This post was sponsored by Visto. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Clients keep asking a new question: “Are we visible in AI search?”
This is the reality: Google’s AI Overviews are reducing organic traffic by 30-70% for many businesses.
In fact, we’re seeing that SEO agencies that incorporate GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) tactics into their SEO strategy and offerings are charging $4,000/month for these additional menu services.
However, when it comes to GEO, a newly evolved and still-evolving branch of SEO, answering the AI visibility question is:
But if you skip the check and jump straight to fixes, you risk solving the wrong problem.
Start with a simple AI Visibility Audit:
Once you identify which phrases you display and those you do not, you can begin to build a comprehensive audit, repeating the steps as you would for keyword research or, traditionally, People Also Ask research.
The Easy Way: Use this AI Visibility audit and bring the snapshot to your next client call. It gets you out of the “we think” zone and into “here’s what we saw today.”
Once you have your audit results in hand, it’s time to determine where you stand:
Notice how some of this is traditional ranking talk, and other facets are new.
So, it’s time for a new lens here.
Look at GEO as more of a traffic channel, as opposed to a new technique: Do we show up in the answer people actually read?
This is where agencies need to act fast. If you’re not helping clients with GEO now, they’ll find someone who will.
In this step, it’s time to connect the dots for everyone outside of your SEO team.
How will clients or bosses handle a change to your reporting?
What is the best way to convince a stakeholder that they need additional SEO services to stay ahead during the GEO boom?
This is how to turn a vague “traffic is down” conversation into “here’s where we’re missing in the answer and what we’ll fix.”
Within your audit presentation, the AI Search findings should follow this structure:
Pro Tip: Leverage a side-by-side comparison. The left side could include the AI answer with your brand’s status. The right side a quick look at on-site metrics for those same topics.
Once your audit is approved, and a contract is in place to expand your SEO offerings to include GEO techniques, it’s time to apply the perfect mix of traditional SEO and GEO to improve visibility in the areas you’ve identified in the audit.
From a high level, there are two constraints that change the game, especially when adding GEO tactics to your SEO offerings:
That’s why old habits can backfire. You’re optimizing for clarity, entities, and extractability, not density.
The way we think about it is this: if SEO is about ranking for keywords, GEO is about showing up for prompts.
How Does A Prompt Differ From Keywords?
When someone types a prompt, modern AI doesn’t just “look up” one thing. It:
From our perspective, that’s the bridge between SEO and GEO: your classic search visibility still matters, but only as a feeder into which sources the AI decides to read.
You will see overlaps here; that’s because there are slight changes to traditional methods that you’ll need to consider when optimizing for answer engines.
What to focus on, from a traditional SEO angle:
What to focus on, from the GEO perspective:
The Easy Way: Visto can consolidate these checks into a single workflow, allowing you to baseline quickly and track progress without needing a dozen tools.
Within traditional SEO, this refers to improving readability.
Your goal here is to give the answer engine what it needs as quickly as a good support team would:
If the reader needs to scroll to find the point, the crawler will likely give up at that same point.
Next, make the page unambiguous with consistent:
Think of this as labeling the shelves in a small shop. If the labels are clear, the model finds what it came for without guessing.
Then handle the technical side of GEO. AI crawlers care about time to the first useful token, so shorten the path to the answer.
Tighten titles and H1s, move key facts above the fold, and keep interstitials from blocking the first read. The AI crawler has a limited context window and reads fast. Help it skim the right lines.
If your customers compare options, publish a straightforward comparison that highlights only the differences people ask about.
What we’ve seen is that honest tables and short “who it’s for” notes get cited more than glossy positioning.
Finally, reinforce what supports the page. Link credible sources to the version you want cited. Check how your brand is described in the existing answers. If the tone is off, correct the original source you’re referencing.
Then, regularly review your metrics: presence, named mentions, and competitor share. GEO isn’t a set-and-forget channel, so a light monthly review helps prevent drift.
Visto’s platform automates much of this tracking, giving agencies the tools to prove value with measurable, prompt-level insights and easy-to-share reports.
“In the first two quarters, we have seen an 88% year-over-year increase in organic traffic and a 42% YoY increase in unique pageviews from organic traffic.“
Agencies using a platform like Visto’s see their clients’ brands referenced more in AI answers after tightening entities and updating a handful of high-value pages.
The agencies succeeding are those positioning themselves as AI search authorities now, not waiting to see how things shake out.
Visto helps agencies measure AI visibility and manage the work.
Built specifically for marketing agencies, the platform shows where your brand appears in AI answers, summarizes citations across engines, and highlights the pages most likely to move the needle.
Visto provides:
Don’t wait for your clients to ask why they’re invisible in AI search. Position your agency as the AI search authority they need right now.
Special Offer: For SEJ readers, sign up for three months free access and start prospecting and serving clients.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Visto. Used with permission.
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