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Why PR needs to be part of your GEO strategy in 2026

Why PR needs to be part of your GEO strategy in 2026

“I was just learning SEO, and now I’ve been told I need to optimize my GEO,” a marketing manager told us on a recent call. “Do I need to completely rewrite all of my web content and start from scratch so that it’s more appealing to GEO?” 


(To be clear, SEO is about making sure your company website can be found by humans typing searches on the Internet. GEO is about making sure your company can be found in search results by AI – which is where a lot of online searches these days begin and end. More on that below.) 


The short answer to “do you need to rewrite all your SEO’d content to make it GEO-compliant”? Nope. 


SEO and GEO have the same fundamentals: Well-written, informative, timely, updated content. 


That SEO content your marketing team carefully crafted is probably totally awesome. In fact, it’s essential to build your content marketing foundation before you sign a PR firm. 


But to get to the top of the pack of the search results for GEO, and AI Search? PR needs to be part of your GEO strategy in 2026. It’s a not-so-secret (but pretty new) weapon that gives you a leg up on competitors. 


AI overviews are challenging traditional search 


Google now provides AI overviews where Gemini summarizes the best information before the first search result. Click-through-rates (CTR) are already being impacted. For the top search result, the CTR is down by 32% since Google’s AI overview rollout in 2025. 



For marketing managers who have been focused on getting prospects to their website, the challenge becomes even greater in 2026. The key question is: how can you become the source (or one of the sources) that shows up in the AI overview? 


LLMs love stories from traditional media. When Google’s AI overview, or ChatGPT, is deciding which sources to trust, traditional journalism is weighed far more heavily than sponsored content or your company’s website. 


Non-paid media now makes up 94% of links cited by AI. And top of the sources list? Content written by journalists at reputable publications. 


Expertise included in articles about your industry and trends you’re seeing are most likely to be featured in AI answers. That includes expert quotes, founder interviews, and news coverage. 


Different LLMs will rank traditional media differently when it comes to credibility, and the freshness of a story is still a big factor. But for the most part, LLMs love to pull from traditional news sites. 


  • Claude prefers U.S. New and World Report, Nature, Yahoo! Finance, CNBC, NerdWallet, and BankRate.  

  • ChatGPT prioritizes Reuters, the Verge, The Guardian, the Financial Times, CNBC, and Axios. 

  • Gemini looks at sites including Forbes, Investopedia, NerdWallet, CNET, BankRate, and PC Magazine. 


Three of the most popular LLMs in the world, and what do they have in common? They’re looking for experts quoted by the most reputable media outlets. 


What kind of content helps build your GEO? 


Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) isn’t built around keywords like traditional SEO. It’s more about providing LLMs with authoritative content that’s backed up with evidence. You can control SEO by writing new content for your website. But PR needs to be part of your GEO strategy so you can continue to be featured in stories that LLMs are citing. LLMs are more likely to pick up on: 


  • Interviews. We recently got our cybersecurity client multiple long-form interviews about her background, and how her technology is helping companies in finance and healthcare. Now, when prospects or investors ask an LLM about female tech founders, her profile and startup are featured in the response. 

  • Quoted commentary. We worked with a data centre supplier who manufactured parts overseas. When new tariffs hit, we got the CEO’s comments about supply chains featured in Reuters. 

    Now, whenever a prospect asks AI about the company, not only do they come up as data centre experts, but their supply chain expertise is on full display, helping them land deals even in uncertain times. 

  • News stories. We landed our adtech client a full feature about their new AI tool in the biggest ad industry publication. Now, when prospects are searching for adtech tools with AI search, that coverage pushes them to near the top of the list. 

  • Thought leadership. Our fintech client landed a thought leadership piece in a mainstream publication about how startups can raise VC funding. A week later, he got a phone call from a new startup looking for help raising a Series B. And the first words out of the prospect’s mouth? “I found you by searching on ChatGPT.” 


And it’s key that PR is part of your GEO strategy, because while ChatGPT might be able to write thought leadership, it can’t make you seem smart. And your reputation is everything to GEO. 


Your competitors might be publishing more blog posts and social media content than you. But if you’re being quoted by journalists, and reputable outlets are writing about your company, your voice is likely to be featured in AI summaries and chatbot responses. 


Why fresh coverage is the reason PR needs to be part of your GEO strategy 


A big shift from SEO to GEO is how much recency matters. Most companies we work with that maintain a blog (and you should!) write over 50% of their content on evergreen issues. That’s no problem! And it can be a great SEO strategy. 


But GEO heavily rewards what’s new, highly credible, and published by reputable sources.


That’s why relying only on your existing blogs, case studies, and landing pages won’t cut it. LLMs are looking for third-party validation, expert commentary, and reporting from outlets they trust. That means if you’re not showing up in news articles, interviews, and analysis every month, your company or your personal brand will slowly disappear from LLM results. 


So how recent does your coverage have to be to be picked up by GEO? More than half of citations by AI are from the last year. And citations peak in the first seven days. That means if you’re relying on your already-overworked marketing team to do some PR on the side, you’re going to waste a lot of time. You need a PR team that can be part of your GEO strategy. 


Content can also reach AI search much faster than SEO, where you could wait weeks or months for Google to index your content. News stories can reach LLM results in as little as half an hour, giving you an instant advantage over competitors the same day news or commentary from your company appears in a reputable outlet.  


Every month, your PR firm will send targeted pitches, securing interviews and coverage that will make you part of the conversation. Those pieces will become fresh content for LLMs, proving that your brand is credible and insightful. That ongoing cadence will do much more to attract the attention of LLMs than the evergreen content on your website. 


The 2026 GEO playbook: Become the quoted expert


If your goal is to dominate GEO in 2026, there are some key strategies to keep in mind. 


  • Share context that AI can understand 

  • Provide useful explanations that journalists want to quote 

  • Create a pattern of authority across multiple outlets over time


When you have these strategies in place, AI chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT will find your content when it’s scanning for sources. 


SEO is great to draw traffic to your website. But in 2026, you also need authority outside of your website, at reputable news outlets, to build out your GEO. 


Search engines have changed. But the good news is that with a PR agency, you can build the kind of reputation that gets noticed. 



Want to start getting quoted in the media and build your GEO foundation? Contact Mind Meld PR today.

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