Your client doesn't always open Google any more. They ask ChatGPT who does what you do and get back two or three names. GEO positioning is the work of making one of them yours, and it comes down to a model being able to read you, understand you, lift out one of your sentences and find you named away from your own website. It isn't a new product with its own price tag. It goes inside the monthly SEO because ninety per cent of the work is the same.
Crawling + markup + citability + entity + mentions | Movement in month 3-6 | Inside the monthly SEO
On Google you competed for a slot in a list and the user chose. When a model writes the answer, either it names you or you don't exist, and there is no page two to fall back on. Most small business websites can't even be read properly, so they are out before they start.
Try it now. Type into ChatGPT who does what you do in your town and see whether you appear. Most small businesses don't come up, and almost none of them know why.
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That is all it takes in the robots.txt to block GPTBot without you noticing. It ships as standard in plenty of templates and in security plugins nobody ever reviewed.
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What a model can extract
from a site with no structured data
Agencies that discovered the word GEO six months ago and already sell it as a speciality, with its own fee, without saying which project they applied it to or what metric they measure it with.
Double fee for the same work
GEO stands for generative engine optimization, and it means preparing your website so an artificial intelligence assistant cites it when it answers somebody.
You stop competing for a slot in a list of links and start competing to appear inside a written answer that mentions two or three names.
That the model can read you, that it understands what you sell without deducing it, that it can lift out one of your sentences and use it alone, and that it finds you named away from your own website.
In almost everything. Models read with crawlers similar to a search engine's and several use a classic index, because ChatGPT leans on Bing and AI Overviews are Google.
Because whoever fixes your crawling, your markup and your structure is already doing half the work. It goes inside the monthly SEO and not on a new invoice.
There is no official documentation explaining how a model decides who to cite, so anyone handing you an exact algorithm is making it up. What can be observed are four conditions that hold in almost every cited website, plus a fifth one which is measuring whether it is happening. That is what I execute, and in this order.
I go through the robots.txt and take out the blocks on GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended that are sitting there without anyone having decided it, which is what usually happens when they come from a template or a security plugin. Then I look at what a crawler really receives, because if your content gets painted with JavaScript after load there are bots left staring at a blank page.
Structured data for service, local business, FAQs and breadcrumbs. It isn't writing new content, it is labelling what is already there so a machine knows what you sell, where you are, what it costs and who stands behind it without having to interpret it. What isn't guessed can't be got wrong, and your Google listing improves along the way.
It is the most profitable rewriting there is and the one almost nobody does. A model doesn't cite whole pages, it cites fragments. If your answer to a specific question is spread over four paragraphs that depend on context, there is nothing to extract. I rewrite every answer so it stands on its own, with the figure or the timescale inside the same sentence.
What you say about yourself counts for little and what others say counts for a lot. I work on the Google Business Profile, the consistency of your details across sector directories and mentions in local press, associations and comparison pieces. There is a big difference from classic link building here, which is that a mention with no link counts too, because the model reads text and not only tags.
Three things in the monthly report. The referral visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com, which is the hard data. A panel of ten questions from your ideal client run through the three assistants every month, noting whether you come up. And Bing Webmaster Tools, because ChatGPT leans on that index and if you aren't right there the channel is closed off underneath you.
The odd advantage of this work is that almost nothing done here serves the AI alone. All of it also improves your position on Google, so you aren't betting on a single card.
You don't pay twice
for the same work.
This goes inside the monthly SEO and not as a separate line, because ninety per cent of it overlaps with what has to be done anyway. If someone hands you a separate GEO fee, ask them to detail what they do there that they aren't already doing in the SEO, and watch the silence.
What makes you citable
also lifts you on Google.
Clean crawling, structured data, answers that make sense on their own and mentions away from your website. All four improve your classic position in exactly the same way, so if the AI channel took time to land the work wouldn't be lost.
You know whether it works
or whether it doesn't.
The monthly report carries the referral visits from each assistant, the panel of ten questions with that month's result and the state of things in Bing. If nothing comes up one month, it is written down that nothing came up, because a report that only shows the good part doesn't let you decide.
I have it set up
on my own website.
I'm not selling you a category I discovered last week. This website has llms.txt, structured data on 96 of its 104 pages and a robots.txt open to AI crawlers, and you can verify all of it in two clicks before you ring me.
How this website is built
so AI can read it and cite it.
Month 3 to 6
to see real movement
AI assistants are already the fourth traffic channel of this website and a client has come out of it. A year ago that channel didn't appear in the report.
With 323 question and answer pairs marked up. The 8 missing ones are the error page and the thank-you pages, where markup adds nothing.
This isn't a new product.
It goes inside the monthly SEO.
This page exists because plenty of people search for the service by its name, not because it is a separate fee. GEO work overlaps almost entirely with classic SEO, so charging for it twice would mean splitting one invoice in two and giving each half a different name. If you are already a monthly SEO client, this comes in without your fee changing. And if you aren't, the guide range for a small business is €600 to €2,000/month based on sector and competition.
How it gets hired
What people ask most when the subject of GEO comes up.
Nothing extra, because it goes inside the monthly SEO, whose guide range for a small business is €600 to €2,000/month based on sector and competition. If you are already an SEO client of mine, the AI part comes in without your fee changing. The reason is that ninety per cent of the work overlaps with classic SEO, so invoicing it as a standalone product would mean charging you twice for the same thing.
GEO stands for generative engine optimization. In classic SEO you compete for a slot in a list of ten links and the user chooses. In an AI answer there is no list, there is a written text that mentions two or three, so either you are inside it or you don't exist for that person. The technical base is the same, and what GEO adds is that your content can be extracted in standalone fragments and that your brand gets mentioned away from your website. I go into it at length in what GEO is in SEO.
Try it yourself in a minute. Type into ChatGPT the question your client would ask, for example who builds websites for restaurants in Mallorca, and see whether you come up. Measuring it seriously takes three things, the referral visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com in Analytics, a panel of ten questions repeated every month, and the indexation status in Bing Webmaster Tools, because ChatGPT leans on that index.
No, it sits on top of it. Models read the web with crawlers similar to those of a search engine and several use a classic index directly, since ChatGPT leans on Bing's and AI Overviews are Google. That means if your website doesn't crawl well, doesn't load fast or has no structured data, your problem isn't GEO yet. The boring part first, which is also the cheap part.
The same timescales as SEO, between month 3 and month 6 to see movement and around a year for serious conclusions. The technical part gets fixed in weeks, although the mentions away from your website and your brand entity are built slowly. Be wary of anyone promising you will come up in ChatGPT within a month, because there is no console where a request can be submitted and no way to speed it up by paying.
It is especially useful in local, because area questions are the ones these assistants answer best and the ones people ask most. When someone asks for a physiotherapist in Palma or a restaurant in Ses Salines, which is the kind of question I get from where I work in Mallorca, the model leans on business listings, directories and reviews as well as your website. That is why entity work weighs more than technical work in local, and it goes together with local SEO for small business.
It is a text file at the root of the domain summarising what your business does and where each piece of content sits, so a model can read it without crawling the entire site. No vendor has declared it mandatory and adoption is still patchy, so don't expect a jump from putting it up. It costs half an hour, it can't do any harm and it forces you to tidy your own architecture, which is the part you do notice. Mine is at burguerastudio.com/llms.txt if you want to see it.
No, and I'll explain why rather than simply saying no. The four things that make you citable by a model are clean crawling, structured data, answers that make sense on their own and mentions away from your website. All four are SEO. Selling them to you separately under another name would mean inventing a product so I could charge you two fees. What you can hire on its own is the initial diagnosis, which is free anyway.
Ask ChatGPT right now who does what you do in your town. If you don't come up, let's talk for twenty minutes and I'll tell you why, with your website in front of us and without selling you a new category.
Book a 20-min callFree 20-min call.
You bring ten questions your client would ask and we run them together through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini to see where you stand.
What happens next.
I send you in writing what is blocking you and the order I would fix it in. No cost and no commitment.
