SEO, GEO and SEA: which strategy should you choose to improve your online visibility?

SEO, GEO, SEA. If you're not familiar with digital marketing, these three acronyms get confusing fast.

So let's simplify what each one means, explain how they complement each other, and above all show what changed in 2026 with the arrival of advertising inside AI engines.

This is easily the best-known acronym.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, covers every strategy aimed at improving your organic ranking in search engines like Google.

There are many SEO strategies, including:

The goal is simple: increase your chances of showing up in search results when potential clients look for your products or services.

SEO remains the most cost-effective medium-term channel for a Quebec small business. A site ranking well for "accountant Laval" or "employment lawyer Montreal" brings in qualified clients every month without paying per click. That's the subject of our SEO agency in Montreal page.

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, borrows some SEO principles but aims to improve your visibility inside AI-powered engines and tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude.

For instance, someone might ask ChatGPT:

This shift in habits isn't marginal. Radio-Canada reported as early as February 2023 that ChatGPT had reached 100 million monthly active users two months after opening to the public, which analysis firm UBS called the fastest ramp-up ever observed for a consumer web application. TikTok took nine months, Instagram two and a half years. Three years later, the platform has roughly a billion users.

Some of your clients are already looking for suppliers through this channel, and those searches appear nowhere in your Google Analytics reports.

This is where most articles stay vague. Here are the six things we genuinely put in place.

The robots.txt file must explicitly allow GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended. Many sites block them without knowing it, through a default setting from their host or firewall. It's the first thing to check, and often the most profitable.

Pages must be server-rendered. An agent that doesn't run JavaScript has to see exactly the same text a human does. That's the difference between being read and being ignored.

Schema.org on the organization, services, prices, reviews, hours and FAQ. The agent no longer has to guess what you sell or what it costs: it's written in a format it reads without ambiguity.

That's what WebMCP is for: describing what an agent can do on your site, request a quote, book a time slot, check availability, as callable actions rather than forms it has to figure out. The field is moving fast and Google's documentation still describes it as under development, but sites preparing for it today will be ahead.

Every important question gets a direct answer in the first sentence of its section, with numbers and a source. An agent cites what it can lift in one block, not what it has to reassemble across three paragraphs.

The FAQ at the bottom of this article is an example of that format.

We ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot the questions your clients actually ask, then check whether you come up, how you're described and what's inaccurate. We rerun this test every month. The full method is on our GEO optimization page.

Finally, SEA, or Search Engine Advertising, is paid advertising inside search engines.

In practice, you pay for your business to appear among the top sponsored results when a user searches. That's the domain of Google Ads.

Unlike SEO and GEO, SEA can have an almost immediate impact. However, the moment you stop paying, your paid visibility disappears. SEA serves short and medium-term results, while SEO and GEO are long-term strategies.

Until now, those three acronyms were enough. That's no longer true.

According to Agence France-Presse, as reported by La Presse, OpenAI began testing advertising in ChatGPT on February 9, 2026, with adult users on free plans in the United States, expanding gradually by country. The ad appears below the answer, clearly labelled as sponsored, and doesn't influence the content of the answer itself.

In other words, paid placements now exist inside AI engines too. So you need to think in four boxes rather than three rows.

The most disorienting difference for someone coming from Google is that inside ChatGPT you don't buy keywords. You describe the situations where your offer is relevant, and the system decides placement from the conversation's context. The person has often already explained their budget and constraints before your ad shows up.

We cover the format, targeting and costs in detail on our ChatGPT advertising page.

In short:

Most articles stop at SEO tools. Those measure only one of the four boxes.

Semrush to analyze your ranking and your competitors'. Ahrefs for backlinks and keywords. Google PageSpeed Insights for your site's technical performance. Google Search Console, free, to see the queries already bringing you traffic.

There's no Search Console equivalent for AI engines yet. The method is still manual, which is exactly why so few businesses do it.

List the ten questions your clients ask before buying. Ask them verbatim to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini, in a window with no conversation history. Note whether you appear, which competitors are cited, and what information about you is wrong or outdated. Repeat monthly, always with the same questions, so you can compare.

Also check your robots.txt: if it blocks GPTBot, no amount of optimization will help.

At Oriana Solutions, we're among the first software development agencies in Quebec to offer a service combining SEO, GEO, Google advertising and advertising inside AI engines.

This approach is part of our digital visibility offering, built so a business gets discovered on traditional engines as much as in the new search environments.

Our offering starts at $250 for the audit and analysis of your visibility, $750 to roll out the action plan, then $250 per month for ongoing optimization. That monthly amount covers our fees; the ad budget paid to Google or OpenAI is separate and set with you.

To see how we apply these three levers, check out our SEO agency in Montreal and our GEO optimization service.

Radio-Canada. February 2, 2023. "ChatGPT sets the record for the fastest-growing user base": the 100-million-user mark, UBS study citing Similarweb, comparison with TikTok and Instagram. Read

La Presse, Agence France-Presse. February 10, 2026. "OpenAI has begun testing advertising in ChatGPT": launch date, plans targeted, user numbers. Read

OpenAI. Advertiser documentation: ad format, selection, pricing and measurement. Read

Google. Documentation on agentic browsing and WebMCP integrations.

Information verified on August 19, 2026. This field moves quickly: confirm with the source before any budget decision.