throughout the text. A statement like, "A 2024 survey showed 78% of marketers saw ROI within three months," is a perfect, verifiable data point that an AI can pull verbatim to support its generated answer.  

Beyond Text: The Growing Role of Multimedia in GEO

Generative AI is increasingly multimodal, meaning it can process more than just text. High-quality images with descriptive alt text, well-structured data tables, and videos with clear titles and descriptions can all be interpreted and used by AI systems. For example, an AI might summarise the data in a comparison table or describe the contents of an image in its response, providing another avenue for visibility.  

Pillar 3: Trustworthiness - Becoming the Authority AI Cites and Recommends

The final and most crucial pillar is Trustworthiness. An AI will only cite sources it deems credible and authoritative. This pillar is about building and signalling that authority across the digital ecosystem.

E-E-A-T: The Gold Standard for Building Trust with AI and Humans

Google's E-E-A-T framework—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—is the foundation of this pillar.  

• Experience: Demonstrate firsthand knowledge. A local Indian travel agency should publish detailed blog posts from its agents about a recent trip to the Andaman Islands, sharing unique insights and photos.  
• Expertise: Showcase the credentials of the content creators. Every article should have a detailed author bio with a photo, credentials, and links to their LinkedIn profile or other publications.  
• Authoritativeness: This is about reputation. It is built when other credible sources recognise and mention the brand.
• Trustworthiness: Be transparent. A website needs a clear "About Us" page, a physical contact address, and a policy of citing all data and sources used in its content.  

Ultimately, the S-E-T framework is the practical application of E-E-A-T for machine consumption. Structure makes the content technically legible, Explainability makes its meaning clear and summarizable, and Trustworthiness provides the external validation signals. It translates the abstract principles of E-E-A-T into concrete actions that AI can measure and reward.

The New Backlink: Why Brand Mentions and Digital PR are Crucial

In the GEO landscape, an unlinked mention of a brand in a high-authority publication can be as valuable as a traditional backlink. AI models are sophisticated enough to associate a brand name with its area of expertise without needing a hyperlink. This makes digital public relations a core component of any effective GEO strategy. Securing features and mentions in reputable online newspapers, industry magazines, and expert blogs sends one of the strongest possible authority signals to AI systems.  

The Power of Social Proof and Community Footprint

AI models don't just learn from websites; they learn from conversations. They actively scan online review media like Google and Trustpilot, as well as community forums such as Reddit and Quora, to understand public sentiment and consensus about a brand. Therefore, actively managing online reviews—reacting professionally to both positive and negative feedback—and participating helpfully in relevant online communities are essential activities for shaping the AI's perception of a brand's authority and trustworthiness.  

Putting GEO into Practice: An Action Plan for Indian Businesses

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing the S-E-T Framework

Adopting the S-E-T framework can be approached systematically.

1. Audit Your AI Presence: Begin by asking generative AI platforms key questions related to the business. See which sources are cited and where the brand stands in comparison to competitors.  
2. Implement Structure: Conduct a technical audit. Implement relevant Schema markup, ensure the robots.txt file is friendly to AI crawlers, and optimise for site speed and mobile-friendliness.
3. Enhance Explainability: Revamp the most important pages. Start with the homepage and key service pages. Rewrite introductions to provide a direct answer first, and break up lengthy blocks of text with headings, bullet points, and FAQs.
4. Build Trustworthiness: Create detailed author pages for content creators. Launch a digital PR campaign to earn high-quality brand mentions and actively start managing online reviews.

Local GEO: Winning the "Near Me" Search in the AI Era

The Convergence of GEO and Geo-Targeting

For the vast majority of Indian businesses, the customer base is local. This is where Generative Engine Optimization must become hyperlocal. Voice searches, which are increasingly popular in India's mobile-first economy, are heavily skewed toward local intent, with users asking questions like "restaurants open near me" or "nearest petrol pump".  

Optimizing Your Digital Footprint for Local AI Queries

The signals that have long been crucial for ranking in Google's local map pack are now the primary training data for AI determining local prominence. A fully optimised Google Business Profile (GBP) is therefore the most critical element of a local GEO strategy. This includes ensuring the Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) are consistent everywhere online, publishing regular posts and offers, and actively answering questions in the Q&A section. Indian brands are already demonstrating the power of this approach. Companies like Urban Company, which connects users with local service professionals, and Kalyan Jewellers have used hyperlocal digital strategies to drive enormous foot traffic and lead generation, cementing their status as local authorities in the eyes of both customers and the AI models learning from their digital footprint.  

Voice Search and Regional Languages: The Next Frontier for GEO in India

The next wave of GEO in India will be driven by voice and vernacular languages. Projections show that voice search could account for over 50% of all online inquiries by 2025. In a country with India's linguistic diversity, this means a surge in regional language queries. Businesses that want to lead must create content in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and Telugu, optimising for conversational, long-tail phrases that mimic how people actually speak (e.g., "Mumbai mein saste kurtis kahan milte hain?"). As businesses engage more through these channels, it is also paramount to secure compliance with India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act), 2023, maintaining transparency and lawfulness in any data collection process.  

Measuring What Matters: Tracking the ROI of Your GEO Strategy

Moving Beyond Rankings: The New KPIs for GEO

In a world of zero-click, AI-generated answers, traditional metrics like keyword ranking are becoming less expressive of true success. A business can be the primary source for an AI answer without its website ever being clicked. This necessitates a new set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the force of a GEO strategy:  

• AI Citation Frequency: How often is the brand's website or content explicitly cited as a source in AI answers?  
• Brand Mentions in AI Responses: Tracking the volume and sentiment of brand mentions, even without a direct source.  
• Visibility in AI Overviews: Measuring how often the brand appears in Google's AI-powered summaries for key queries.  
• Referral Traffic from LLMs: Using analytics to monitor traffic coming directly from users clicking links within platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity.  

Tracking these new metrics reveals the actual impact of GEO on brand authority and visibility. Success is no longer just about traffic; it's about influence. This also forces a necessary shift away from simplistic last-click attribution models, as the customer journey now often begins with a non-clickable AI interaction that influences a later, direct search for the brand.  

The Future is Here: Why Acting Now Gives You a Competitive Edge

Generative Engine Optimization is not a distant future trend; it is the present reality of digital marketing. Users are already changing their search behaviours, and AI models are continuously learning and refining their understanding of the web. Businesses that adopt a structured GEO strategy today, built on the principles of Structure, Explainability, and Trustworthiness, are not just optimising for a new type of search engine. They are fundamentally supporting their brand's long-term authority and credibility. Early adoption provides a significant competitive advantage, establishing a brand as a forward-thinking, trusted leader in the AI-driven digital landscape of tomorrow. By partnering with experts who understand this new terrain, Indian businesses can navigate this shift with confidence and achieve measurable, sustainable growth.