# Generative engine optimization services that start with SEO > Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your company found and cited by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, on top of ranking in Google. We start with a technical and entity audit ($3,500 to $8,000, 2 to 3 weeks), then ship the fixes and page rewrites in a sprint ($6,000 to $15,000, 4 to 7 weeks). - Page: https://methodcrew.com/services/seo-and-geo - Last updated: 2026-10-28 - Publisher: [The Method Crew](https://methodcrew.com/) - Service: SEO and GEO - Category: Search and visibility Technical SEO, entity work and pages written to be quoted on Google and in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini answers. Every engagement starts with an audit that ranks the fixes by what each problem costs you. ## Key facts - Price: $3,500 to $15,000 per project. The audit runs $3,500 to $8,000. The sprint that ships the fixes and rewrites runs $6,000 to $15,000. - Timeline: 6 to 10 weeks for the audit and sprint - Typical tools: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Ahrefs, Semrush, PageSpeed Insights, Schema Markup Validator, Google Analytics 4, Looker Studio, IndexNow - Change requests: $175 an hour, quoted in writing first - Model and tool usage: billed to your own accounts at cost, no markup - Ownership: code, workflows, prompts, accounts and data belong to you ## Who it is for - B2B companies with 10 to 500 staff whose buyers research before they call - Teams that rank on Google for their own name and almost nothing else - Marketing leads who want AI search reported in numbers a board can read - Sites with good services and pages that never say what they cost or how long they take ## Signals you need it - **AI answers name your competitors.** Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for providers in your category. Other firms come up, with links. You do not. - **Your copy only exists after JavaScript runs.** View the raw HTML of a service page and the body text is missing. Several AI crawlers do not run scripts, so to them the page is close to empty. - **Impressions climb while clicks stay flat.** Search Console shows more impressions on your service pages than a year ago, but traffic has not moved. Buyers read the answer on the results page, and it is not yours. - **Your company is described 4 different ways.** The site, LinkedIn, Clutch and an old directory listing each give a different name, location or one-line description. Engines cannot tell whether they are the same company. ## What we hand over - **Audit report and ticket list.** Every finding ranked by impact and effort, written so a developer can close a ticket without a call. - **Prompt panel baseline.** 30 buyer prompts run in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Copilot and Claude, with a log of who gets named, who gets linked and which URLs are cited. - **Entity sheet and Organization schema.** One company name, a one-sentence description and profile links, applied to the site, its JSON-LD and the listings you control. - **Rewritten priority pages.** 5 to 12 service, pricing and comparison pages rewritten answer-first, with facts approved by your team. - **Crawler access and rendering fixes.** robots.txt groups for each crawler, CDN bot rules, sitemaps, canonicals and server-rendered copy, shipped by us or by your developers. - **Measurement setup.** Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools verified on your accounts, GA4 segments for AI referrals and one Looker Studio report. ## How the engagement runs 1. **Map** (2 to 3 weeks): The audit. We crawl the site, fetch every template with JavaScript off, pull Search Console and Bing data and run the baseline prompt panel. You get the report, the ticket list and a fixed price for the sprint. 2. **Prove** (1 to 2 weeks): We ship the highest-impact technical fixes and rewrite 2 or 3 priority pages first. Rankings take months, so this stage checks one thing: that every change lands the way crawlers need it, confirmed with raw HTML fetches and URL Inspection. 3. **Build** (3 to 5 weeks): The rest of the sprint: remaining fixes, page rewrites, Organization and Service markup, profile clean-up and the measurement report. Each week ends with a demo of what shipped and what is next. 4. **Run** (Monthly, for as long as it helps): On a retainer we rerun the prompt panel monthly, catch crawl problems after releases and add pages from the question backlog. Or your team carries on from the runbook. Every engagement follows [The Method](https://methodcrew.com/approach): Map, Prove, Build, Run. ## What is generative engine optimization, and is it different from SEO? Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your company named and linked in answers written by AI systems: ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Most of it is SEO. Google's [AI features guidance](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) says AI Overviews and AI Mode need nothing beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. The difference is that Google is one index among several. Each engine retrieves from its own crawl or from Bing, and each can be shut out by a robots.txt line or CDN setting nobody remembers adding. | Engine | Where it finds pages | What usually keeps you out | |---|---|---| | Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google's search index | Not indexed, or nosnippet and low max-snippet settings | | Gemini app | Google's crawl, governed by the Google-Extended token | Google-Extended disallowed in robots.txt | | ChatGPT search | OpenAI's index, crawled by OAI-SearchBot | OAI-SearchBot blocked in robots.txt or at the CDN | | Perplexity | Its own index, crawled by PerplexityBot | PerplexityBot blocked | | Microsoft Copilot | Bing's index | Not indexed in Bing, or NOARCHIVE on the page | | Claude | Claude-SearchBot index plus live fetches | Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User blocked | So GEO adds 2 jobs to ordinary SEO. The first is access: every crawler you want has to reach the raw HTML. The second is quotability: one consistent description of your company, and pages plain enough for a model to lift a passage as written. Our article on [GEO vs AEO vs SEO](https://methodcrew.com/insights/geo-vs-aeo-vs-seo) sets out where the three overlap. ## What does the SEO and GEO audit check? The audit answers one question: what stops the right pages from being found, read and quoted, ranked by what each problem costs you. It takes 2 to 3 weeks and covers 8 areas. - Rendering: we fetch every template with JavaScript off and compare it with the rendered page. Copy, links, headings and JSON-LD that appear only after scripts run are invisible to several AI crawlers. - Crawler access: robots.txt groups for each search and AI crawler, CDN and firewall bot rules, status codes, redirect chains and 404s. - Index coverage: what Google and Bing have indexed, what they skipped and why, plus sitemaps and canonical tags. - Core Web Vitals from field data where you have enough traffic, lab tests where you do not. - How your company name, one-line description, founders and profiles read across the site, LinkedIn and directories. [Entity SEO](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/entity-seo) is the term for this work. - Whether your structured data validates and matches the visible text. - Which questions your buyers ask, which page should answer each one and which pages answer nothing. - A baseline prompt panel: 30 buyer prompts run in 6 AI engines, with a log of who gets named and which URLs get cited. You get a written report and a ticket list your developers can work from, each item with an effort estimate in hours. We present it on a 60-minute call and price the sprint from it. ## How do you measure visibility in AI search? With 4 sources, none complete on its own. Google Search Console now has a [generative AI performance report](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports) that shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and date. It shows impressions only, with no clicks. Bing Webmaster Tools has an [AI Performance dashboard](https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/march-2026/the-ai-performance-dashboard-your-view-into-where-your-brand-appears-across-the-ai-web) that counts citations of your pages in Microsoft's AI answers and lists the grounding queries that retrieved them. Those queries show the phrasing an AI system used to find you, which makes them good content briefs. Analytics shows the visits, through GA4 segments for referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com and claude.ai. The prompt panel covers what no dashboard reports: whether ChatGPT or Perplexity names you when a buyer asks for a provider. Answers vary between runs and between users, so we treat the panel as a sample and track direction over months. Rankings still matter, though less directly than they did. [Ahrefs data reported by Search Engine Journal in March 2026](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ai-overview-citations-from-top-ranking-pages-drop-sharply/568637/) showed that 38% of pages cited in AI Overviews also ranked in the top 10 for the same query, down from 76% in its July 2025 study. Ahrefs says its parsing changed between the two, so treat the drop as direction. Pages outside the top 10 get cited when they answer a sub-question cleanly. ## What do SEO and GEO cost, and what changes the price? The audit costs $3,500 to $8,000. The sprint that ships the fixes and rewrites costs $6,000 to $15,000. Both are fixed price. Five things move a project up or down the band: - Size. A 40-page site on 5 templates sits near the bottom. A site with 2,000 product pages and filtered navigation sits near the top. - Rendering. A site that builds its copy in the browser needs that fixed before anything else. If the fix is a framework change, it belongs in a [web design and development](https://methodcrew.com/services/web-design-development) project instead. - Who deploys. With access to your CMS or repository we ship changes ourselves. If your developers prefer to deploy, we write tickets and review their pull requests. That costs less and takes longer. - Rewrites. Each priority page rewritten answer-first, with prices and timelines approved by your team, is the largest line in a typical sprint. - Locales. Each extra language or country adds hreflang checks and its own prompt panel. The sprint is where most [answer engine optimization](https://methodcrew.com/services/answer-engine-optimization) happens: question research, answer-first rewrites and markup that matches the page. If your technical base is already sound, you can buy that sprint on its own and skip the audit. After the sprint, ongoing work moves to an [SEO and GEO retainer](https://methodcrew.com/services/seo-geo-retainers) at $3,000 to $8,000 a month, or your team runs it from the runbook. Tool and model usage is billed at cost. ## What is not included, and when is this the wrong spend? Not included: link buying, guest-post packages, paid search, social media management and PR placements. We do not sell general digital marketing. We also do not seed fake mentions on forums or review sites. Google's [AI optimization guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide) says inauthentic mentions are less helpful than they look, and hidden instructions aimed at language models break Bing's webmaster guidelines. Nobody can guarantee a ranking or a citation in an AI answer. We commit to a list of changes shipped by a date, and to measuring honestly what they did. This is the wrong spend in 4 situations: - You are rebuilding the site in the next 3 months. Fold search into the build. Fixing templates you are about to delete wastes most of the audit. - Your category has almost no search demand yet. A new kind of product needs outbound sales, events and press before there are queries to answer. - You need leads in the next 30 days. Paid search is faster. Expect 3 to 6 months before organic and AI search show up in pipeline. - Nobody inside can check rewritten pages. We can draft them, but a page that states your prices, process and limits has to be approved by someone who knows them. ## What changes for your team - Copy, links and structured data for every page sit in the raw HTML that crawlers fetch. - The search and AI crawlers you want can reach the site, in robots.txt and at the CDN. - Your company has one name and one description on the site, in its schema and on its profiles. - AI Overview and AI Mode impressions in Search Console and Copilot citations in Bing Webmaster Tools are on one monthly report. - A dated prompt panel shows which AI answers mention you and which of your URLs they cite. ## Tools we work with Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Ahrefs, Semrush, PageSpeed Insights, Schema Markup Validator, Google Analytics 4, Looker Studio, IndexNow ## What it costs $3,500 to $15,000 per project. The audit runs $3,500 to $8,000. The sprint that ships the fixes and rewrites runs $6,000 to $15,000. - Change requests: $175 an hour, quoted before work starts - Model and tool usage: billed at cost, no markup All 20 price bands: https://methodcrew.com/pricing ## Blueprints that use this service - [AI search content engine](https://methodcrew.com/blueprints/ai-search-content-engine): built in 6 to 8 weeks, $12,000 to $25,000 per project. ## Common questions ### How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT? Make sure ChatGPT's crawler can read your site, then give it specific facts to repeat. Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and at your CDN, state what you sell, for whom and at what price in plain page text, and describe your company the same way everywhere. Answers also draw on what other sites say about you, so genuine reviews and listings help. Nobody can force a mention. ### How long does GEO take to show results? Technical fixes show up in crawl data within days. Rankings and AI citations usually take 3 to 6 months to move in a way you can see in Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and the prompt panel. Because AI answers vary between runs, we judge progress on monthly trends and never on a single answer. ### Does schema markup help with AI search? It helps engines identify who you are, but it is no shortcut. Google says no special schema is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and FAQ rich results stopped appearing in Google in May 2026. We add Organization, Service and BreadcrumbList markup that matches the visible text, because consistent entity data helps Bing and other parsers. We skip markup that exists only for show. ### Should we add an llms.txt file? It is cheap and harmless, so we usually add one, but do not expect a ranking effect. Google says Search does not use llms.txt or other AI text files. Some AI tools and coding agents do read it. We generate it from the same content as your pages, so the file and the site never disagree. ### Do you guarantee first-page rankings or AI citations? No. Google, OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft decide what they show. We commit to the work: a fixed list of fixes and rewrites, shipped on dates in the written scope, plus measurement that shows you what moved. Anyone guaranteeing a ChatGPT citation is either guessing or planning something that breaks search engine guidelines. ### Can you work with our developers and our CMS? Yes. We work in WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, HubSpot CMS and headless setups such as Next.js with Sanity or Contentful. If you give us access, we ship changes ourselves on your accounts. If your developers prefer to deploy, we write tickets with acceptance checks and review their pull requests. ## Related services - [Answer engine optimization (AEO)](https://methodcrew.com/services/answer-engine-optimization): 10 to 25 pages rewritten so AI answers can quote them, tracked on 30 to 50 buyer prompts. $6,000 to $15,000 per project. - [Content operations](https://methodcrew.com/services/content-operations): A pipeline from keyword to CMS draft, with an editor approving every piece. $8,000 to $25,000 per project. - [SEO and GEO retainers](https://methodcrew.com/services/seo-geo-retainers): Monthly fixes and new pages, with a report on rankings and AI citations. $3,000 to $8,000 per month. ## Further reading ### Guides - [How to get your company cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews](https://methodcrew.com/insights/get-cited-by-chatgpt-perplexity-ai-overviews) - [GEO vs AEO vs SEO: what is actually different](https://methodcrew.com/insights/geo-vs-aeo-vs-seo) ### Terms explained - [AI visibility (share of voice in AI answers)](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/ai-visibility): AI visibility measures how often AI assistants mention or cite your business when answering the questions your buyers ask, compared with competitors over the same set of prompts. - [Answer engine optimization (AEO)](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/answer-engine-optimization): Answer engine optimization structures pages so a search engine or AI assistant can lift a direct answer from them, as a featured snippet, voice answer or AI citation. - [Entity SEO](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/entity-seo): Entity SEO is making sure search engines and AI systems recognize your business as one distinct thing, with consistent facts about what it is, does and connects to. - [Generative engine optimization (GEO)](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/generative-engine-optimization): Generative engine optimization is the work of making your pages likely to be retrieved, quoted and cited in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. - [Google AI Overviews and AI Mode](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/ai-overviews): AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown at the top of some Google results with links to sources; AI Mode is a conversational search view built on the same systems. - [llms.txt](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/llms-txt): llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at a site's root that gives AI tools a short site summary and a hand-picked list of links to its key pages. - [Schema markup (structured data)](https://methodcrew.com/glossary/schema-markup): Schema markup is structured data, usually JSON-LD, that labels the facts on a page, such as organization, service, price or author, using the shared schema.org vocabulary. ## Next step Request a 30-minute scoping call: https://methodcrew.com/contact. Or email contact@methodcrew.com.