GEO shares real ground with traditional SEO, topical authority, structured data, clean internal linking, still matter, because AI systems and search engines are often reading the same underlying signals. The difference is what gets measured: SEO asks where you rank on a results page, GEO asks whether the model's actual answer names you at all.
Why it needs its own check
A page can be fully optimised for search and still be absent from an AI answer, because AI systems retrieve and synthesise differently than a ranked SERP does. That gap is exactly what an AI Visibility Score measures directly, and what a well-maintained llms.txt file is one part of closing.