How to Do GEO: Complete Implementation Guide

You understand what Generative Engine Optimization is. You know AI search is reshaping how buyers discover brands. Now you need the playbook: a step-by-step implementation guide that takes you from zero AI visibility to a repeatable, measurable GEO process.

This guide covers the complete GEO implementation workflow: auditing your current position, analyzing competitors, optimizing content and technical infrastructure, building off-site authority, and measuring results. Each section links to dedicated deep-dives if you need more detail on a specific area.

Before You Start: The GEO Readiness Check

GEO builds on SEO. If your site has fundamental SEO problems, fix those first. AI crawlers use the same sitemaps, robots.txt files, and internal linking structures as traditional search bots. A technically broken site is invisible to both Google and ChatGPT.

Before diving into GEO-specific tactics, confirm these foundations are in place:

If you answered "no" to several of these, start with foundational SEO work. GEO optimizations on a weak site won't produce results. If your foundations are solid, proceed to Step 1.

Step 1: Audit Your Current AI Visibility

You can't improve what you don't measure. The first step in any GEO implementation is understanding where your brand currently stands across AI search platforms.

Define Your Audit Prompts

Start with 10-20 prompts that your target audience would actually type into an AI search engine. These should cover awareness queries ("What is [your category]?"), consideration queries ("Best [product type] for [use case]"), and decision queries ("Is [your brand] good for [specific need]?").

Run Your Baseline with Clairon

Doing this manually across 5+ AI platforms is tedious and impossible to scale. Clairon automates the entire process: it monitors your brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Google AI Overviews in 200+ countries. For each target prompt, Clairon shows you whether your brand is mentioned, which competitors appear, which sources are cited, what sentiment the AI conveys, and how your share of voice evolves over time.

This gives you an instant, data-driven baseline instead of a messy spreadsheet you'll never maintain.

What to Look For

Pay attention to patterns in your Clairon dashboard. Are competitors being cited consistently while you're absent? Are there queries where no strong source exists, an opportunity you can fill? Is the AI saying something inaccurate about your brand? These gaps become your GEO priorities. Clairon's source analysis also reveals which domains AI engines pull from for each query, so you know exactly where to focus your authority-building efforts.

Step 2: Analyze Your GEO Competitors

Your GEO competitors aren't necessarily the same as your SEO competitors. In traditional search, you compete against whoever ranks for the same keywords. In AI search, you compete against whoever the AI cites when answering questions about your category, and that can include blogs, Reddit threads, review sites, and Wikipedia pages you've never considered rivals.

Identify Who Gets Cited

From your Step 1 audit in Clairon, you already have the data: every brand, domain, and source that appeared in AI responses for your target queries. Group them into direct competitors (companies selling similar products), content competitors (publications and blogs the AI cites for industry information), and platform competitors (Reddit, Quora, G2, and other aggregator sites that dominate AI citations).

Analyze Their Citation Patterns

For your top 5 competitors, analyze why the AI cites them. Clairon's competitor tracking shows you which sources each competitor is cited alongside, how frequently they appear, and which specific queries trigger their mentions. Is it because they have a specific page that answers the query directly? Because they're mentioned across multiple authoritative sources? Because they use structured data that makes extraction easy? The answers reveal what you need to replicate or surpass.

For a detailed walkthrough: How to Identify Your GEO Competitors, How to Track Competitor AI Visibility, and Competitor Citation Analysis: Find Their Sources.

Step 3: Optimize Your Technical Foundation

Technical optimization is the most commonly overlooked part of GEO. You can have the best content on the internet, but if AI crawlers can't access it, you're invisible.

Allow AI Crawlers

Check your robots.txt file. Many sites block AI crawlers without realizing it. Cloudflare recently changed its default settings to block AI bots automatically. If you use Cloudflare, check immediately. The key user agents to allow are: GPTBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), Google-Extended (Gemini), and Bingbot (used by multiple AI systems).

Implement Schema Markup

Schema markup is the "machine-readable" layer of your site. It tells AI systems exactly what your content contains and how to interpret it. Priority schema types for GEO include: Organization (who you are), FAQPage (extractable Q&A), HowTo (step-by-step processes), Article (publication metadata), Product (pricing and features), and Person (author credentials).

Use JSON-LD format. Ensure all schema data matches your visible content exactly. Validate with Google's Schema Markup Validator.

Create an llms.txt File

An emerging standard: the llms.txt file sits at the root of your domain and provides AI systems with a structured overview of your site, similar to how robots.txt guides traditional crawlers. Include your site description, key topics, and links to your most important pages.

Ensure Server-Side Rendering

Many AI crawlers struggle with JavaScript-heavy pages. If your site uses client-side rendering (React, Vue, Angular SPAs), critical content may be invisible to AI bots. Server-side render (SSR) or pre-render your most important pages. Check your server logs for AI bot user agents to confirm they're successfully accessing your content.

Detailed guides: Schema Markup for AI Visibility (Step-by-Step), Entity Optimization Guide for GEO, and How to Make Your Site AI-Crawlable.

Step 4: Structure Content for AI Extraction

AI engines don't read your content like a human does. They extract fragments, individual chunks of text that answer specific sub-queries. Your content needs to be structured so that each section can stand alone as a useful, citable chunk.

The Extractable Content Framework

Front-load answers. Lead every section with a direct answer in the first 40-80 words, then expand with context. AI systems often extract opening paragraphs for citations, so your most valuable information should appear first.

Use question-format headers. Replace generic H2s like "Our Approach" with question-based headers like "How Does [Topic] Work?" This mirrors how users prompt AI engines and makes your content easier to match to sub-queries generated during query fanout.

Write in modular blocks. Keep paragraphs to 2-3 sentences. Each paragraph should be able to stand alone as a useful "chunk" if extracted by an AI. Think of every section as a self-contained answer, not a thread that only makes sense in sequence.

Add factual density. Every section should contain at least one specific data point, named source, or verifiable claim. The Princeton GEO research confirmed that adding statistics increases AI visibility by 15-30%, and adding credible citations increases it by 30-40%.

Content Formats That Get Cited Most

Based on citation pattern analysis across AI engines, these content formats consistently outperform:

Deep-dives: How to Write Content for AI Search Engines, Question-Driven Content Framework for GEO, and Content Structure That AI Engines Prefer.

Step 5: Build Citation Authority

Being technically accessible and well-structured isn't enough. AI engines need to trust you before they'll cite you. Citation authority is built through a combination of on-site signals and off-site validation.

On-Site Authority Signals

Cite authoritative sources. When you reference data, link to the original source: academic papers, government statistics, industry research. AI engines evaluate your content's credibility partly by the quality of the sources you reference.

Display author credentials. Author pages with bios, credentials, and links to external profiles (LinkedIn, industry publications) strengthen E-E-A-T signals. AI systems use these to assess whether the author is qualified to write on the topic.

Include original data. If you can publish proprietary research, case studies, or unique datasets, do it. AI engines love citing first-party data because it's uniquely verifiable and not available elsewhere.

Off-Site Authority Signals

This is where GEO differs most from traditional SEO. Research from Nine Peaks Media shows that 61% of the signals determining AI's understanding of brand reputation come from editorial media sources. Web mentions show a 0.664 correlation with AI citations, while traditional backlinks only correlate at 0.218.

In plain English: what others say about you matters 3x more than your backlink profile. Get mentioned in industry publications. Earn reviews on G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra. Contribute to relevant Reddit and Quora discussions. Build a Wikipedia presence if you qualify. The more authoritative third parties discuss your brand, the more AI engines trust you.

Detailed guides: How to Find Which Sources AI Engines Use, How to Get Cited by AI Search Engines, and Domain Authority vs AI Citation Authority.

Step 6: Optimize for Specific Platforms

While the core GEO strategy is platform-agnostic, each AI search engine has unique behaviors worth exploiting.

The universal strategy remains: create authoritative, well-structured, extractable content. But understanding platform-specific behaviors helps you prioritize which technical and content optimizations to tackle first.

Platform guides: How to Optimize for ChatGPT Search, Perplexity Optimization Best Practices, and Claude AI Citation Strategies.

Step 7: Scale with Off-Site Presence

On-site optimization is only half the equation. AI engines build their understanding of your brand by synthesizing information from across the entire web. Your off-site presence directly impacts whether and how AI platforms discuss your brand.

The Entity Building Framework

Wikipedia and Wikidata. If your brand qualifies for a Wikipedia page, this is one of the strongest entity signals you can build. AI systems reference Wikipedia extensively. At minimum, ensure your Wikidata entry is accurate and complete.

Knowledge panels. Claim and optimize your Google Knowledge Panel and Bing entity data. These structured data sources feed directly into AI systems.

Industry publications. Earn editorial mentions (not paid placements) in publications your audience reads. Digital PR for AI citations is becoming its own discipline. Focus on being quoted with specific, factual statements that AI systems can extract and reuse.

Review platforms. AI systems read reviews on G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and similar platforms to assess brand sentiment and product quality. A strong review profile directly influences how AI describes your product. Encourage reviews and respond to them consistently.

Community presence. Reddit and Quora are among the most-cited domains in AI responses (Semrush analysis). Participate authentically in relevant communities. Don't spam. Provide genuinely helpful answers that reference your expertise.

Comparison content. Create "Us vs Them" comparison pages on your own site to control the narrative when users ask AI for product comparisons. If you don't create this content, competitors or third-party sites will, and AI will cite their version instead.

Step 8: Measure, Iterate, Repeat

GEO is not a one-time project. 40-60% of cited sources change month to month. AI engines continuously update their retrieval indexes and behavior. Your strategy must include ongoing measurement and iteration.

Key GEO Metrics (Tracked in Clairon)

The GEO Loop

Establish a continuous optimization cycle. Clairon automates much of this by alerting you when visibility changes, when new competitors enter AI responses, or when AI sentiment shifts.

Weekly: Run citation audits on your top 10 target queries. Check for new competitors entering AI responses. Monitor AI referral traffic in analytics.

Monthly: Refresh the 10 most important pages that are losing citation coverage. Update statistics, add new sources, improve structure. Review competitor citation changes.

Quarterly: Conduct a full GEO audit. Review all schema markup and entity data. Remove or update outdated claims. Adjust strategy based on platform behavior changes.

Yearly: Reassess your GEO competitive landscape. Evaluate new AI platforms entering the market. Review and update your full content cluster strategy.

Implementation Timeline

GEO results typically emerge faster than traditional SEO because AI engines update their indexes more frequently. Here's a realistic implementation timeline.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Blocking AI crawlers without knowing it. This is the #1 technical mistake. Cloudflare's default settings, aggressive bot protection, and misconfigured robots.txt files silently kill your AI visibility. Check your server logs for AI bot user agents today.

Treating GEO as separate from SEO. GEO isn't a replacement for SEO. It's a layer on top. Companies that try to run GEO in isolation, without solid SEO foundations, waste resources. Build on what works.

Optimizing once and forgetting. GEO is a continuous discipline. 40-60% of cited domains change monthly. A page that's cited today might not be cited next month if a competitor publishes better-structured, more recent content. Build continuous iteration into your workflow.

Ignoring off-site presence. Many teams focus exclusively on on-site content optimization and neglect the brand mentions, reviews, and third-party citations that AI engines rely on heavily. Web mentions correlate 3x more strongly with AI citations than backlinks do.

Keyword stuffing for AI. Just as Google penalizes keyword stuffing, AI engines actively downweight over-optimized content. The Princeton research found that keyword stuffing decreases AI visibility by 10%. Write for clarity and accuracy, not for keyword density.

Chasing one platform. Don't optimize exclusively for ChatGPT and ignore Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and others. The best GEO strategy is platform-agnostic. Create authoritative, extractable content that works everywhere.

This guide covers the full GEO implementation workflow. Explore each topic in depth:

Competitive Intelligence:
How to Identify Your GEO Competitors
How to Track Competitor AI Visibility
Competitor Citation Analysis: Find Their Sources

Source & Citation:
How to Find Which Sources AI Engines Use
How to Get Cited by AI Search Engines
Domain Authority vs AI Citation Authority

Content Creation:
How to Write Content for AI Search Engines
Question-Driven Content Framework for GEO
Content Structure That AI Engines Prefer

Technical Optimization:
Schema Markup for AI Visibility (Step-by-Step)
Entity Optimization Guide for GEO
How to Make Your Site AI-Crawlable

Platform-Specific:
How to Optimize for ChatGPT Search
Perplexity Optimization Best Practices
Claude AI Citation Strategies

Foundational reading:
The Complete Guide to GEO
How Do AI Search Engines Work?
The Evolution from SEO to GEO