AI Search Visibility · GEO / AEO
Generative Engine Optimization Consultant
Get your brand cited where buying decisions now start.
Your buyers increasingly get a shortlist from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews before they see a single classic result. As a generative engine optimization consultant, I make brands legible to those systems: entities the models can resolve, content they can quote, and access they can crawl, so you get named in the answer instead of buried under it.
The results page your buyers see has already changed
AI Overviews now sit on top of a large share of commercial searches. ChatGPT and Perplexity have become the first stop for research that used to start with ten blue links. When a buyer asks one of these systems for the best option in your category, it names a handful of brands, cites a handful of sources, and quietly builds the shortlist for them. If you are not in that answer, you are out of the deal before your website ever gets a chance to make its case.
The useful part is that these systems do not invent answers from nothing. They retrieve, rank, and quote web content, and they lean hard on the signals classic search has always rewarded: authority, clarity, consistency, crawlability. Generative engine optimization, whether you call it GEO, AEO, or answer engine work, is the discipline of making your site the most quotable, most trustworthy source available at the moment a model assembles its answer. The label matters far less than the method.
What a generative engine optimization consultant actually does
I run AI-assisted search systems every day, on my own properties and inside client engagements, so this is working knowledge rather than a slide deck. Most AI search optimization services and LLM SEO services on the market right now are repackaged content marketing. The real work is more technical and more measurable. It concentrates in four areas: making your brand an unambiguous entity that models can resolve and trust, structuring pages so your strongest claims survive extraction and earn citations, verifying that AI crawlers can actually reach your content, and building measurement so you can watch citations and AI referral traffic move.
Just as important is what this work is not. GEO does not replace classic SEO, it compounds it. Retrieval-based systems overwhelmingly cite pages that already hold rankings and authority, which means your existing organic program is the supply line for AI visibility. I integrate both into a single roadmap, with deep technical work on WordPress and Shopify. It is the same foundation I have applied on programs associated with brands like Intel, Discover, American Express, and L.L.Bean, and on mid-market sites where every dollar has to defend itself.
A typical engagement concentrates on six fronts.
Entity and schema foundations
Your organization, products, and authors defined consistently across your site and the sources models trust, with hand built structured data that removes ambiguity about who you are and what you sell.
Quotable content architecture
Pages restructured so definitions, comparisons, and recommendations stand on their own and survive extraction. That is the difference between being cited and being paraphrased without credit.
AI crawler access audits
Verification that GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended reach what they should, with robots, CDN, and rendering issues resolved before they silently erase you from answers.
Citation and referral measurement
Tracking of where your brand appears in AI answers for the prompts your buyers actually use, plus AI referral traffic reported next to classic organic so the investment stays accountable.
GEO integrated with classic SEO
One roadmap for both channels. The rankings that feed retrieval and the structure that earns citations are managed together, so neither is starved to feed the other.
Competitive answer analysis
A clear read on which competitors get named in your category’s answers, why the models prefer them, and the specific gaps that have to close before you displace them. A worked example: I ran this analysis across 20 cannabis buyer questions and published every finding, including that 68 percent of AI answers named no provider at all.
Hiring questions, answered straight
How do you measure AI search visibility?
Three layers. First, citation tracking: whether and how your brand appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and Copilot answers for the prompts that matter in your market. Second, AI referral traffic in your analytics, which is now clean enough to trend and report. Third, downstream lift, because branded search and direct traffic typically rise once a brand starts getting recommended. No platform offers Search Console style reporting for AI answers yet, so credible measurement is built, not bought. Building it is part of the engagement.
Do we still need traditional SEO if we invest in GEO?
Yes, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling a channel that depends on the one they just told you to cut. Answer engines retrieve and cite content that already ranks and already carries authority. Strong classic SEO is the supply line, and GEO is the layer that turns that supply into citations and recommendations. I run them as one program because that is how the systems actually consume your site.
How fast will we show up in AI answers?
Faster in some places than classic SEO, slower in others, and I will not pretend otherwise. Fixing crawler access and structural problems can change what models retrieve within weeks, because answer engines refresh retrieval far more often than rankings move. Entity authority and displacing an entrenched competitor from a high-value answer take months of consistent work. In every engagement review you see exactly what moved and what has not yet.
What do the first 30 days look like?
Week one is access and baseline: analytics, Search Console, a full crawl, and a snapshot of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews currently answer the prompts that matter in your category, including which competitors get named. From there you get the audit itself: entity and schema gaps, crawler access problems, the pages best positioned to earn citations, and a prioritized roadmap with owners and effort attached. Quick technical fixes usually start inside the first month, so the engagement opens with changes on your site, not just a document about it.
What does an engagement cost?
Most of this work runs as a monthly retainer between $5,000 and $8,000, scoped to how contested your category’s prompts are and how much technical debt the audit surfaces. For teams with strong in-house execution I also take on standalone audits and advisory. Either way you get senior work directly from me, not a junior team behind an account manager.
Can you work with our in-house team or existing agency?
Yes, and it is often the best structure. I handle strategy, technical audits, schema, and measurement while your team executes content and development, or I go hands-on inside WordPress and Shopify when there is no team to hand work to. The engagement flexes around your capacity, not the other way around.