People aren’t only using traditional Google search to research businesses anymore.
They’re asking ChatGPT for recommendations, seeing AI Overviews in Google and using tools such as Perplexity to research products, services and potential suppliers.
Understandably, businesses are starting to wonder what they need to do about it.
I’m Laurren, an independent marketing consultant helping businesses understand how they’re currently appearing in AI search, where there may be opportunities to improve that visibility and, importantly, whether it’s something they should be prioritising at all.
Because while search behaviour is changing, I don’t believe you need to throw everything you know about SEO away and start again.
What Is AI Search Optimisation?
You’ll see several names being used for this, including AI SEO, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), AI search optimisation and answer engine optimisation.
The terminology is still developing, but the principle is fairly straightforward.
When someone asks an AI tool a question related to your business, we want it to be able to understand who you are, what you do and the subjects you know about.
There are differences between traditional search results and AI-generated answers, but that doesn’t mean everything has changed. Many of the fundamentals that help search engines discover, understand and trust your website still matter.
There’s already plenty of noise around AI search. I’m much more interested in what your business can sensibly do about it.
Finding Out How You Appear in AI Search
The first step is understanding what’s happening now.
I’ll look at the types of questions your potential customers might ask when they’re researching a business like yours and explore what different search and AI platforms return.
I’m interested in more than whether your company name appears. I’ll look at which businesses are being surfaced, the sources being referenced and whether there are subjects where you’d reasonably expect your business to have greater visibility.
We’ll then compare that with your wider organic search presence and the content already on your website.
AI-generated answers can vary, so I don’t treat this as a league table of who’s “ranking number one in ChatGPT”. It’s a starting point for understanding your visibility and identifying whether there are opportunities worth pursuing.
Where Are the Opportunities?
What happens next depends entirely on what we find.
Sometimes there will be clear opportunities to improve how your business appears in AI search. But quite often, the work isn’t something exotic or uniquely “AI”.
Your service or product information might need improving. There may be important customer questions your website doesn’t answer. Existing content might be too vague to be genuinely useful, or there could be technical SEO, internal linking or structured data issues getting in the way.
You might also have excellent knowledge within the business that simply isn’t being reflected online yet.
The important part is working out which of those things actually matters.
I won’t hand you a generic GEO checklist with 30 things to fix. I’ll help you understand where the strongest opportunities are, what I’d prioritise and what probably isn’t worth worrying about yet.
Useful Content Still Matters
This is probably the part of AI search I’m most interested in.
Think about what your customers want to know before they buy.
If you’re a renewable energy business, they may be researching how much solar costs, whether it will work on their property, how battery storage works or what happens on cloudy days.
A nursery customer might want to know which hedge will cope with heavy clay, how many plants they need, when they should plant or how quickly different species will establish.
Those questions matter whether they’re being typed into Google, asked in ChatGPT or discussed with someone in your sales team.
Your business probably already has many of the answers. The opportunity is to turn that knowledge into useful information that people can find and understand.
That’s where good content strategy and AI search start to overlap.
AI Search and SEO Work Together
I don’t see AI search optimisation as a replacement for SEO.
Google’s own guidance says the SEO fundamentals used to appear in Search remain relevant to its AI features. There aren’t additional technical requirements or special AI files you need to create to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
A technically accessible website still matters. So do useful content, sensible internal linking, accurate structured data where appropriate and clear information about your business and the people behind it.
There are additional things worth considering as search behaviour changes, but there isn’t a secret technical switch that turns “AI visibility” on.
And if your existing SEO needs work, that may well be where I’d recommend starting.
Working With Me on AI Search
You don’t need to know whether you need GEO, AI SEO, traditional SEO or something else before getting in touch.
That’s part of what I’m here to help you work out.
I’ll look at your AI search visibility in the context of your website, SEO, content and wider marketing, rather than treating it as an isolated channel.
Sometimes that will uncover a worthwhile opportunity around AI search. Sometimes we’ll find something more fundamental that deserves attention first.
And if improving your AI visibility isn’t where I’d spend your marketing budget right now, I’ll tell you.
I’m based near Newport in Shropshire and work with businesses across Telford, Shrewsbury and the wider county, as well as remotely across the UK.
“There was no jargon or generic checklist. She explained why things mattered, gave me clear steps to follow and even researched different options and costs for me. I came away actually knowing what I needed to do next rather than feeling even more overwhelmed!”
Emma A. ★★★★★
Google Review
Not Sure What AI Search Means for Your Business?
If you’re wondering whether your business is appearing in AI search, or whether you should be doing anything differently because of it, bring that question to a Seed Session.
It’s a free 30-minute conversation where we can look at what you’re doing now and talk about where AI search fits.
You don’t need to come armed with a brief or know your GEO from your SEO. That’s what I’m there to help you work out.
FAQs
An AI search consultant helps businesses understand how changes in search, including AI-generated answers, affect how people discover and research them.
For me, that means looking at your existing visibility, SEO, content and wider online presence, then identifying where there are sensible opportunities to improve.
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation. It’s a term used to describe work intended to improve how a business or its content is understood and surfaced by generative AI systems.
I use the term because it’s increasingly how people describe this area of search, but I don’t treat GEO as a completely separate discipline from SEO. There’s considerable overlap between the two.
Traditional SEO focuses on improving your visibility within search engines. GEO looks at how your business and content may also be discovered and used within AI-generated answers.
The distinction isn’t as neat as some of the marketing around GEO would suggest. Technical SEO, clear business information, useful content and established expertise can contribute to both.
Not necessarily.
If your existing SEO and website need significant work, that’s quite likely where I’d start. If you’ve already got strong foundations, it may make sense to look more closely at your AI search presence and identify additional opportunities.
I wouldn’t recommend adding another marketing service simply because it has a new acronym.
No.
AI-generated answers aren’t fixed search rankings and nobody outside the platforms themselves controls which businesses or sources are selected for a particular response.
I can help improve the information available about your business and look at how your visibility changes, but I won’t guarantee that a particular AI platform will recommend you.
Yes. I can look at relevant questions your potential customers might ask and assess what currently appears across AI search tools.
We can then look at that alongside your website and wider search presence to see whether there are useful opportunities to pursue.
I wouldn’t look at it that way.
Search behaviour is changing, but many of the fundamentals behind being discoverable online still apply. Google’s own guidance says established SEO best practices remain relevant to its AI search experiences.
For most businesses, adapting a good search strategy as behaviour changes makes far more sense than abandoning SEO and starting again.