GEO, AI SEO, and the Early Days of AI Visibility: What Marketing Leaders Need to Consider

How to rank for AI visibility has been a hot topic lately. The hard truth is that marketers now need to “please” two audiences: humans and AI. Both matter.
Many of us have been asking, “How do I get AI to rank my brand or products?” That’s an important question. But the better question is:

“How are my customers actually searching, prompting, and deciding?”

Understand How Your Customers Search

Ten years ago, the primary research sources for B2B buyers were Google Search, review platforms, and third-party analyst reports. Today, buyers toggle between ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google,  moving back and forth to validate results.

You’ve probably seen the stats: LLMs often cite Reddit, Quora, and Wikipedia. But does that mean your corporate content is irrelevant unless you publish there?

Not really.

B2B buyers (I am one of them) may lurk on Reddit or Quora, but they still weigh vendor websites, analyst reports, and industry publications far more heavily. In my own customer conversations, websites remain the go-to for clarity, evaluations, and comparisons.

Another distinction worth noting: visibility is not equivalent to authority. AI can surface your brand without context, and authority doesn’t guarantee visibility in AI outputs. (Note: Shout-out to Taylor Young for sharing a thoughtful comment on my LinkedIn post.)

That’s why your website still matters, even if traffic is down. That’s your digital home base, where you educate, defend, and differentiate. If AI needs a source to crawl, you want your site ready.

I’ll be transparent: my own website traffic has declined 30%. Yet, I still create original content, and I’ve seen my site cited in AI chatbot outputs. Over the last six months, I’ve watched AI drive new traffic back to my pages. I’ve gotten high-quality leads based on ChatGPT’s recommendations.

Prompt to try (customer research):

“Show me how a VP of Marketing might use Google and ChatGPT together to research [your product category]. What questions would they ask in each tool?”

Prompt to try (website optimization):

“Here’s my homepage copy [paste text]. Rewrite it so it’s clear for both a human buyer and an AI system scanning for context. Keep it concise, structured, and benefit-driven.”

Understand How Your Customers Prompt

If you can track AI bots driving traffic to certain pages, you can reverse-engineer the likely prompts buyers are using.

For example: if your pricing page suddenly shows up in analytics with “ChatGPT” as a referral, chances are buyers are prompting for price comparisons. That insight tells you to tighten your pricing content so both humans and AI can parse it.

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With thought leadership or educational content, prompts are harder to infer. But if a page consistently draws traffic, it’s worth asking: “What else can I add here to bring clarity for both audiences?”

Prompt to try:

“Here are my top 5 traffic pages from ChatGPT referrals [list URLs]. Suggest the likely prompts buyers are using to arrive at these pages.”

Understand How Your Customers Decide

Enterprise buying still involves committees, procurement, and end-users. AI isn’t replacing those structures, but it may be reshaping the early evaluation phase.
Ask yourself: “Are buyers using AI to screen vendors before you ever enter the RFP conversation?” If so, your visibility in AI search results may determine whether you even make the shortlist.

Prompt to try (decision-making):

“Here’s my ideal customer profile [paste ICP]. What role does AI likely play in their early evaluation process? At what stage of decision-making would my brand need to show up?”

Prompt to try (decision-maker validation):

“Here are my target titles [list titles]. Which of these roles are most likely to use AI for vendor research, and what specific prompts might they ask?”

Three Options for B2B Marketers

Based on what you learn about how your customers search, prompt, and decide, here are three strategic paths:

1. Do Nothing (for now)

This isn’t about ignoring AI SEO completely — it’s about buying time while keeping your digital foundation steady.

Specific steps:

• Keep your existing SEO program running — don’t cut it just because traffic is declining. SEO is still a long-term investment.
• Monitor traffic sources in analytics (Google Analytics, Search Console, etc.) for signals of AI referrals (e.g., “ChatGPT” or “Perplexity” as referrers).
• Assign a team member to track industry updates (e.g., how LLMs cite sources, AI overview updates from Google, etc.) and brief leadership quarterly.
• Create a “watchlist” of competitor content being cited in AI chatbot answers.

Note: This approach works if your team is already stretched thin or you’re waiting for clearer industry standards. But doing nothing for too long risks falling behind.

2. Do Something

This is the middle ground: maintain your basics, but experiment with AI-focused tweaks without overhauling your entire site.

Specific steps:

• Audit your website pages and tighten copy for clarity (remove jargon, add structured FAQs, make it skimmable).
• Select 3–5 high-value pages (pricing, product overview, comparisons, services) and optimize them for both humans and AI crawlers.
• Start syndicating content more widely — repost blogs, articles, and thought leadership to LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, and industry sites. (The more touchpoints, the more likely AI models see your content).
• Use AI tools to categorize and restructure offerings so they’re easier for both buyers and AI to understand.
• Add FAQ sections with natural language questions buyers would actually ask AI bots.

Note: Think of this as a “test-and-learn” phase. You don’t redesign your whole site, but you chip away at improvements where ROI is most likely.

3. Go All In

This is for organizations that want to lead, not follow. It requires budget, alignment, and a willingness to rethink your digital presence.

Specific steps:

• Partner with an agency or in-house team with AI SEO expertise to map how AI crawls, parses, and cites content.
• Conduct a content taxonomy redesign: re-architect your site navigation, categories, and tagging to make it AI- and human-friendly.
• Rewrite all key website pages with AI readability in mind (shorter paragraphs, structured answers, data-backed insights, conversational headers).
• Create AI-optimized content hubs — each hub designed to answer a family of prompts buyers might ask (“Best B2B cybersecurity solutions for financial services,” “What’s the ROI of ABM for mid-market companies?”).
• Implement structured data and schema markup so AI tools can more easily identify context.
• Train your marketing team to reverse-engineer customer prompts and integrate those into copy.
• Launch a pilot program to track citations of your brand in AI chatbots and use that as an internal success metric.

This is a major lift, but it positions your brand to shape how AI presents your category. It’s like being early to SEO in the 2000s — high effort, but first movers may dominate, but it’s still a continuous effort, just like ongoing SEO.

My Recommendation

There is no universal “best decision.” It’s about budget, leadership appetite, and timing.

• If you’re overwhelmed → Do Nothing (short-term) while monitoring shifts, but put a six-month cap on this strategy.
• If your budget is tight → Start with Do Something and optimize selectively.
• If you have resources and appetite → Go All In to build an early advantage.

The key is to pick a lane intentionally, not drift into inaction.

That’s exactly what I did. Instead of overhauling everything, I refreshed my service pages, restructured my offerings, and tightened my homepage. The result? Both humans and AI “get” what I do faster.

Marketing has never been boring, but AI is rewriting the rules faster than ever. The key is to align your leadership team on a POV, separate hype from reality, and make calculated, budget-driven bets.

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