Optimising For
How Generative Engine Optimisation Works
Ask an assistant to recommend a supplier and you won’t get a list of links back. You’ll get an answer, with two or three businesses named in it and a handful of sources credited underneath. Generative engine optimisation is the work of making sure you’re one of the businesses it names.
Models don’t really rank pages, they assemble answers. They favour sources they can fetch and read easily, that are clear about who and what they’re describing, and that say something a model can check somewhere else. Miss any of those and you stay invisible, however well you do in traditional search.
My job is to sort all three: the technical access, the way your pages actually state things, and the outside evidence that backs them up. There aren’t any tricks worth playing here. The aim is simply to be the most citable source on your subject.
What The
Work Involves
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Citation Gap Analysis
I run the questions your customers ask across the main assistants and record who gets cited, how you’re described when you do appear, and what those cited sources have that you don’t.
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Source Level Content
Rewriting and restructuring pages so a model can pull out a clean, quotable answer. Clear claims, specific evidence, and enough context that repeating it feels safe.
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Entity Clarity
Making it obvious who you are, what you sell and where you work, so an assistant can recommend you without worrying it’s got the wrong business.
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Structured Data
Schema that spells out your services, people, locations and FAQs in terms machines can read, so models aren’t left guessing at what a page means.
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Authority And Corroboration
Earning mentions, reviews and quotes on the sources models already draw from. It’s the difference between being one opinion and being the consensus.
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Crawl Access For AI Bots
Checking that GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google’s crawlers can reach and render what matters, and that nothing in robots.txt or your CDN is quietly turning them away.
What Changes On Your Site
Most of this lands on pages you already have. Answers get stated earlier and more plainly. Vague claims get swapped for specifics a model can repeat without risk. Headings start matching the questions people actually type.
Underneath, the markup does more of the work. Schema that names your services and the areas you cover, internal links that make the relationships obvious, and clean HTML that still makes sense when something other than a browser reads it.
What You Get Reported
First a baseline of where you stand across the assistants, then a tracked set of prompts showing your share of answers over time, which competitors keep appearing beside you, and how your description shifts as work lands.
Then the commercial side. Referral traffic from AI sources and the enquiries it produces, sat next to your SEO numbers so you can see what each one is contributing.
If Google is where your customers still start, AI Overviews optimisation is usually the companion piece, and answer engine optimisation is what makes your pages easy to quote in the first place.
GEO Consultancy
Want to know where your business stands in AI answers today? Get in touch and I’ll take a look.
- 07930 533394
- Bedford Heights, Brickhill Drive, Bedford, Bedfordshire MK41 7PH
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Frequently
Asked Questions
What does a GEO consultant actually do?
Three things, roughly in this order. Work out where you stand in AI answers today, remove the reasons models skip you, then build the evidence that makes you worth citing. In practice that’s an audit across the assistants, technical and content work on your own site, and digital PR to earn corroboration elsewhere.
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
There’s a lot of overlap, and anyone telling you it’s completely new is selling something. The foundations are the same. What differs is the target: you’re optimising to be quoted and credited inside an answer rather than to hold a position in a list. A few things matter far more for GEO than for rankings, like how plainly you state a claim.
Which AI platforms do you optimise for?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews. They retrieve and cite in slightly different ways, but what they want underneath is the same. Accessible pages, clear entities, claims that can be checked. So the work compounds instead of splitting six ways.
How do you prove it’s working?
A fixed set of prompts, tested on a schedule, showing whether you appear and how you’re described. That’s the leading indicator. Behind it sits referral traffic from AI sources and the enquiries that follow. If citations climb and enquiries don’t, we look at what the answer is saying about you rather than celebrating a chart.
Can you do this alongside my existing SEO?
Yes, and it’s usually the sensible order. If your technical foundations are already solid then a good chunk of this is half done. I’m happy working alongside an in-house team or an agency you already use, and I’ll tell you honestly if what you actually need is better SEO rather than a new acronym.
Client Testimonials
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“Nigel’s contributions have been instrumental in significantly improving our PPC performance and we are in a much better position today than when he initially took the reins”
Mark M. Marketing Manager Shoal Group -
“We absolutely would not be where we are today without Nigel. He has been instrumental in growing our business via SEO & PPC and we can’t thank him enough”
Annie Watts Marketing Manager Polycote UK -
“We have used 2 or 3 larger agencies in the past.... All were a waste of money, Nigel has been very consistent and lovely to deal with”
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