I've seen a narrative doing the rounds on LinkedIn right now that genuinely frustrates me every time it lands in my feed.
It goes something like this: "SEO is dead. AI answers everything now. Why bother creating content?"
I've seen it shared by founders, marketers, even a few people I respect. And every time, I have the same reaction: an overwhelming urge to reply with something I'd probably regret.
Because here's what I've started to realise, from working with B2B SaaS businesses, watching how they grow, and seeing how buyers actually make decisions, the people saying "SEO is dead" are confusing two very different things.
They're confusing discovery with conversion and assuming sophisticated buyers will solely rely on what an AI overview has to say... ridiculous right?
That confusion is quietly becoming one of the most expensive mistakes a B2B company can make.
The funnel hasn't changed. The top of it has.
Let me be direct: AI Overviews won't close a £50,000 SaaS contract.
No buyer is going to ask ChatGPT to summarise a vendor comparison and then hand over their credit card. That's not how enterprise or mid-market B2B buying works. Buying decisions at that level involve people, demos, references, multiple touchpoints, legal reviews, and at least three internal Slack threads that go nowhere for weeks.
What's changed is how buyers start that process.
It's clear to me buyers are no longer searching on google "best CRM for Series B SaaS companies." They're opening ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and having a conversation, asking follow-up questions, requesting comparisons, probing for pros and cons, before they've visited a single website.
This is the new top of funnel. And if your brand isn't mentioned in that conversation, you don't make the shortlist. It's that simple.
However GEO isn't a replacement for SEO. LLM's are just another form of 'search'.
This is where the "SEO is dead" crowd have genuinely got it wrong.
GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems cite it, reference it, and recommend it when buyers are doing their research. And from what I've seen, the businesses who are going to win at GEO are the same businesses who already take content seriously.
Why? Because AI models don't pluck authority from thin air. They pull from sources that demonstrate expertise, are structured clearly, answer questions directly, and have built enough credibility across the web to be trusted.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, the majority of B2B buyers will rely on generative AI tools to research, evaluate, and shortlist vendors.
So the question isn't "should I keep creating content?" It's "am I creating content in a way that gets me cited?"
What this looks like in practice
From my experience working with SaaS businesses on their content and growth strategies, I've started thinking about content through two lenses simultaneously: Google and AI.
Here's how they fit together.
For Google, the fundamentals still matter. Strong page structure, proper heading hierarchy, fast load times, and clean technical performance. Google's Core Web Vitals set the benchmarks: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1, and they're not going away. A slow, unstable site loses twice: once in organic rankings, and again because AI models deprioritise low-authority sources. You can check your own site against these metrics in Google Search Console.
For AI, it's about authority signals and structure. Research into GEO has found that adding statistics and citations to your content significantly improves how often AI models surface it. One peer-reviewed study found that including quotations improved AI visibility by 41%, statistics by 32%, and citations by 30%. That's not manipulation. That's good writing. It's the kind of depth that signals to both humans and machines that you know what you're talking about.
The overlap between the two? Content that's genuinely useful. Well-structured, clearly written, answering real questions that real buyers ask. That's what performs in both channels.
The buying journey now has an invisible stage
Here's the mental model I've started using when talking to founders and marketing teams about this.
Imagine a buyer who's been tasked with finding a new tool. Six months ago, they'd Google the category, find some comparison sites, read a few blog posts, and build a shortlist.
Today they open ChatGPT. They ask: "What are the best tools for [category] for a Series A SaaS company?" The AI gives them three or four names with a brief rationale for each. They then visit those company websites, read case studies, book demos.
Notice what happened there. The AI didn't convert them. But it decided who even got the chance.
If your business isn't in that AI-generated answer, because you haven't built enough content authority, because your content isn't structured in a way that AI can easily extract and cite, because you stopped posting eighteen months ago, you don't exist at that stage of the buying journey.
So essentially you're not losing to a competitor in the demo, instead you're losing before the buyer has ever heard of you.
Where to actually start
This is the part most people skip over. They agree with the theory and do nothing. So here's a practical starting point.
Step 1: Audit what you already have.
Before you write a single new word, understand where you currently stand. At Moresource we use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush which can give you a full picture of your organic visibility, broken pages, missing metadata, and which content is actually driving traffic versus sitting there doing nothing. Run a site audit and it will tell you more about your content health than six months of guesswork and give you clear, actionable steps to improve your sites health.
Step 2: Look at your site through a buyer's eyes.
Your website is still where the money gets made. Every buyer that comes through, whether from an AI overview, a paid campaign, Google search, or a LinkedIn post, lands on your website. If it's slow, unclear, or impossible to navigate on mobile, you're losing deals before the conversation even starts.
Check your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console. If your LCP is over 2.5 seconds or your site fails on mobile, that's not a content problem, that's a foundation problem. And it affects both your Google rankings and how AI models assess your authority. Sometimes the honest answer is that the site needs rebuilding on a faster, cleaner stack before content can compound the way it should.
Step 3: Build a content structure, not just a content calendar.
There's a difference between publishing randomly and building a content architecture. Think in pillars. Pick three to five topics that sit at the intersection of what your buyers are researching and what you genuinely know. Write the definitive piece on each one. Then build supporting content around them: FAQs, shorter takes, case studies, comparisons.
This is what AI models pull from. Not a single blog post, but a body of work that positions you as the authoritative voice on a topic.
Step 4: Write for questions, not just keywords.
Buyers using AI ask questions in natural language. "What should I look for in a [tool] as a scaling SaaS company?" Structure your content to answer those directly. Clear headings, direct answers at the top of each section, data where you have it. This serves both Google's featured snippets and AI citation logic at the same time.
How to get AI to cite your business
Most businesses understand the theory but don't know what specifically influences whether an LLM surfaces them or ignores them. Here's what actually moves the needle.
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Publish question-led content. Use AlsoAsked and AnswerThePublic to find exactly what your buyers are searching, then answer those questions directly.
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Back claims with data and citations. Statistics improve AI visibility by 32% and citations by 30%, link to reputable sources like Gartner and Statista.
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Get mentioned on other websites. Guest posts, press coverage, and comparison roundups build entity authority, use HARO to get quoted in publications consistently.
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Use consistent terminology. Repeat the correct category language across your blog, product pages, and case studies so LLMs associate your brand with your topic.
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Add FAQ sections to key pages. FAQs map directly to how AI retrieves information, mark them up with FAQ schema so crawlers can parse them cleanly.
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Keep content updated. Recency matters to LLMs, update old posts, add to them, and refresh the published date when you make significant changes.
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Submit to AI indexes directly. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit to Perplexity, both feed directly into major LLMs.
The businesses winning right now are publishing consistently.
From what I've seen, this isn't about gaming algorithms for the sake of it. It's about the volume and quality of genuine thought leadership, understanding and speaking directly to the buyer and answering their search queries.
The businesses getting cited by LLM's are the ones who've spent years writing about their category, not just their product. They've published opinions, they've shared case studies, data, and frameworks. They've become a credible reference point in their space.
That's not something you can shortcut with a content sprint or by posting AI generated BS. But it is something you can start building today and every week you delay is a week another business in your category gets to compound their authority while you're invisible.
Your site sits at the center of growth
All of this, GEO, SEO, content, authority-building, is in service of one goal: getting the right buyer to your website, where you can actually show them who you are and what you do.
When they land on your site after an AI overview mentioned you, that's when conversion begins. That's when your case studies earn their keep, your product page needs to sing, and your messaging needs to resonate with someone who already has a shortlist and is now deciding who deserves their time.
AI will not sell for you. But it will decide whether you get the chance to sell at all. Your website's design, performance and messaging do the heavy lifting to ensure buyers are booking demos and converting.
So no, SEO is not dead. Content marketing is not dead. But the bar has shifted. The businesses who understand that GEO and SEO are two parts of the same thing, not competing philosophies, are the ones who will compound their authority, stay on buyer shortlists, and build pipelines that don't depend on paid ads to survive.
The rest will keep posting "SEO is dead" on LinkedIn while their pipeline quietly dries up.
At Moresource, we focus on driving growth for B2B SaaS companies and actually strive to put your buyer first. Websites sit at the centre of growth so they should be as optimised as your product, up to date with relevant content to drive both awareness and conversions. That's what we'll be writing about: what's actually driving growth, helping you scale, and how you can make small but effective changes that allow your content to compound and evolve with the AI race.