What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization makes your website easier for search engines to find and understand. You help visitors with useful content and make pages accessible, clearly structured and connected. An organic result is not a purchased advertising position.
For a business, this could be a service page about bookkeeping for limited companies, with answers about working together. The content must match what the business actually does.
How cognito approaches SEO for e-commerce and service businessesWhat is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization describes work on visibility in AI answers. Such systems can summarise information, name organisations and cite sources. A name mention is not automatically a recommendation or a link to your website.
SEO and GEO share a foundation: accessible information, clear content and verifiable expertise. Google says its existing SEO principles apply to its AI features without additional technical requirements. That does not mean every AI platform uses the same sources or selection method.
How cognito researches and improves AI visibilityWhat is SEA?
Search Engine Advertising means paying for advertisements in search engines. You choose a campaign and budget and assess performance. Advertising provides paid visibility; your website's organic visibility remains a separate subject.
Advertising budgets and campaign management are not included in the cognito subscription. The service focuses on content, visibility, business information and measurement. If you already use Google Ads, continue assessing paid and organic results separately.
Which outcomes do you compare?
For SEO, you can review impressions, clicks and page search performance. For GEO, you might investigate how often your business is mentioned within a fixed question set and whether sources are cited. SEA involves measures such as advertising costs and enquiries attributable to campaigns.
| Channel | Where does your business appear? | What do you assess? |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Organic search results | Visibility, impressions and clicks |
| GEO | A generative AI answer | Mentions and sources by question and model |
| SEA | Paid search advertisements | Costs, clicks and attributed enquiries |
Do not combine these outcomes into a universal “visibility score”. A mention is not a visit, and a visit is not yet a customer. A useful discussion about results starts with what was measured and over which period.
Where should a business start?
First check whether your main products or services are clearly described, whether the right audience recognises their needs and whether purchasing or making contact is easy. Connect this with questions people ask before becoming customers. Then choose measurements suited to those questions.
cognito starts with a baseline assessment, then improves content and sources. The free introductory scan offers a limited first impression in ChatGPT. The full baseline assessment and delivery belong to the paid subscription.
Request a free scan