The traditional rules of content discovery were relatively straightforward. If you wanted your brand to be found, you focused on ranking well in search engines, earning media coverage, and building a strong social media presence. Earned media and search engine optimization (SEO) became essential to every brand’s marketing blueprint. And they were, for many years, two of the key pillars of our own content playbook here at Vero. 

They still matter, probably even more than ever. But the emergence of AI-powered search and generative AI is changing how people discover information, compare options, and make decisions — and this, fundamentally, is changing the content marketing game.    

As people move seamlessly between search results, media, social platforms, and AI-generated answers, the boundaries between these channels are becoming increasingly blurred.   

This means visibility is no longer shaped solely by search rankings or media coverage, rendering share of voice alone as an incomplete measure of a brand’s presence. Brands also need to consider their share of model — how often, how accurately, and in what context AI systems understand and recommend them. The growing importance of AI-driven discovery has brought forth a new discipline: generative engine optimization or GEO. 

An effective GEO strategy ensures that brands are accurately, favorably, consistently, and credibly cited in the answers generated by large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools. 

Together with a strong earned media and search engine presence, a compelling appearance on AI-generated answers drives digital visibility, builds credibility, and positions a brand as an authoritative name.  

With content now sitting at the center of all these different touch points, our approach to creating and distributing content for our partner brands needed to evolve, too.  

And so we built Editorial IQ. 

How Editorial IQ Scores Content Across Media, SEO, and GEO

As AI became a bigger part of how people discover information, we wanted a smarter way to create content that could perform across media, search, and AI without compromising the editorial standards we uphold. 

That thinking became the foundation for Editorial IQ, an AI-powered content optimization tool that evaluates content across three pillars: Media, SEO, and GEO. Given a draft and details about your goal (such as target audience, keywords, and sector), Editorial IQ assigns that draft a score from 1 to 10 across all three pillars. It provides an overall score showing how well the content is positioned to perform, then lists actionable steps to raise that score. 

Each pillar reflects a different dimension of content performance. Media asks, “Is it credible?” SEO asks, “Is it discoverable?” GEO asks, “Is it AI-ready?” Together, they help writers create content that’s more likely to be trusted by journalists, discovered through search, and cited by AI.  

At the heart of the tool is a simple premise. Media, search engines, and AI may surface content differently, but they increasingly reward the same qualities: credibility, relevance, originality, and authenticity.  

This insight also reaffirmed our core design principle. Editorial IQ is built on a media-first philosophy. We strongly believe that if a story is compelling enough to earn editorial attention, it is far more likely to have the qualities that search engines rank highly and AI systems can cite confidently. 

The framework doesn’t introduce a new methodology. Instead, it brings together established best practices from communications, SEO, GEO, and content strategy into a single evaluation process.  

To put this into practice, we applied the same approach while developing this article. An early draft received an overall score of 7 out of 10 in Editorial IQ, along with recommendations to refine how we explain key ideas for greater AI citation potential, and to optimize the headline and introduction for stronger SEO performance.  

We used those findings to guide the next round of revisions, while keeping our editorial judgment central throughout the content development process. Collaborating with Editorial IQ added a layer of objective scrutiny that helped us identify gaps, revise strategically, and pressure-test the final content against the three pillars of visibility and quality. 

Beyond Better Content

Editorial IQ helps reduce the guesswork around what makes content effective by showing writers what’s working, what’s missing, and how a piece can be strengthened before publication. 

For communications teams, that means bringing Media, SEO, and GEO into a single workflow instead of treating them as separate disciplines. Rather than optimizing for one channel at a time, teams can evaluate how a piece is likely to perform across all three before it is published. 

For brands, the value extends beyond better writing. The goal is to be represented consistently wherever people look for information, increasing both share of voice and share of model while building greater trust over time. 

Editorial IQ also supports Own the Answer, Vero’s recently launched GEO initiative to help organizations build their visibility, credibility, and authority as AI shapes how people discover information across Southeast Asia. Insights into how AI platforms currently represent a brand can inform the content created through Editorial IQ, helping teams address information gaps with credible, authoritative, and well-structured content. 

Looking Ahead

New platforms will emerge, search behavior will change, and AI will play an even bigger role in how people learn and make decisions. But the challenge for brands will remain the same: creating content that people trust, regardless of where or how they encounter it. 

That was the thinking behind Editorial IQ. We did not build it simply because AI arrived, but because the boundaries between media, search, and AI are increasingly blurred. As audiences move across these environments, content strategies need to reflect the interconnected way people discover information. 

Editorial IQ is our way of putting that belief into practice, ensuring quality content continues to earn trust wherever discovery happens. 

A note on responsible AI: Like any AI tool, Editorial IQ works best when paired with the expertise and professional judgment of experienced communications consultants. The same principle guided the development of this article. Read more about Vero’s approach to responsible AI use.

Editorial IQ is one of Vero’s proprietary tools, initiated by former Regional Content Director Charmaine de Lazo and built by former Senior Editor for Regional Content Warute (Omsin) Udomrat.