AEO / GEO / SEO methodology
Most AI-visibility advice is a guess. This sequence isn't.
A one-time "AI visibility audit" isn't a foundation — it's a snapshot of noise. This is the order I run, the five stages that actually move AI search, and the parts of this industry I refuse to sell you.
What everyone sells. What actually happens.
"Get your AI visibility score."
A single AI response carries almost no signal — independent research found under a 1-in-100 chance two runs return the same brand list. I track the trend across dozens of prompts and models, never a one-off score.
"Add schema markup and an llms.txt file."
97% of llms.txt files are never requested by a single crawler, across 137,000 domains studied. A controlled study found schema markup's effect on AI citations statistically indistinguishable from zero. I don't bill either as AI-citation work.
"Guaranteed X% more AI citations in 90 days."
No independent study shows a durable lift on that timeline, net of brand size. I'll tell you what's proven and what's a bet. Nothing else.
The sequence
Five stages, run in order. Each one has to clear before the next one starts — skip one and everything built after it sits on nothing.
01
Access & indexation
Confirm AI crawlers can reach your site and that you’re indexed where each engine retrieves from — Bing feeds ChatGPT and Copilot, Google feeds AI Overviews. A gate, not a growth lever. Block it silently and everything after this disappears.
Mandatory starting point02
Entity consistency
Make your brand one clean, disambiguated entity — Wikidata, consistent naming, review-platform profiles (G2, Capterra). This is what lets a model attach any signal to the right company.
03
Content extractability
Restructure your pages so a model can quote them directly — direct answers, self-contained sections, original data. The only on-site lever with real research behind it.
04
Off-site & earned presence
Reviews, third-party roundups, genuine press coverage, Reddit and YouTube presence. This is where growth happens — slower and more expensive than anything above it, and the lever with the highest ceiling.
05
Ongoing monitoring
Only once the above is in place: track how often you’re mentioned and whether you stay in the consideration set, and catch factual errors — stale pricing, wrong category — before they calcify.
Why this order
"I start with what's binary — can AI crawlers reach your site, are you indexed, does your brand resolve as one clean entity. Only once that's true do I track consensus — and I track it as a trend, never a score."
Brand size and off-site signal predict whether you get recommended — far more than anything on your own domain. Owning your site's AI presence matters, but it's a gate you clear once. The compounding work happens off-site: reviews, press, the places models already trust.
The receipts
↗
82-89%
of all AI citations trace to earned media (avg. ~85%), not owned content or paid placement
Muck Rack, 25M+ links analyzed across three editions
↗
4 days
median time to a citation lift after a genuine review burst on G2
Indig, 2,514-product study
↗
<1%
chance two runs of the same AI prompt return the same brand list
SparkToro, 2,961 runs
Ways to work together
Dedicated B2B SaaS AEO/GEO programs with comparable scope — content production, earned-media outreach, ongoing monitoring — run $5,000–$11,000/mo industry-wide in 2026. At $4,500/mo, you're paying less than that floor, and working directly with the person who built this system in-house at Atlan — not an account manager reselling it to a junior team.
Foundation Sprint
$2,000$3,000
Stage 1–2 · one-time · 2–6 weeks · start here
Access-layer and indexation fixes, entity hygiene. The only stage that stands alone — necessary regardless of what you do next, and the fastest way to see results in server logs.
Founding-client price, for the first three clients, in exchange for a public case study on completion. Full price after that. 50% due upfront to begin — if the week-one diagnostic doesn't turn up a fixable issue, that payment is credited toward a future engagement instead.
Start with Foundation Sprint Foundation + Extractability
$4,000$6,000
Stage 1–3 · one-time · 6–10 weeks
Everything in Foundation Sprint, plus a full content restructuring pass across your priority pages — the on-site work with the best evidence behind it.
Founding-client price, for the first three clients, in exchange for a public case study on completion. Full price after that.
Ask about Foundation + Extractability Growth Retainer
$4,500/mo
Stage 4–5 · ongoing · min. 6 months · the destination
Where the growth work happens: review generation, earned-media and listicle outreach, Reddit/YouTube presence, monitoring, and pipeline reporting. Requires Foundation Sprint complete first.
Talk about Growth Retainer Consensus Monitoring
+$1,500/mo
Add-on to Growth Retainer only
I won't sell this before your foundation is fixed — it would just tell you what Stage 1 already would, for more money. Honest tracking, not a score: mention frequency, consideration-set trend, factual-error detection.
Ready to start
Most engagements start here.
Most engagements start at Foundation Sprint and grow from there. If it's the right entry point for you, tell me your domain and I'll run a free 10-minute access/indexation check before we talk price — you'll know within a day whether Stage 1 is even broken on your site.
Questions I get
Why not just run the audit first? It's cheaper.
On a site with access or indexation problems, the audit will just tell you what Stage 1 already tells you — for the price of a monitoring tool instead of a free log check. It's not wrong ethically, it's wrong sequentially.
Do you guarantee more AI traffic?
No. AI referral is currently about 1% of total traffic industry-wide and converts at a premium in several published studies — but those rest on small absolute counts. I report AI-referred pipeline honestly against that baseline, not a promised number.
How fast will we see results?
Access-layer fixes: days. Indexation and entity work: weeks, with propagation timelines that aren't rigorously measured anywhere in the industry — I won't invent a date. Off-site and earned-media work: quarters, compounding. Nothing in this space has been shown to move in under 30 days.
Who actually does the work?
I do — audits, entity work, content restructuring, and outreach are all hands-on, not delegated to a junior team. I'm also evaluating full-time roles in parallel. If that changes anything about an active engagement, you'll hear it from me before it affects the work — not after.
AEO / GEO / SEO — built on evidence, not hype.
A good place to start
Is your site even reachable
by AI crawlers?
A free 10-minute access and indexation check — you'll know within a day whether the gate is even open.