Generative Engine Optimisation
Be the Brand the AI Recommends
When your customer asks ChatGPT, Google or Perplexity who to use, one or two brands get named and the rest are invisible. Generative Engine Optimisation is the work of becoming one of the named brands. It has been core to Essheo since the day we launched, not a service added when it became fashionable.
- Search platforms optimised, from Google to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Reddit and YouTube
- 24
Some of the brands we have worked with
Who this is for
GEO for different business types
Local and trade businesses
Assistants increasingly answer "who is a good plumber in Leeds" with a named shortlist. Getting on it depends on Google Business Profile completeness, review velocity and being discussed on local forums and community groups.
E-commerce
Product and category content that answers comparison questions, plus presence in the review and community sources models use to recommend products
Professional services and B2B
Expert-attributed content, thought leadership that gets cited, and clear service definitions that a model can match to a prompt
Multi-location and national brands
Consistency at scale, so that the model's picture of your business does not fragment across regions
What we do
What GEO is and why it is now unavoidable
Search is no longer a list of links. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode summarise the answer above the results, ChatGPT and Perplexity answer directly with citations, and voice assistants read out a single recommendation. In each case the model has decided which sources to trust and which brands to name. GEO is the discipline of influencing that decision: making your brand the one the model has clear, consistent, corroborated information about, and making your content the kind it prefers to cite.
The consequence for businesses is stark. In categories where AI answers now appear, a brand that is not being cited loses traffic it will never see in Search Console, because the click never happened. Optimising for this is not optional for anyone whose customers research before buying.
How AI models choose who to cite
Language models and the retrieval systems behind them favour sources that are:
Clearly defined
The model knows exactly what your business is, where it operates and what it is best at, because that information is stated consistently across your site, your profiles and third-party references
Structured
Content organised so a specific claim can be lifted cleanly, with headings that match the question, direct answers near the top and supporting detail beneath
Corroborated
Mentioned and discussed on sources the model already trusts, especially Reddit, review platforms, trade press and Wikipedia-style reference sites
Current
Updated recently, with dates the model can see
Authoritative in the traditional sense
Strong links, established domain, real expertise attributed to named people
Notice that most of these overlap with good SEO. That is why we treat GEO as an extension of search marketing rather than a separate department, and why our SEO retainers build the foundations GEO relies on.
What our GEO service includes
- AI visibility baseline: how often your brand and your competitors are cited across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude for a tracked set of buyer prompts
- Prompt research: the questions your customers actually ask assistants, mapped alongside traditional keywords
- Entity and brand consistency: fixing the conflicting descriptions, addresses, service lists and names that confuse models, across your site, Google Business Profile, directories, social profiles and Wikidata where relevant
- Citation-ready content: restructuring existing pages and creating new ones in the formats models lift from, with answer blocks, comparison content, definitions and expert attribution
- Third-party presence: our Reddit and Quora GEO products, review generation and PR placements in the sources models cite most in your category
- Structured data: schema that makes your entities, offers and expertise machine-readable
- Monthly AI visibility reporting alongside traditional rankings, so you can see share of voice in generated answers move
Measuring GEO
We track a fixed set of buyer prompts every month across the major assistants and record whether your brand is mentioned, whether it is cited with a link, its position in the answer and which competitors appear alongside it. This gives you share of voice in AI answers, the metric that matters, reported next to your Google rankings and organic revenue so you can see them move together.
GEO and AEO
Related services
Answer Engine Optimisation
Answer engines pull one response from the web and present it as the answer.
AI Visibility Audits
Most businesses have never checked whether ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews recommend them, their competitor, or nobody at all.
Reddit Link Building
As a Reddit marketing agency, we get your brand into the subreddits your customers already read, through posts and comments that add to the discussion.
Quora Link Building
We act as your Quora marketing agency, answering the questions your buyers already ask on Quora in replies that Google can show and AI assistants can cite.
SEO Services
Every account at Essheo is worked by a senior SEO, not handed down to a junior after the pitch.
Content Marketing
Content is the raw material every search platform runs on, from Google's index to the retrieval systems behind ChatGPT.
Insights
AI SEO Guides
How to Measure Success From Generative Engine Optimisation
AI SEO Guides
What ROI Can Businesses Expect From GEO Services?
AI SEO Guides
How Much Traffic Can AI Search Generate for Your Business?
AI SEO Guides
Is GEO Worth Investing In? A Business Case for AI Search Optimisation
AI SEO Guides
How AI-Powered Search Engines Decide Which Brands to Recommend
AI SEO Guides
Google’s AI Overviews: What They Mean for Your Business
AI SEO Guides
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
They overlap heavily. GEO adds prompt research, AI visibility tracking, entity consistency work and content structured for citation. A site with strong SEO has a head start, but plenty of well-ranked sites are invisible in AI answers because they never did the extra work.
No. The models are probabilistic and the platforms change monthly. What we can do is measurably increase how often you appear for the prompts that matter, and show you the trend.
A combination of specialist tracking platforms and our own scripted prompt runs across each assistant, recorded monthly for a fixed prompt set, so the comparison is like-for-like.
Entity and structural fixes can change citations within weeks because the models retrieve live. Building third-party corroboration takes longer, typically three to six months to see share of voice move consistently.
For most clients GEO runs inside the SEO retainer as an integrated programme. Where you already have SEO covered elsewhere, we can run GEO as a standalone engagement with an AI Visibility Audit as the starting point.
Speak to us today to get started