Generative engines have quietly become a primary discovery channel, and most brands are still optimizing for yesterday’s search. Treat AI models like a new class of audience, build a holistic footprint they can trust, and turn your agency or marketing team into a product-building lab that uses AI to ship faster, not just write faster.
- Shift from “SEO-only” thinking to a GEO strategy that covers web, social, podcasts, and Reddit as one integrated authority system.
- Design content around real ICP questions and long-tail use cases that AI engines actually decompose and search for.
- Clean up the structure and navigation so LLMs can crawl and understand your site as easily as a human.
- Systematically rehab older content with AI agents, refreshing dates, formats, and depth to match current GEO requirements.
- Use Reddit and other social platforms for social listening and authentic participation that signals authority to AI systems.
- Build internal AI “champions” and product-style hackathons so your team creates tools and workflows, not just one-off prompts.
- Think of every recurring service process as a potential “services-as-software” and selectively commercialize the best internal tools.
The GEO Authority Loop: A 6-Step System For AI-First Visibility
Step 1: Define ICPs With Context, Not Just Demographics
AI engines personalize responses based on the questioner, so “generic buyer personas” are no longer sufficient. Map your ICPs by role, vertical, use case sophistication, and typical questions they ask when they first recognize a problem. Document how a photographer, a founder, and a Fortune 500 VP might each describe the same need; use that nuance to drive content topics and phrasing.
Step 2: Map the Self-Education Journey Into Questions
Start with your ICP’s self-education journey and convert each stage into the questions they would realistically type into a chat interface. Instead of thinking “we need a pillar page on CRM,” think “what does a VP marketing actually ask when they’re fed up with their current stack?” Build clusters of pages, FAQs, and assets that directly answer these layered, situational prompts.
Step 3: Architect a Crawlable, LLM-Friendly Site
Assume the model is a clumsy user with limited perception. Simplify navigation, reduce dependence on heavy JavaScript for critical paths, and create clear surface-level routes to essential content. Use schema, FAQs, and an LLM-focused text file to guide AI crawlers toward the right sections, and ensure your content hierarchy mirrors how people and models explore a topic.
Step 4: Extend Authority Beyond Your Domain
LLMs don’t stop at your site; they synthesize from articles, Reddit threads, LinkedIn, YouTube, and podcasts. Treat every external mention as part of your authority spine. Invest in PR, social content, podcast appearances, and platform-native conversations so the models see consistent, corroborated signals about who you are and what you’re an expert in.
Step 5: Systematically Refresh and Elevate Legacy Content
Content older than 18–24 months often underperforms for generative engines unless it’s updated and restructured. Use AI agents to audit your archive, identify pages with traffic or citations, and then refresh them: update years (for example, “2026”), add long-tail questions, reorganize into scannable, answer-focused formats, and deepen insights beyond what a generic model would auto-generate.
Step 6: Build an Internal AI Product Culture
Move from “AI as copy helper” to “AI as innovation engine.” Appoint AI champions in each department, run hackathons to prototype internal tools, and treat every repeatable service process as a candidate for automation or augmentation. Ship lightweight agents for PR, social, and content, measure impact, and either commercialize the winners or institutionalize them as delivery accelerators.
From SEO to GEO: How Discovery Strategy is Really Changing
Dimension | Classic SEO Focus | GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) Focus | Leadership Implication |
|---|---|---|---|
Primary Surface | Website pages and backlinks into Google/Bing SERPs | Holistic footprint across site, social, podcasts, Reddit, and citations in LLM training data | Leaders must fund multi-channel authority, not just “more blog posts” and link-building. |
Content Strategy | Keyword clusters, intent buckets, and evergreen how-to or list posts | Question-driven, context-aware content structured for LLM grounding and long-tail prompts | Roadmaps should start from ICP questions and AI query behavior, not keyword volume alone. |
Technical Priorities | On-page tags, sitemaps, page speed, and crawlability for search bots | LLM-readable structure, LLM text files, clear navigation, and machine-friendly schemas | Product and marketing teams must collaborate to make UX and AI discoverability co-equal goals. |
Leadership-Level Insights: Turning AI and GEO Into Advantage
How should marketing leaders rethink “search” when chat interfaces are the new front door?
Stop treating search as “10 blue links” and start treating it as “one synthesized answer assembled from your entire footprint.” When a user types “best CRM for creatives,” the model pulls from your website, social proof, Reddit mentions, and thought leadership, then compresses that into a recommendation. As a leader, your job is to ensure that every major surface where people talk about your category signals the same positioning, strengths, and proof. GEO, in this sense, is reputation management at machine scale.
What does a practical Reddit strategy look like for brands that want to influence AI outputs without being spammy?
Think “participation and listening” before “promotion.” First, identify subreddits where your ICP genuinely hangs out and use social listening tools to track relevant threads and sentiment. Second, create an official brand account and, where scale justifies it, a dedicated subreddit you moderate. Third, contribute as a subject-matter expert: answer questions fully, share useful frameworks, and mention your product only when it naturally fits or when asked. Over time, those conversations become training data and live context for LLMs, which improves your chances of being cited as a credible solution.
How can teams rescue older content so it still matters to AI engines?
Treat older content as raw material, not dead weight. Start by using AI agents to crawl your library and flag high-potential pieces—those with backlinks, time-on-page, or any known LLM citations. Then, for each target asset, focus on specific questions, add updated examples and current-year references (for instance, replacing “best apps” with “best apps for 2026”), and restructure into clear sections, bullet points, and FAQs. Your goal is to provide more nuanced, experience-based insight than a generic model can generate on its own.
What does an effective AI “champion” program look like inside an agency or marketing org?
An AI champion program works when it’s cross-functional and outcome-driven. Select one motivated practitioner from each major discipline—SEO, paid media, PR, social, creative—and give them explicit time and mandate to explore, test, and build. Run recurring hackathons where these champions form mixed teams, define a single workflow problem, and ship an MVP agent or tool within days, not months. The champions then own internal enablement: training peers, documenting playbooks, and tracking time saved or performance lifted so leadership can see concrete ROI, not just experimentation for its own sake.
How should leaders think about “services-as-software” in the age of AI?
Any service you deliver more than a handful of times is a candidate for partial productization. Map your client delivery processes step-by-step—research, analysis, reporting, QA—and ask, “Where could an AI agent meaningfully assist?” Build internal tools first to compress these steps, measure the impact, and only then decide whether a tool has enough external value to become a paid product. Many of the most valuable AI tools will never be public; they’ll quietly power your margins and client experience while competitors are still stuck in manual mode.
Author: Emanuel Rose, Senior Marketing Executive, Strategic eMarketing
Contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b2b-leadgeneration/
Last updated:
- Rose, Emanuel. “Authentic Marketing in the Age of AI.”
- Rose, Emanuel. “Generative Engine Optimization.”
- Moburst resources and public case studies on mobile-first and AI-assisted campaigns.
- Industry discussions on answer engine optimization and LLM-driven discovery.
About Strategic eMarketing: Strategic eMarketing helps B2B and mid-market organizations design AI-informed marketing systems that generate demand, shorten sales cycles, and build durable authority in their categories.
https://strategicemarketing.com/about
https://www.linkedin.com/company/strategic-emarketing
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-in-the-age-of-ai-with-emanuel-rose/id1741982484
https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC6zFnFpRVismFotbNoOo
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLAGQ5Y_OsaouGucY_dK3w
Guest Spotlight
Guest: Lior Eldan, Co-Founder & COO, Moburst
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lioreldan/
Company: Moburst – a global, full-service, mobile-first marketing agency serving startups and Fortune 500 brands, including Google, Samsung, Uber, Reddit, and Microsoft.
Podcast Episode: Marketing in the Age of AI with Emanuel Rose — Conversation with Lior Eldan (recorded September 1, 2025, 7:00 AM PDT).
Contact: lior.eldan@moburst.com
About the Host
Emanuel Rose is a senior marketing executive and author focused on helping organizations apply AI pragmatically to authentic, revenue-producing marketing systems. Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b2b-leadgeneration/
Putting GEO and AI to Work in Your Next 90 Days
Take one tangible step in each area: pick a core ICP and map their top 20 questions, fix the crawlability and structure of your highest-value pages, and stand up a small AI champion group to prototype a single internal tool. Use those early wins to build momentum, then expand GEO thinking across content, social, and PR so that when AI engines look for an authority in your space, they consistently find you.