The overlap is large. Both need a crawlable site, pages that match real intent, consistent business facts, local relevance, reviews and credible third party mentions. If an agency's GEO proposal does not include those things, it is not really a GEO proposal. Any time you see GEO sold as a replacement for SEO rather than a layer sitting on top of it, you are being sold a rebrand of work you should already be getting.
The real differences are worth naming though. GEO cares more about whether a single passage can stand alone as a complete answer, so structure and phrasing get stricter. It cares about entity clarity, meaning a machine can tell who you are, where you operate and what you do without inferring any of it. It leans harder on schema. And it measures success as mentions, citations and share of answers rather than ranking positions.
Practically, if your SEO is in decent shape, GEO is an adjustment rather than a rebuild. Rewrite pages answer first, add FAQ and service schema, split vague pages into specific ones, tighten your listings, and start tracking what the assistants say about your category each month. If your SEO is a mess, fix that first. There is no version of this that skips the fundamentals and still works.
Send the site over. We will tell you what is broken, what you could rank for, and whether AI search knows you exist. No charge and no pitch deck.
