From SEO to GEO: How to Improve Your Visibility as an Employer in AI Chatbots

Many organizations look at website traffic from AI tools in their analytics and conclude, “People are finding us.” But that’s a false sense of security… in fact, traffic from chatbots tells us little to nothing.

AI chatbots hardly drive any traffic. The real influence happens within the chat itself. That’s where a candidate forms their impression, often without ever visiting your (careers) website.

So here’s what you need to know:

• Are you even mentioned?
• In what context?
• and with what sentiment?

Specialized tools are now available to provide this insight. Examples include Profound, Peec AI, and AthenaHQ. These tools use a set of prompts, such as “What makes a good employer in the tech industry?” or “What is it like to work at [your organization]?”

Based on that, they analyze:

• whether your (employer) brand stands out
• how you are positioned relative to competitors
• what sources are used for that

This gives you something you didn’t have before: a measurable baseline for your visibility in AI. And that’s crucial, because without this insight, you’re optimizing in the dark.

Whereas SEO used to focus on optimizing for search terms to please algorithms, this new landscape is all about something else: clarity. AI models aren’t trying to rank pages; they’re trying to interpret and repurpose information. They look for clear, complete, and logically structured answers. You can see this reflected immediately in what works well.

Content that directly answers questions, such as FAQs, is used remarkably often by chatbots. Not because it’s “SEO-friendly,” but because it aligns perfectly with how AI reasons and communicates: conversationally.

The same applies to summary content in the form of listicles or personal stories. For example:

• “5 Reasons Why People Work Here”
• “What is a typical workday like for a mechanic at [us/employer’s name]?”

This type of content is concrete, easy to scan, and immediately usable in responses from AI chatbots. AI needs context to understand what it’s reading. The more explicit you are in providing that context, the more likely your content will be taken into account.

Even small details can make a real difference. A URL like /employee-talks-about-working-at-achmea provides context for an AI chatbot. Whereas /eline's-story, for example, does not.

Perhaps the most significant shift in GEO optimization: you have less control than you think. AI doesn’t just pull information from your careers website and job postings, but also from sources such as:

• Glassdoor reviews
• Google reviews
• Social media posts
• (News) articles

All these sources together shape the image of your organization. If that image is inconsistent, a problem arises. Suppose your career website states, “Flexibility is key,” but reviews say, “There’s little room for flexibility at this company”—this creates noise that undermines the trust of AI models.

AI models are trained to weigh precisely that consistency. The more often the same message appears, the more reliable it is considered to be. In practical terms, this means:

• ensure alignment between internal and external communication
• Keep an eye on what’s being said about you outside your own channels
• Provide "quality" content to external sources (e.g., ask your current, satisfied employees to leave reviews on Glassdoor)

You influence AI not only through what you post, but also through everything else that exists about you.

In addition to the content of your careers website, interpretation also plays a role. You can help AI by explicitly stating what type of content you offer. You can do this using structured data (schema.org). Many organizations already do this for job postings so that Google4Jobs can “read” them, but they’re missing out on opportunities on other pages.

For example, add this snippet of code to your homepage:

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Organization”,
“name”: “Bedrijfsnaam”,
“url”: “https://www.jouwdomein.nl”,
“sameAs”: [
“https://www.linkedin.com/company/…”,
“https://www.instagram.com/…”
}

Or on a "Careers" page:

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “WebPage”,
“name”: “Werken bij Bedrijf X”,
“description”: “Ontdek hoe het is om bij ons te werken”
}

And for employee stories or blogs:

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Article”,
“headline”: “Werken als monteur bij X”,
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Jan”
}

It doesn't make a difference to the front end of your website or to the people who visit it, but it does have an effect: you make it easier for AI to understand and evaluate your content.

Whereas traditional SEO focused on keywords, traffic, authority, and backlinks, this new playing field (GEO) focuses on:

• context
• consistency
• clarity
• reliability
• authenticity

AI chatbots won’t replace your career website, but they will increasingly influence whether someone even considers you as an employer.

Visibility and discoverability are shifting from search results to answers. And there’s only limited space available in those answers. So the question is simple: will you make sure your employer brand story is included?