The GEO Playbook for Agencies: How to Offer AI Search Visibility as a Service‍

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the next major opportunity for marketing agencies. As AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode become primary discovery channels, clients expect their brand to appear inside these answers. Recent industry surveys show that over 54% of businesses now expect their digital marketing partners to guide them in AI Search. Many are already asking how they perform in AI-generated answers and why competitors are winning those conversations.

This playbook explains how agencies can offer AI Search visibility as a measurable and scalable service through GEO. You will learn how to measure Brand Visibility and Citation Rate, conduct a baseline audit, and identify exactly where competitors are winning citations.

Beyond the basics, this guide covers how to package GEO inside existing SEO retainers, select the right analytics tools, and manage workflows across multiple clients. It provides a complete framework for turning AI Search visibility into a scalable revenue stream for your agency.
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What GEO Is (And How It differs from SEO)

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) (sometimes also known as Answer Engine Optimization “AEO” ) is the process of optimizing a brand’s content to make it easier for AI systems to understand and thus surface it in answers. 

This is similar to what you already do on the SEO side, but instead of focusing on ranking in traditional search results, you help brands also get mentioned and cited in AI search.

The simplest way to explain the difference is this:

• SEO answers the question: “Can Google find it?”
  
  
• GEO answers the question: “Will AI mention it and cite it?”
  
  

In both SEO and GEO, you:

• Optimize for clarity and structure. Heading hierarchy and readable formatting help both Google and AI engines interpret brand content accurately.
• Build credibility throughout the web. Backlinks and mentions from trusted sources improve brand authority for AI visibility as well.
• Strengthen E-E-A-T signals. Expert quotes, strong author profiles, recent data and stats all work to signal credibility in both search types.
• Optimize for topical depth. Covering related subtopics and long-tail questions increases your relevance in AI and traditional search.

Below is a quick reference card that summarizes the core distinction between SEO and GEO.

Where GEO Goes Beyond SEO

AI engines do not all use the same retrieval sources. ChatGPT and Perplexity rely heavily on Bing and their own internal retrieval indexes, while Gemini and Google AI Mode rely on the Google Search index. Across all engines, however, top ranking Google content is still cited more often because it is authoritative, structured and frequently updated. This is why strong SEO fundamentals continue to support GEO. Good technical SEO and high quality content on your site, formatted in an AI friendly way and aligned with your target audience's questions, remain the main foundation for increasing AI Search visibility.

This overlap makes GEO very accessible for agencies already specializing in SEO. GEO is not a replacement or an alternative. It is an upgrade, building on the work you already do while preparing clients for a growing discovery channel.

However, the similarity does not mean you can simply repeat SEO tactics and call it GEO. There are meaningful differences. GEO uses its own success metrics, especially Brand Visibility and Citation Rate, and it focuses on formatting content in a way that is easy for AI models to parse. GEO also requires measuring performance with analytics designed specifically for AI Search.

Standard SEO tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console cannot show how a brand performs inside AI generated answers. This means agencies need new processes, new metrics and new tools in their stack to understand AI visibility.

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Why Agencies Need a GEO Layer

GEO also expands the playing field. The sources that influence AI Search visibility go far beyond the sources that affect SEO. AI engines consider transcripts, structured data, PR mentions, third party reviews, YouTube metadata, topical authority signals and many other elements. With modern GEO analytics platforms such as Superlines, agencies can make these sources measurable and turn them into actionable recommendations.

This is why GEO becomes a natural and high value extension of SEO, content and digital strategy services. For agencies, it represents a new opportunity to create measurable impact for clients and a strong recurring revenue stream built on continuous visibility improvements in AI Search.

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Why do many agencies have a hard time monetizing AI Search?

Many agencies are still figuring out the differences between SEO and AI Search work. This often leads to surface level responses towards existing clients and new leads regarding what services they could offer regarding GEO. They either say that nothing has changed and AI Search is the same thing as SEO and people are overhyping these new channels or then they are on the hype train saying that having a wikipedia page, doing PR and having a team fully focused on reddit is the only way to improve AI Search visibility. Both are extremes and most often the reason is that they just haven’t figured out a way to monetize this channel yet within their own context. The good thing is, after reading this guide, you will know how to start making money with AI Search. In short, GEO is so new that most agencies are still figuring out what it even means to “optimize” for ChatGPT or Perplexity.

There’s no playbook yet, nor is there an established pricing model, but since we already covered the differences between GEO and SEO, let's move ahead to discuss how you can add GEO as a service to your agency.

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The GEO Delivery Workflow for Agencies

Agencies need a clear and repeatable workflow to deliver GEO as a service. While the strategy behind GEO is new, the operational steps follow a practical pattern that fits naturally into existing SEO, content and digital strategy processes.

Below is a straightforward workflow that your account managers, strategists and content teams can follow when delivering GEO for any client.

Step 1: Set AI Search goals with the client

Begin by identifying which conversations matter most. These are the questions buyers ask that influence awareness, evaluation and conversion. Define the primary prompts, business goals and visibility targets you want to track.

Step 2: Run the baseline audit

Measure how often the client appears in AI generated answers today. Capture Brand Visibility, Citation Rate, Share of Voice across engines, sentiment and competitor presence. This baseline becomes the foundation for the GEO roadmap.

Step 3: Select priority prompts

Not every topic matters equally. Select ten to twenty core prompts that align with the client’s revenue drivers and strategic positioning. These will guide your initial GEO program.

Step 4: Analyze competitor references

Identify which competitors AI models currently prefer and why. Look at the pages being cited, how they are structured, the data they provide and the clarity of their explanations. This analysis helps you understand exactly what you need to outperform.

Step 5: Identify content gaps

Map out where your client is missing. This may include missing definitions, outdated pages, unclear structures, weak topical depth or lack of factual authority. Document specific gaps and opportunities.

Step 6: Create briefs and execution plans

Translate insights into actionable deliverables. Create clear content briefs that outline the required structure, examples, definitions, statistics and supporting sources. Include entity definitions and schema requirements.

Step 7: Publish or optimize content

Execute the changes. Publish new articles and optimize existing pages with clear structures, direct answers, updated data and improved internal linking. Ensure AI crawlers can access all pages.

Step 8: Measure Brand Visibility and Citation Rate

Track changes weekly or monthly to understand how the optimizations influence visibility. Identify which prompts improved, which declined and why.

Step 9: Report results and reset the cycle

Present the results in monthly or quarterly reviews. Use before and after comparisons to show progress. Identify the next set of opportunities for the coming cycle.

Delivering GEO with this workflow turns AI Search visibility into a predictable and repeatable service rather than a one off tactical audit. It helps agencies show value quickly and continually reinforce their strategic role in their clients’ growth.

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How To Add GEO To Your Agency

How you position GEO makes all the difference between generating actual new revenue versus just absorbing more work into existing retainers or getting one off payments.

Your clients very likely already want this and you might have already been asked about GEO quite a few times. What you need to do is figure out how to structure it so you’re not just tacking on “AI visibility” work with vague deliveries and opaque pricing. 

There are two main ways you can go about this, but most agencies will need both to capture the full opportunity..

As an Integrated Service

The easiest way to introduce GEO is to fold it into your existing SEO or content workflows. You aren’t pitching GEO as a completely new and isolated service here, but simply as an extension of what you’re already doing.

Position it as an upgrade to your current offering: 

“We now optimize for both Google and AI Search.”

Clients who already trust you to keep them visible in search will be more open to being visible in yet another channel, rather than investing in an entirely new, isolated service.

In practice, this model lets you:

• Expand existing retainers by adding GEO as a deliverable within current SEO packages.
• Offer a premium-tier SEO package that includes AI search visibility as a core component, justifying a higher price point for a more future-proof service.

This works for all types of clients: small businesses, freelancers, enterprises and anyone else interested in both SEO and GEO.

Standalone GEO offering

Some accounts, such as established enterprises or even other smaller agencies, have the SEO bit figured out in-house but want someone to come in and guide them through the changes that AI Search brings.

For this set of clients, a separate GEO-only plan is your best bet. Instead of a standard content optimization retainer, you position your agency as a specialized consultant focused on the future of search.

You can offer services such as:

• AI visibility audits: Understanding current visibility in AI Search and analyzing existing content performance and technical setup to identify specific gaps and opportunities for AI citing.
• GEO strategy and roadmap building: Developing a comprehensive plan to maximize the brand’s visibility in generative AI search results.
• Consulting and training: Providing expert guidance to their in-house SEO or content teams on GEO best practices and helping them create the process of using new types of data in their content creation flow.
• Helping clients build 360 view: Helping clients to build a more full analytics stack by including AI Search visibility alongside their SEO and Paid Ads views.

A great way to get started, is to offer a snapshot of your client’s current visibility by using a GEO tool like Superlines and conduct an AI Search readiness audit beforehand and come well equipped with materials regarding that to the client meeting. This shows three things: you come well prepared and look like the expert of the topic, you show a realistic view about their current situation and have data to back your suggestions of what should be done. Having data to back up your suggestions sets you a mile apart from your competitors who are still trying to figure out what they could offer regarding GEO. Doing all this before they have even signed off to buy this service from you, shows dedication and clear understanding of the topic.

Then for the pricing, you can opt for a project-based fee if it is a one-off project. Or, have a custom monthly retainer for ongoing training or consulting services.
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Multi Client Management and Scale

Agencies rarely work with a single brand. They manage ten, twenty or even hundreds of clients across multiple industries. GEO has to be delivered in a structured and scalable way so that account teams can manage workload effectively and keep reporting consistent across all engagements.

Below are practical methods you can use to scale GEO while reducing time spent per client.
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Choose a GEO platform that really supports multi client work

You will be setting up many clients in your GEO solution and auditing many more in new business pitches. It is crucial that you can:

• Switch between client accounts quickly
  
• Tie data to the client’s most important markets and languages
  
• Invite clients in to collaborate directly in the workspace
  
• Export data easily or push it via API into the client’s own dashboards
  
  

Without strong multi client management, role based access and reporting exports, GEO becomes difficult to scale beyond a few pilot customers.

Standardize your GEO reporting

Create a repeatable reporting pack for all clients. At minimum, every dashboard or report should include:

Main KPIs

• Brand Visibility
  
• Citation Rate
  
  

(Optional) Additional metrics

• Share of Voice by engine
  
• Competitor Win Rate
  
• Before and after comparisons for an agreed time frame
  
  

When these elements are standardized, account managers can focus on interpreting AI Search data instead of rebuilding slides for every client.

Use proactive alerts instead of manual spot checks

AI Search shifts quickly. Automated alerts help your team detect:

• Sudden drops in Brand Visibility
  
• Changes in sentiment or factual accuracy
  
• Competitors that start winning citations on key prompts
  
  

Catching these signals before the client spots them turns your agency into a proactive partner instead of a reactive vendor.

Build “visibility ladders” for each client

A visibility ladder is a sequence of topics that move from easiest to hardest to win. For every client:

1. Start with low competition, high relevance prompts.
   
2. Move to mid tier prompts where competitors are present but weak.
   
3. Finish with high value commercial prompts once the basics are covered.
   

This makes progress visible and predictable and gives you a clear roadmap for the next quarter.

Prioritize for clients with small content teams

Some clients do not have large internal content resources. In those cases, focus GEO work on:

• Pages closest to revenue (pricing, product, demo, booking)
  
• Prompts where the brand is already partially visible and only needs a boost
  
• Topics where competitors have thin or outdated content that can be overtaken quickly
  

This lets you deliver wins even when bandwidth is limited.

Using MCP servers and AI assistants to analyze AI Search data

If you work with technical teams or advanced AI workflows, check whether your GEO provider offers an MCP server or similar integration layer. With this in place, agencies can:

• Connect their GEO data directly to their preferred AI assistants
  
• Explore client visibility, citations and competitors through natural language queries
  
• Run repeatable analyses without logging into the UI every time
  

Some of the most advanced agencies using Superlines barely touch the interface. They review client data and generate findings directly through their own AI assistants, inside their existing internal workflows. This is a powerful way to make GEO fit your current processes instead of forcing the team into a completely new tool workflow.

In the end, multi client GEO success comes from a mix of standardized processes and flexible strategic thinking. When you manage several clients in a unified way, you build institutional expertise faster, reduce operational friction and deliver consistent AI Search visibility improvements across your entire portfolio. A solid GEO platform that supports this workflow becomes the foundation for scaling the service.

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The Workflow and Company Culture

Adding GEO to your service stack impacts your agency from within. Not just how you sell, but how your team thinks, who owns what and whether you can answer basic questions consistently. 

Before you pitch a single client, figure out: who runs GEO research? What is your agency’s official stance on the questions every prospect will ask? Does your own agency even show up in AI search?

Without that structure, GEO will be a vague line item that clients don’t trust and your team can’t deliver.

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Team Structure

Should you hire someone dedicated to GEO? Maybe. That’s very much up to you, the size of your agency and how many customers will likely bite on the offer.

What’s non-negotiable is training your existing teams in the basics of AI Search visibility. Every SEO and content specialist in your agency needs to understand how AI engines surface, cite and mention brands and what are the levers that you can pull to deliver measurable results to your  clients.

You can then add someone who focuses solely on generative engines, a “GEO Lead” who keeps themself and the entire team updated on the happenings of AI Search.

A good team setup looks like this:

• GEO Lead: One person who owns ongoing research, testing and experimentation. They stay on top of AI engine updates, test new workflows, document findings and train the team as and when required. It can be either a new hire or someone you already have in-house who’s shown interest and curiosity in the subject and has the chops to take on the role. A natural role to fit into this is Head of SEO’s since many of them are already looking at this topic with great interest.
• Account Managers: Dedicated managers who handle three to ten client accounts and can confidently explain GEO’s value to clients and how it complements SEO.
• Content Strategists & GEO Specialists: Know how to optimize content for AI discoverability, develop strategies and fix visibility gaps both for your own agency and your clients.

Your staff are already SEO pros, so you only need to train them on GEO principles. There’s no need to hire entirely new staff. It’s important that everybody are aligned and you have a clear understanding of what's within your reach in terms of deliverables and what not to say to avoid dropping into the vague hype train of talking only about the importance of PR, Reddit and Wikipedia. Yes, they matter, but for your agency those probably aren’t the strongest levers you can pull.

But if you have for instance dedicated PR personnel in your agency, you can most definitely use them as part of your offering, since you can (probably for the first time regarding a performance marketing channel) make their work measurable and tie it directly to the AI Search visibility. That would be a great addition.

None the less what you are offering, you need to have your internal philosophy around this topic and processes aligned before storming at the customers gates.

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Internal Philosophy and Processes

When a client asks about GEO, every person on your team needs to be aligned about the answer to avoid looking like you don’t have your own house in order regarding what you are selling. We’ve heard from several clients for instance, that an established SEO platform didn’t have their directors aligned about GEO and that cost them many deals. How could in-house teams or even agencies buy this platform's add-ons if half of the leading directors are saying that GEO is a fad and meanwhile the other directors' teams are pushing out features and trying to make it into a serious play. Get your house in order before selling so it doesn't kill your credibility. As Hannes Jersenius, head of Growth has said to many agencies; “You need a unified stance. What’s your POV on how GEO and SEO work together? What’s your philosophy on prompt selection, handling and the transparency regarding how they are sourced and analyzed? These aren’t questions you figure out client by client. You figure them out once, as an agency, as a team, and then have everyone deliver the same message.”

Address this early in the training. Develop your position on common yet much-debated questions like:

• “Should we prioritize GEO or SEO?”
• “We don’t get clicks through AI engines. What’s the point of GEO?”
• “How do you know GEO is working?”
• “How do we even know which prompts to track?”

Document the answers. Turn them into an internal “GEO Playbook” that captures your agency’s official stance on each of these points and is your team’s single source of truth for how to talk about and deliver GEO.

Use it to train new hires and keep client pitches consistent so your agency always shows up with one clear voice on GEO.A good rule of thumb from our experience, having worked with tens and tens of agencies is that be realistic. Acknowledge the similarities of SEO, back everything with data and you can also remind that GEO also increases SEO visibility since it has the best parts of SEO as the basis and Google and Bing are turning into AI Search -first experience as well.

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Thought Leadership and Marketing

In a market where many agencies are still figuring out what GEO is and how to roll it out, your documented and unified point of view becomes a competitive advantage. Agencies that speak clearly about AI Search, publish their thinking and show real results position themselves as credible partners. You cannot effectively sell GEO without first demonstrating that you understand it.

To build that credibility, make GEO visible across your external channels.

Publish GEO focused content on your website

Create blog posts, case studies, experiments and practical tips from your internal playbook. This gives prospects a clear picture of your expertise and allows AI engines to index your perspective.

Use video and social channels to amplify your message

Talk about GEO on your podcast if you have one or share GEO content on YouTube, LinkedIn and other platforms. Short educational clips, live tests and behind the scenes audits are effective formats that AI systems pick up.

Run webinars, live audits and Q and A sessions

These are low cost and high impact ways to generate leads. A live audit that explains how a client appears in ChatGPT or Perplexity instantly shows your value and differentiates you from agencies that speak in generalities.

Share your own results

Publish how you improved your own AI Search visibility or how you helped a client in a specific industry. Real examples build trust faster than theoretical advice and significantly increase your chance of being cited in AI generated answers.

Leverage your GEO vendor’s educational content

If your GEO platform publishes guides, best practices and updates, use that material to strengthen your outbound communication. This lifts your brand and reinforces your position as the agency that stays ahead of the curve. When prospects research your agency, they will evaluate you through multiple online touchpoints.

Your own visibility becomes proof of expertise. You should also leverage the educational materials your GEO solution provides. These resources help your agency stay ahead and give your clients clear, practical guidance.

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Selling GEO To Clients

Most clients have already heard about “AI Search” or “showing up in ChatGPT,” so awareness isn’t the issue. It’s that they don’t know what it actually takes, what they should be paying for or how to evaluate whether an agency knows what they’re doing.

Agencies that can turn that vague anxiety into a structured offer are the ones that close deals.

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Establish Credibility Before You Pitch

Your clients might know AI visibility matters. But do they know why or what separates GEO work from someone just saying “we’ll optimize for ChatGPT” with no actual methodology behind such a bold claim?

If you can articulate what GEO involves, speak confidently about how it’s measured and have a unique POV on it, you’ve already separated yourself from 95% of agencies that are still winging it.

You should be able to answer questions like:

• Will GEO affect our current SEO rankings or traffic?
• Is this something we need to invest in now, or can it wait?
• Is this something that we can completely outsource to you or something that we could do with your agency and our in-house team?
• What are prompts and are those really the questions that are being asked from AI?
• How are you going to measure the outcome of GEO?
• Why should we trust your agency to do this?

As said earlier, it's good to be realistic, but enthusiastic about this opportunity. Clear and data-backed communication goes a long way. You can research how AI engines cite sources, experiment with prompt testing and track brand mentions across platforms. Yes, it takes time and you can fast track this with GEO solutions in the market that will guide you and read more about the topic itself, like our guide on What Is Generative Engine Optimization to get foundational knowledge or read our ChatGPT statistics article to show how fast the channel is growing, or how to measure the success of AI Search article. All of these are good sources for you to start building your own story and POV regarding GEO and to stay ahead.

Clients at this stage prefer partnership and guidance over perfect execution. The fact is that the AI Engines LLMs are being updated on a fast basis and more nuances are coming to AI Search, such as Ads that are now coming to ChatGPT. This means that there is loads of information going around and you can work as the clarifier and guide in the AI Search storm. If you can genuinely guide them not just sell them a service but help them understand their current visibility and help them capture this new channel faster than their competitors, you are worth more than your body weight in gold.

Talking about capturing the channel and results.. One of the coolest things regarding GEO, is that it's already measurable and the results show up faster than in traditional SEO. This will definitely make your selling and upselling easier as well, since clients are more likely to buy a service where you can measure the results instead of having to wait up to 6 months like in SEO.

Why GEO Produces Faster Results Than SEO

GEO produces results faster than traditional SEO because AI engines do not rely on long indexing cycles. Once content is updated, LLMs retrieve and incorporate these changes almost immediately. A single improvement in structure, clarity or entity definition can shift how often a brand is cited within days, not months.

AI Search also changes quickly. Competitors publish new content, answer styles shift and engines release updates that influence visibility overnight. This volatility is exactly why GEO works best as an ongoing track rather than a one time project.

Freshness matters too. Our data shows that content refreshed every 90 days performs significantly better, which means agencies can often create major improvements by optimizing existing content instead of only producing new assets.

Here is a fast breakdown of the key reasons GEO produces results faster than SEO.

Next, let’s take a look at the Sales Framework itself that you can use for your clients.

The Sales Framework

To create a good Sales framework, you just have to create one for the new service rollout: standard enough that it’s repeatable but flexible enough that you can adapt it to different industries, competitor landscapes and client maturity levels.

1. Start with the problem

State the pain point clearly if they aren’t requesting this service from you yet: “Your customers are asking AI, not Google. Right now, you don’t know if you show up in those answers.”

As said before, you can already include in the first meeting / tender a snapshot of your customers current situation in AI Search and then tailor your offering based on that data. On top of that, Include any supporting case studies and stats (such as AI Search traffic converts 6x better than traditional search engine traffic) to solidify the problem/opportunity. 

2. Present the solution

Introduce Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as the evolution of SEO, not a replacement for it. You want to make it sound both familiar and forward-looking. 

Your clients already understand the importance of visibility in Google; now you’re helping them achieve the same in AI search. Talking points like“GEO is the next layer of discovery,”  and “same team, same strategy, broader reach” keeps clients from feeling like they’re being upsold on something unproven, while also assuring them they’re in good hands when it comes to future-proofing their content strategy.

3. Give the offer

Once they understand the problem and trust you have a real solution, don’t leave them hanging with “let us know if you’re interested.” Close with a concrete, low-risk way to get started that makes GEO sound like a natural extension of their current investment.

Depending on the client’s maturity and goals, you can show up to the call with one of the two options we discussed earlier:

Add-on model: If the client is already on an SEO retainer, frame GEO as an upgrade rather than a new, separate contract.

“We’ll integrate GEO into your existing SEO plan to expand your visibility beyond traditional Google into AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral and Perplexity and provide the analytics layer to make the whole project measurable to begin with and you will own the data that accumulates regarding your AI Search visibility.”

Price this model at €1.5K–€3K/ month above their existing package. It’s small enough that it doesn’t trigger a new budget approval cycle (in most of the cases), but meaningful enough to prove value fast and boost your recurring revenue. 

Standalone, deeper GEO audit: For enterprise clients or teams managing SEO in-house, offer a one-time project that benchmarks their AI visibility and identifies growth opportunities as a springboard for further spend.

“We’ll run a complete AI visibility audit: analyzing where your brand currently appears across all AI engines relevant to your markets, how your strategically most important service packages are shown, which competitors are winning citations and what steps will help you close the gap.”

This can run €5K–€10K for a one-off project and can easily convert into an ongoing consulting retainer once they see what’s possible, what they’re missing and how much work it requires.

Below is a simple packaging model that agencies can standardize across clients.

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“The deeper audit offering is their first taste, so you might price it slightly lower than your full value to get them in the door, after they see what’s possible, converting that into an ongoing retainer is significantly easier.” Kimmo Ihanus CTO, Co-Founder at Superlines

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Whatever you offer, be specific about deliverables: Brand visibility, citation opportunities, competitive analysis, GEO strategy, training and so on. You can price each deliverable separately as an add-on if they want to phase the work.

Clients are willing to pay for data and clarity and they usually want to take action, but are just looking for the best possible way to get started. Many know that there isn’t a crystal ball or ironclad solution and also acknowledge that it’s better to get started and get better doing it than just wait around and see competitors run past by them.

The Execution Framework (A Pilot to Get it Off the Ground)

Before rolling GEO out to clients, it’s smart to test it internally first. Treat your own agency as the pilot project, as it’ll give you an edge over others on two fronts:

• Prove your expertise: It’s not off the table that clients will check your own AI visibility before trusting you with theirs. Optimize your brand first to show you know what you’re doing and so that you can explain what you did and how you are going to do it for them.
• Build your first case study: In the absence of GEO clients, you can use your own results and turn your agency’s visibility and conversion wins into a case study that demonstrates credibility and real outcomes. If you have a GEO solution vendor, you can also use their case studies and testimonials if they have those available to showcase that you have partnered with industry leaders and that you are learning yourself the whole time.

That said, if you have an eager customer who wants a look into their AI visibility immediately, you can always use them as the guinea pig.

To run a pilot effectively though, you’ll need visibility data, citation tracking and performance benchmarks, none of which traditional SEO tools provide. In other words, you’ll need a GEO-focused platform like Superlines.

Month 1: Foundation and Quick Wins

Your goal in Month 1 is to set up the foundation and deliver the first tangible proof that GEO works. You’ll do that in two steps: delivering a baseline report and strategy early in the month and then executing the strategy and documenting the early wins.

The foundation

Are you just looking at the overall brand's visibility or does the business have strategically important services that you should prioritize and which markets are most important for them? It could be good idea to start with just the main brands visibility and deepen to the service parts and markets later. This also affects which AI Answer Engines are important for your client on top of their own market, are they B2C or a B2B, are they based in EU, US or perhaps Asia? All these play a factor what type of solution you need. Can you differentia markets, languages, setup multiple brands, filter data, and have all the relevant AI Engines available? Deepseek for instance is highly relevant for companies who are targeting Asian countries but for a Nordic only B2B company that channel plays very little meaning at the moment for instance.

The baseline report

Start by setting up your clients brand inside Superlines (or any GEO tool you are using) to begin tracking AI visibility data across platforms.

Then, check and report where your brand (or one of your customers’) currently stands in AI search by zeroing in on these four metrics:

1. Brand Visibility: Which platforms currently mention the brand and how ofter
2. Citation rate: Which platforms cite the brands content, and how often?
3. Wins and opportunities: Which topics or prompts are you ranking for, and where do competitors outperform you?
4. Positioning and factual correctness: How is the brand being described when it does appear: positive, neutral, or negative and is the information up to date?
5. Traffic. How much human traffic are AI citations generating to our website?

Platforms like Superlines show you these metrics.

• Brand Visibility % is the total share of AI answers that mention your brand within the prompts that you are tracking.
• Citation rate shows how often LLMs cite your website in the prompts you track.
• Your Position tells you the average position in which your brand gets mentioned compared to competitors.

These metrics give you a clear idea of where your (or your clients’) brand currently stands in AI search. Document them in the baseline report, but don’t stop there. Metrics alone don’t prove value unless you show how you’ll improve them.

Your report should also include a short, actionable strategy outlining how you plan to improve the situation.

Pick your focus areas for the month:

• Fix technical blockers: Make sure AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can access your brand’s site.
• Optimize five key pages: Update high-performing SEO pages for AI readability with better structure, schema markup and explicit brand mentions.
• Update existing content or create new: Optimize existing content or create completely new content to answer the first batch of prompts that you’ve identified a gap within compared to the competitors 
• (extra) Reach out to citation sources: Pick 15–20 external third party domains that the data identifies and request inclusion or updates.

Mention this action plan in the report and you’ll have a complete Baseline GEO Audit + Actionable Plan.

Execution and Early Results Reporting

After implementing the promised actions with the help of GEO solutions and your own expertise, you can begin the reporting. Throughout the month, track the same core metrics, i.e., visibility %, position and sentiment to monitor early movement. At the end of the first 30 days, compile the results into a short report highlighting your first wins, such as:

• Increase in visibility percentage
• Uptick in human traffic from AI citations
• New citations or mentions gained
• New content being indexed that wasn’t showing up before
• Positive sentiment improvements or ranking shifts
• New mentions in answers where competitors were mentioned instead

These small but measurable results are your first proof of concept, which sets the tone for Month 2’s deeper execution phase.

Month 2: Systematic Execution

Month 2 is when you amp up the GEO efforts and create a consistent process based on results from Month 1.

Weekly Check-ins and Strategy

On a fixed day every week (say Monday, for ease), check your clients’ current visibility metrics and compare them to the previous week’s. 

Note down any positive or negative changes, new themes and prompts the brand’s been mentioned in, as well as any sentiment changes.

Based on the health check, decide on your action items for the week. Since you’ve already started optimizing for GEO in Month 1, there might be multiple optimizations driving good results. First, check what’s pending from last week:

• Checking the visibility metrics of pages published just last week. Are they visible already?
• Has pages previously with good visibility seen a decline?
• (Remember, this was an extra step) Following up on outreaches you’ve not heard back from

Then, it's time to look for new data-backed opportunities from the GEO solution of your choice:

• Any new citation opportunities that are driving mentions in a lot of AI-generated answers.
• Underperforming pages that haven’t improved in visibility or mentions since last week and need a refresh.
• Content that competitors have published recently but your customer hasn’t yet covered on their own website (these are called content gaps).

Prioritize actions that have the highest potential impact. For example, say you found ten new content opportunities for the week but only have the bandwidth to do five optimizations/new contents, choose the ones with highest Brand Response Rate (BRR). This means that you choose the most important prompts that also has the highest rate of any brands being mentioned in the answers. This way you are optimizing toward prompts that are of high value and business opportunity since you can get your clients brand mentioned there.

You might also notice that certain optimizations drive stronger results than others. Document these patterns to personalize and refine your GEO strategy for each client based on what drives the most value.

Month 3: Scale and Reporting

By Month 3, you have two months of consistent data showing how your GEO efforts are improving the brand’s AI search visibility. 

Your goal at this stage is to: deliver a full-scale GEO performance report that proves ROI, then use that to scale the scope of work, either by expanding to more pages and assets or converting a project into an ongoing retainer.

Building the Performance Report

The GEO performance report should tell a compelling before-and-after narrative.

Structure it around four sections:

1. Executive Summary

The most important top-line metrics. should be immediately visible. Use percentage changes and concrete numbers that tell a story. :

• Brand Visibility increase: “Your visibility in AI search increased from 12% to 31% over 90 days, which is a 158% improvement.”
• Citation rate increase: “We secured 47 new citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, up from 8 at baseline. These citations translated into an uptick of 56% in LLM traffic.”
• Position improvement: “Your average mention position improved from 4.2 to 2.1, meaning you’re now cited earlier in AI-generated answers.”
• Correct information improved: “The outdated information regarding topics  X Y Z has been updated and the LLMs are showing correct and up to date information within Z topics.
• (Optional) Sentiment shift: “Positive sentiment mentions increased by 64%, while neutral mentions decreased by 22%.”

2. Month-by-Month Progression

Show the trend in a simple table or chart:

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3. What Drove the Results

Break down which specific actions had the biggest impact so your clients can connect strategies to the outcomes:

• Top-performing optimization: “Updating the ‘Best [Product Category]’ comparison page with structured data and expert quotes resulted in 14 new citations and appearing in 89 new answers.”
• Most valuable citation source: “Being mentioned on [Authority Site] led to your brand appearing in 23% more AI answers across all platforms.”
• Platform breakdown: “ChatGPT now mentions your brand in 38% of relevant queries, up from 9%. Perplexity citations grew from 2 to 19.”

The Impacts and Results column in Superlines Action Center shows you which specific actions drove what kind of results, which is information you can directly use in this section. 

4. Competitive Positioning

Show where the brand now stands relative to competitors:

• “You’re now cited in 31% of answers where competitors appear, up from 8%.”
• “For high-intent prompts like ‘best [product] for [use case],’ you rank ahead of [Competitor A] 67% of the time.”
• “Your visibility now exceeds [Competitor B] by 14 percentage points in AI search, even though they outrank you in Google for several terms.”

If you’ve closed the gap with a key competitor or surpassed them entirely, call that out. Clients care about winning against rivals, regardless of what their GEO looks like.

“The hardest part of reporting GEO results is making clients (or often, their bosses) understand why it’s relevant. Brand visibility and citation rate don’t mean much if you can’t connect them to business outcomes, which isn’t too far from the issue we’ve had with reporting on organic traffic alone." - Hannes Jersenius, Head of Growth at Superlines

I learned to frame it like this: ‘You now appear in 40% more AI-generated answers than you did months ago. That means when someone asks ChatGPT for recommendations in your category, you’re in the conversation. Your competitors who aren’t optimizing for this aren’t.

But I’d also push them to look at other signals. Are you seeing traffic you can’t fully attribute? Are you getting leads who say they found you through ‘research’ and it turns out the source is ChatGPT? That’s ROI right there. Not to mention, with AI adoption rates being what they are, you can’t afford to wait until attribution is perfect. By then, you’re already behind.”

Scaling The Scope of Your Contract

You’ve presented the data, now don’t wait for the client to ask “what’s next?” Guide that conversation and present scaling the investment as the logical next step. Support your clients strategy by expanding the GEO work to their important offerings/markets and drive them towards the thirst of knowledge of how they are performing there.

Position scaling as something more

The worst thing you can do is frame Month 4+ as “we should keep doing this.” 

Instead, position it as scaling what’s already working:

“We’ve proven GEO works for your top five pages. Now we can expand to your product pages, regional content, and FAQ sections, where competitors are currently outranking you in AI search.”

This takes the conversation from “should we continue?” to “how fast do we want to scale and can you afford to slow down now?”

Use competitive gaps to create urgency

Point to specific areas where competitors are winning and the customer’s brand isn’t:

“Right now, [Competitor X] appears in 55% of AI answers for ‘[topic]’ prompts, and you don’t appear at all. We can close that gap in 60 days by optimizing your existing content on that topic.”

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Why Your Clients Need Ongoing AI Search Analytics

AI Search visibility moves fast. Rankings in traditional SEO often shift over months, but in AI Search the changes can appear within days. This makes one time audits unreliable. If agencies check visibility only once or twice a year, they are presenting clients with a picture of the past instead of what is happening right now.

Clients need ongoing visibility into how often they are mentioned, how often they are cited and how competitors are performing within the same prompts. As more companies begin optimizing for AI Search the competition intensifies, and positions can shift at any time.

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A Real Example of How Fast Visibility Can Change

We once held 80% Brand Visibility for an important commercial query: “How to track brand mentions in AI Search”. In practice this meant that out of one thousand conversations in this topic we appeared in eight hundred. It was one of our strongest performing articles.

After several months I updated the content to improve it even further and published the changes on a Sunday evening. By Monday morning our Brand Visibility had fallen to zero percent. We had disappeared from the answers entirely in just ten hours.

Nothing major happened in the models and competitors had not published new content. The change came from the update itself. Two sections had become too promotional, and the article no longer looked neutral and informative. AI engines simply stopped selecting it as a reliable source.

Because we had continuous analytics, we saw the drop immediately. We rewrote the promotional sections, kept the structural improvements and republished. Within an hour the page was being cited again. Over the next few days the visibility climbed back up and eventually exceeded the original 80%.

This real world case illustrates just how quickly visibility can change.

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Why Continuous Measurement Becomes a Competitive Advantage

Without ongoing analytics, we would never have noticed the problem. That single article has generated several hundred thousand euros in sales opportunities. Losing visibility for even a few days would have had a direct commercial impact.

This is why continuous measurement matters. Agencies cannot rely on assumptions or wait six months to validate whether actions worked. The agencies that track Brand Visibility and Citation Rate weekly catch issues early, optimize faster and give their clients a strategic advantage in a channel that updates at high speed.

Here are the most important reasons ongoing analytics is essential, distilled into a quick list.

Choosing the Right AI Search Solution for Your Agency and Your Clients

Selecting the right AI Search or GEO solution is one of the most important decisions an agency will make when adding AI Search visibility to its service offering. The ideal solution should provide accurate, reliable and transparent data. It should also fit the reality of agency work, where teams need to audit clients, collaborate, manage multiple accounts and generate reporting that drops directly into new business pitches.

There are two categories of tools on the market. Some platforms are hybrid solutions that combine SEO and GEO data in one view. Others are purpose built specifically for AI Search, providing deeper insights and more advanced capabilities. Both approaches can work, but agencies should verify how the data is collected before trusting the output.

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Questions to ask a potential GEO vendor

Not all tools are equally transparent. You should always ask where the prompts come from, how the platform performs retrieval tests and whether it relies only on API calls without validating what real models actually return. Some products also market tactics such as creating an alternate clone version of your website specifically for LLM bots. Based on our own testing and industry data, these cloned domains rarely receive visits from either humans or AI crawlers. The idea sounds appealing, but in practice domain authority and trust signals still matter more than an artificial duplicate site.

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How GEO Fits Into Your Agency’s Service Model

When evaluating a potential GEO provider, agencies should confirm that the platform supports real operational needs. The solution should include multi client management, user roles for collaboration, clear auditing capabilities, competitive insights, reporting tools, export options and integrations into the client’s preferred analytics or business intelligence stack. Without these features, GEO becomes difficult to scale as a service.

Most importantly, agencies should ensure that the vendor truly understands AI Search as a channel. GEO requires knowledge of how content is retrieved, how visibility works across different models and how AI interprets structured information. Ideally, the provider also has a background in marketing and agency workflows, because this ensures the platform supports real world client delivery and not only technical experimentation.

Choosing the right solution is not just about data accuracy. It is about selecting a tool that lets your agency deliver consistent results, build repeatable GEO processes and turn AI Search visibility into an ongoing service your clients trust.

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Who Should Own the GEO License, the Agency or the Client?

Both models are possible. Agencies can hold the GEO license or the client can own it. However, based on how agencies operate and how enterprise procurement works, the most effective model is usually a hybrid approach where both parties have a role.

Why Agencies Should Have Their Own License

Your agency should have a smaller or mid tier GEO license. This allows you to:

• learn the platform
  
• run internal tests and experiments
  
• perform audits and lightweight client work
  
• build case studies and a point of view
  
• demo the platform confidently during pitches
  

This internal license becomes the foundation for offering GEO as a high quality and repeatable service.

Why the Client Should Ultimately Own Their GEO License

Although agencies should use the platform internally, the client should ultimately own the GEO license for several reasons:

• The client should own their data, history and long term visibility tracking
  
• Agencies avoid carrying the cost of tracking thousands of prompts across dozens of clients
  
• Clients appreciate control and transparency
  
• Agencies avoid purchasing large enterprise level licenses that are not needed
  

In this model, the client pays for their own GEO setup and the agency provides the expertise.

Why Clients Often Prefer Purchasing Through the Agency

In reality, enterprise procurement is slow. Some clients have approval processes that take six to fifteen months for new tools. When the agency is already an approved vendor, the process becomes much faster.

Buying the GEO license through the agency:

• accelerates procurement
  
• removes legal roadblocks
  
• helps the client move at market speed
  
• strengthens the agency’s position and relationship
  
• allows the agency to provide GEO at scale without taking on unnecessary cost
  

Many large clients find this a relief. They want to start GEO immediately but cannot wait for procurement cycles. Going through the agency is a fast track that benefits everyone.

The Recommended Model

The winning setup for most agencies is this:

• the agency holds a small internal license for learning, audits and pre sales
  
• the client holds the full license for long term tracking and data ownership
  
• the license is optionally purchased through the agency at a discounted rate
  

This arrangement keeps costs fair, maintains proper ownership, strengthens agency relationships and creates a scalable model where both sides benefit.

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Be the Agency That Offers Something Concrete and Measurable regarding GEO

You still have time to be early.

A lot of agencies are watching, waiting to see if GEO is as relevant as they think. A few are running quiet tests. Almost none have built it into their service stack in a way that’s documented, repeatable and provable.

That’s your opening.

Build your first few GEO client projects, document what worked and what didn’t. Then, turn those results into case studies that show you’ve solved problems other agencies are still trying to understand. You don’t need a dozen wins, just a few strong examples that prove you figured this out. The market is growing exponentially and you have a chance to grow with it.

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Next Steps for Agencies

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Use this final checklist to get GEO off the ground inside your agency.

Here is the simplest way to begin:

• Audit your top three clients or desirable new business case leads to establish baseline AI visibility
• Add a slide on Generative Engine Optimization to your pitch with data about your leads visibility + suggestions how to improve it
• Standardize Brand Visibility and Citation Rate as core AI search KPIs in your 2026 pitch decks and reporting.

Agencies that adopt GEO today will own this category tomorrow.

If you are interested in tapping into this huge new market and business opportunity and are looking for a GEO partner with an Agency Program, look no further. Superlines is here to help. Contact us and let’s get started!

Why Agencies That Start Early Win the Market

The future of AI Search belongs to brands that understand how AI systems interpret the web and how each content channel supports visibility. When you track your client’s Brand Visibility and Citation Rate, then optimize content around those insights, their brand will start appearing inside the answers that their target group actually reads.

Superlines helps agencies measure and improve GEO performance across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Mistral, Google AI Mode, Gemini and other AI engines, giving you a clear view of where your client appears today and where they can win next.

Start today with the most actionable and agency friendly platform!