How to Build Brand Authority for GEO or AEO

 

Brands have been around for thousands of years, dating back to the “branding” of livestock and pottery by ancient civilizations around the year 5,000 B.C.E. Of course, now the brands we encounter are a little less literal, used to refer to a unique name, design, symbol or feature that separates goods or services from other sellers or providers. Simply put, it’s the identity behind your business.

A brand can be as small as a local merchant or as large as a multi-billion-dollar corporation, but no matter the size or scope, all brands strive for one important goal – authority.

Brand authority has long depended on a consistent demonstration of expertise and trust, established through reliable customer experiences and targeted content. The stronger the brand authority, the greater the brand’s influence.

For years, brands built authority online through targeted content that maintained a consistent brand voice, earned backlinks from other authoritative sources and built social proof through reviews and word of mouth, often focusing on press release distribution and Multichannel Amplification™ along with search engine optimization (SEO) to help enhance a brand’s authority.

That has changed with the advent of artificial intelligence in the communications space and the emergence of AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization). These new tactics represent the latest ways to build your brand authority, as well as your brand visibility.

Why Is Brand Authority Important?

Brand authority refers to the level of trust, expertise and credibility that a brand holds in its industry. This usually appears through consumer perception and online visibility. While a brand’s online authority previously relied on its placement in search engines, that online discoverability is increasingly found through AI search, as opposed to standard search through engines like Google or Bing.

But why do brands seek out brand authority? Simply put, brand authority leads to brand trust. That trust, in turn, makes it more likely for consumers to choose your brand, as opposed to one of your less authoritative competitors.

Brand authority strengthens your presence through:

• Establishing distinct identity: Authoritative brands have a clear identity, and building authority helps you focus on your unique offerings and origins.
• Improving customer retention: Organizations with high trust and authority have more opportunities to build relationships with their customers, which can lead to higher conversions. According to Sprout Social, “When customers feel connected to brands, more than half of consumers (57%) will increase their spending with that brand and 76% will buy from them over a competitor.”
• Influencing search engine results: Authority is one of the driving signals for search engine recognition, making it a strong focus for most SEO strategies.
• Ranking in AI search results: AI search is increasingly gaining ground on standard search as the primary discovery channel for internet users, and large language models (LLMs) place high value on authority in their citations.

What Is the Difference Between SEO and AEO or GEO for Brand Authority?

While SEO, AEO and GEO all help users discover your content, they do have noticeable differences and noticeably different tactics. 

SEO focuses on rankings. The ultimate goal for an SEO campaign is to appear at the top of the first page of Google and other search engines. The key to a successful SEO strategy is to get the best position on SERPs (search engine results pages), and “page one” used to be considered one of the biggest “wins” for a communications strategy and a strong indicator of brand authority.

In order to reach these rankings, SEO involves creating large quantities of content around core topics, technically optimizing the page and earning backlinks—links to your website from third-party sites—to establish E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).

While E-E-A-T is still immensely valuable for brand authority (more on that later), AI has changed how E-E-A-T factors into authority, and it has changed the value of SEO. Ranking first on Google now results in 58% fewer clicks with AI search, which means that AEO and GEO are increasingly becoming more important for visibility and, in turn, trust and authority.

SEO measures success in “clicks.” AEO and GEO measure success in citations by creating answer-forward, consistent and distinct content that focuses more on structure (as opposed to content length for SEO), ensuring your brand becomes a trusted source that LLMs can cite. As AI search is increasingly responsible for online visibility, LLM citations are crucial for building brand authority.

The Keys to Building Brand Authority for GEO and AEO

Building brand authority through AEO and GEO requires a shift in tactics from SEO-only efforts. By moving past a single-page focus to an emphasis on brand credibility and presence across channels, your brand authority should grow with the following GEO and AEO approaches:

Create Answer-Ready Content

AEO and GEO emphasize content that answers questions users might be asking in AI search. If your content is able to answer important user questions, it is more likely to be cited, so answer-forward content helps increase your brand visibility and, in doing so, your authority.

Content centered around specific questions the audience is asking, as opposed to targeting simple keywords, is more likely to be discovered by generative engines. This means that press releases, GEO- or AEO-focused blogs and resource pages are all great ways to boost your brand authority. This answer-focused content should include:

• Clear, well-defined statements
• Descriptive headers that mirror real questions
• FAQ sections
• Definitions
• Step-by-step explanations when relevantKey takeaways and summaries

Establish Your E-E-A-T

While E-E-A-T has long been a key brand authority signal for search engines, the advent of AEO and GEO, along with generative search, has only served to amplify the value of establishing and showcasing your brand’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Each of these areas of authority has its own requirements:

• Experience demonstrates first-hand, real-world interaction with a topic from the author or organization. Case studies, authentic stories, personal experiences and anything that shows you were “there” establishes experience.
• Expertise comes from sharing verifiable information that shows a creator’s deep experience in a field. This can be earned through detailed credentials to establish an author as an expert, or it can come from in-depth, comprehensive content on a topic that goes far deeper than any simple summary. For example, if you are creating YMYL (your money, your life) topics, formal expertise (such as medical or financial degrees) is necessary to show expertise. Still, for non-YMYL topics, you can demonstrate “everyday expertise” through exhaustive coverage of your topic.
• Authoritativeness naturally impacts brand authority. Authority comes from being recognized as a go-to source for your industry – something very important for GEO and AEO citations. This can be built through positive online reviews, publishing original data studies or research and using press releases to highlight your brand’s achievements, to name a few approaches.
• Trustworthiness comes from posting accurately, safely and honestly, and can grow through creating clear “About Us” pages, fact-checking your content and providing proper citations, regularly updating content and, if applicable, clearly disclosing sponsored content versus genuine reviews.

Be Consistent Across Channels

GEO and AEO require messaging consistency across platforms to maximize your brand authority in AI search. AI answers are built across channels, and if your messaging shifts across those channels, you lose trustworthiness, and as a result, your brand authority suffers.

That’s why it’s key to use tools like PR Newswire Amplify™ that can help plan your messaging across platforms to ensure your messaging remains consistent and more authoritative.

Structure Your Content for Readers and AI

Properly structured content helps make your content more visible for GEO and AEO. As previously discussed, discoverability is a key step to creating brand authority. That visibility can be hampered by content that is not properly structured or is difficult to digest.

This is useful for both the user experience as well as LLMs looking to easily find answers to queries. You should ensure your content utilizes the following structural approaches:

• Bullet points and lists to break down complex information
• Properly incorporated structured data and schema markups
• Consistent formatting
• Short sentences and paragraphs
• Add alt text to images

Continue Growing Your Brand Authority With AEO and GEO

Brand authority has always been key to any communications plan, but that plan is constantly changing. Artificial search has changed the way consumers interact with brands, and how that brand authority is earned. By focusing on the right AEO and GEO tactics, you can find new and exciting ways to grow your brand's expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness that can only serve to build your authority to even greater heights.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between AEO and GEO?

AEO focuses on structuring content so it can be pulled directly into short, specific answers, like FAQs or featured snippets. GEO is broader, covering how a brand's overall presence, such as press releases, articles, reviews and more, shapes the way generative AI models describe and cite it.

Does traditional SEO still matter for brand authority?

Yes, SEO fundamentals like E-E-A-T, quality backlinks and technical site health remain valuable ranking signals. AEO and GEO don't replace SEO. They extend certain AI tactics to account for how AI search engines synthesize and cite information, rather than focusing on SEO page rankings.

How can I tell if AI search tools are citing my brand?

Regularly query major AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini with questions relevant to your industry and brand or use a proprietary tool like Traajan. Track whether your brand appears, how it's described and whether the information is accurate and current.

How long does it take to build brand authority for AEO and GEO?

Brand authority builds over time through consistent, structured content distributed across channels. While individual pieces of optimized content can be cited relatively quickly, sustained authority comes from an ongoing strategy — not a one-time content update.