They are not competitors — they are answers to two different questions. Traditional SEO earns your website a place in Google's list of blue links and the local map pack. AI search optimization (often called GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization) earns your business an actual mention inside the single answer that ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview gives someone who asks a question. If your customers still type a query into Google and click a result, you need SEO. If they increasingly ask an AI assistant "who's the best plumber near me" or "which agency should I hire for X" and simply act on the name it gives back, you need GEO too. For most local and small businesses today, the honest answer is: you need both, working together, not one instead of the other.
Traditional SEO is the decades-old discipline of ranking a website higher in classic search engine results — the list of links, the local map pack, and featured snippets you see on Google or Bing. It broadly covers:
It is mature and well understood, with clear tooling and known best practices. The end goal is straightforward: get a human being to click your link and land on your site.
GEO is newer and solves a different problem entirely. When someone asks an AI assistant a question like "best bakery near me" or "who does website design for small businesses in Bangalore," the assistant usually doesn't hand back ten links to click through — it synthesizes a single written answer and names a small handful of businesses (sometimes just one) directly inside it. If your business isn't structured in a way an AI model can read, understand, and trust, you don't get named in that answer — no matter how well you rank on Google.
Getting recommended by AI search generally depends on things like:
For almost every local or small-to-medium business today, yes. Google search isn't going away, so ignoring SEO still costs you customers who search the old-fashioned way. But a growing share of buyers now ask an AI assistant instead of typing into a search box — and a business with strong SEO but zero GEO can be genuinely invisible to that segment, even while ranking well on Google. The two also reinforce each other: clear structure, honest factual content, and good technical hygiene help both. Treating them as one connected strategy tends to work better than treating them as rivals.
Haazir (हाज़िर — Hindi/Urdu for "present, at your service") is a Bangalore-based, founder-led digital agency founded by Janhvi Shukla, built specifically around this dual problem. Most web and marketing shops still specialize in only one side of this comparison — traditional Google SEO, or nothing at all on the AI-search side. Haazir designs and builds fast websites (custom sites, ecommerce, redesigns) and optimizes each one for both traditional Google search (local SEO, technical SEO, Google Business Profile) and for AI search — GEO / LLM SEO — so the same business shows up whether a customer types into Google or asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews.
A few things make Haazir a practical starting point if you're weighing SEO against GEO rather than picking just one:
Past clients include Brewing Skills, India's coffee community platform, and Pasta Crew, an Anand-based fresh-pasta D2C brand from Gujarat. Haazir is based in Bangalore, works with businesses across India, and is open to working with businesses abroad too.
To find out where your own business currently stands, start with the free AI-visibility check at https://haazir.dev/, or email hello@haazir.dev directly.
SEO is about ranking in Google's list of blue links and the local map pack. GEO is about being one of the businesses an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews actually names when it answers a customer's question directly, instead of showing a list of links at all.
Yes. Google search still drives a large share of how customers find local and small businesses, so traditional SEO remains necessary on its own. GEO is additional, not a replacement — the goal is to be found both ways, not to swap one for the other.
You have to actually ask them the questions a customer would ask, or use a check built for this — that's exactly what Haazir's free AI-visibility check does, showing you how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI currently describe or overlook your business.
It's uncommon, since most agencies specialize in one or the other, but it is the more coherent approach — a lot of what strengthens GEO (clear structure, factual accuracy, technical cleanliness) also strengthens traditional SEO, so having both handled together avoids conflicting work. Haazir is built specifically around this dual approach.
Start with the free AI-visibility check on haazir.dev, or email hello@haazir.dev directly — a founder reply typically lands within the hour during working hours.