A working definition
GEO covers everything that raises the chance a generative system such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity or Gemini uses your content when it answers a question. That means being crawlable, being identifiable as a specific entity, and publishing answers that hold up when extracted from the surrounding page.
What GEO work involves
This comes down to a handful of concrete details. Work through the list below and flag the ones you have not covered yet.
- Consistent entity data across the site, schema and third-party profiles.
- Pages built around one question with the answer in the opening lines.
- Structured data that matches what is actually on the page.
- Primary sources and named authorship behind factual claims.
- The usual technical SEO foundation of crawlability, rendering and performance.
What it is not
GEO is not a prompt trick, a hidden instruction in your HTML or a paid placement. Answer engines do not sell inclusion and do not publish their selection rules, so anyone guaranteeing a citation is guessing.
How to start
Follow the sequence below from start to finish. The order matters: later steps assume the earlier ones are done.
- Test the prompts your buyers actually use and record which brands get named.
- Audit entity consistency across your site, schema and external profiles.
- Rewrite the top ten commercial pages to answer first and support second.
- Add or correct schema so it reflects real content.
- Retest the same prompts monthly and track Search Console alongside it.
A monthly diagnostic routine
Use the list below as a working checklist. Each item is something you can verify or action directly on your own site.
- Rerun the same ten to twenty buyer prompts across the major assistants.
- Log which brands are mentioned and whether the mention is accurate.
- Check whether previously cited pages have changed or been removed.
- Cross-reference with Search Console for the same topics to spot correlated shifts.
Common mistakes to avoid
Here are the key things to get right. None of them are complicated on their own, but skipping one tends to undermine the rest.
- Publishing a generic FAQ page instead of improving the pages people actually land on.
- Hiding text intended only for crawlers rather than genuinely improving the visible page.
- Treating one favourable citation as proof of a working strategy.
- Ignoring schema accuracy after the initial setup.