Why GEO Still Needs Technical SEO, Crawlability and Strong Brand Signals says Gerry White

We speak with Gerry White, an SEO consultant with more than 20 years of experience across technical SEO, analytics, ecommerce, international SEO and search strategy.

Gerry has worked with companies including the BBC, Just Eat, Oda and McDonald’s, and in this conversation we unpack what is actually changing in SEO as AI search, LLMs and GEO become bigger parts of the conversation.

We discuss why Gerry is skeptical of treating GEO as a completely separate discipline from SEO, why technical SEO still matters, and why crawlability, internal linking, indexation, page speed, title tags and structured data are still foundational in an AI search world.

We also get into one of the harder challenges for brands right now: how AI systems understand, describe and associate your brand. Gerry explains why brand perception inside LLMs can be difficult to shift, especially when a company is known for one thing but wants to move into another category.

We also talk about:

• Why AI search changes the relationship between publishers, platforms and users
• Whether GEO is just SEO rebranded
• Why brand association and sentiment matter in LLM visibility
• Why Reddit can be useful, risky and full of bad advice
• How reviews influence local SEO and AI-driven recommendations
• Why podcasts and YouTube videos are becoming important source material
• What technical SEO signals still matter for AI search
• How Gerry uses Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM and vibe-coded tools in his workflow
• Why AI visibility measurement is still messy
• Why title tags are still a boring tactic that works
• Why SEOs need to stay innovative to avoid being replaced by tools

This is a practical and honest conversation about SEO in 2026, what is genuinely changing, what is being overstated, and why the best SEOs are still experimenting, adapting and fixing the fundamentals.

Chapters:

00:00 The Evolution of SEO in the AI Era
04:37 Adapting SEO Strategies to New Realities
07:23 The Importance of Brand Perception in SEO
10:43 Leveraging Multiple Media for SEO Success
13:24 The Role of PR in Modern SEO
16:24 Technical SEO: Ensuring Accessibility and Crawlability
19:42 Integrating AI into Technical SEO Workflows
23:30 Building Custom Tools for SEO Efficiency
26:14 Measuring Success in a Zero-Click Era
30:39 Innovative Thinking in Local SEO
31:29 Understanding Local Relevance and Trust in AI
34:08 The Importance of Reviews in Local SEO
35:15 Citations vs. Rankings: A Nuanced Discussion
36:27 The Shift to Multi-Platform Search Strategies
37:53 TikTok as a Discovery Engine
39:29 B2B Marketing on TikTok: Challenges and Opportunities
40:56 Meaningless Metrics in SEO
43:06 AI Workflows in SEO
43:52 The Power of Title Tags in SEO
46:07 Misconceptions About LLM Visibility
48:40 Overhyped GEO Advice in SEO
49:33 The Future of AI in Search
51:29 The Role of AI in Writing and Workflow
53:06 The Evolving Role of SEO Engineers
56:20 Innovative Future of SEO

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