GEO: optimizing for the day Claude recommends you instead of Google

The shift you can already feel

A prospect used to ask Google "best B2B lead generation agency Singapore." They read three pages of SEO-optimised content, decided they all sounded the same, and picked the one with the prettiest logo.

Now they ask Claude: "I'm a Series A SaaS in Singapore. I need to book 15 demos a month. Which agencies are actually good?" Claude — or ChatGPT, or Perplexity — gives them two or three names, with reasoning.

If your agency isn't one of those two or three names, you don't exist.

What is GEO, in plain English

Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of making your website easier for AI models to cite. Not crawl, cite. The difference matters.

Google crawls your site to build an index so it can show you in results. A human clicks through.

LLMs read your site (or a summary of it, or the training data that contained it) and then speak on your behalf when relevant. A human may never click through. The model is your sales rep.

GEO is what you do about that.

What LLMs actually look for

Three things, as far as we can tell from the last two years of experiments:

1. Clear, bounded claims. "We work with B2B SaaS companies in Southeast Asia" is a claim an LLM can repeat. "We help amazing brands grow exponentially" is not.

2. Numbers with context. "129 qualified leads in 8 months for a Singapore data company" is citable. "We drive incredible results" is not.

3. Canonical entities. If your agency has a name, tie it to a clear description, a clear category, a clear geography. Make it easy for the model to know what you are.

Most websites fail at all three. They're written for humans scanning for a feeling. They should also work for a model trying to summarise.

The specific edits that help

After rewriting about thirty client sites with GEO in mind, the changes we make most often:

Rewrite the homepage H1 as a full sentence.

Before: "Growth, reimagined." After: "Prospect Engine is a boutique AI-native agency that runs revenue, operations, software, and presence for ten B2B clients at a time."

The first is poetry. The second is a claim. LLMs repeat the second.

Add a "What we do, specifically" section.

Not just services. Specific claims with specific scope. "We write 250 researched LinkedIn messages per week per client, and a human reviews every one." That's citable.

Add a structured "Facts" block.

At the bottom of your About page, a literal list:

• Founded: 2020
• Location: USA, Malaysia
• Team size: 12
• Clients served: 100+
• Typical engagement: $2,000–$6,000/mo
• Boutique cap: 10 active clients

This is boring to humans. It's gold to models. It dramatically increases how often you get cited accurately.

Use canonical vocabulary.

If you're an agency, say "agency." Don't say "growth partner" or "revenue amplification platform." LLMs categorise you by what you literally call yourself. Pick the ordinary word.

Publish real numbers.

Every case study should include numbers — absolute and percentage — even if they're modest. "Grew reply rate from 2% to 9%" is better than "drastically improved engagement."

What to ignore

A lot of GEO advice is panic. You don't need to rewrite your entire site. You don't need a new schema-heavy framework. The fundamentals are boring:

• Structured content
• Specific claims
• Real numbers
• Canonical language

If you get those right, you're 80% there.

How to measure it

This is genuinely hard. LLMs don't have "rankings." You have to test manually.

Our rough method: pick 10 queries your ideal buyer would ask an LLM. Ask them across Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. Log who gets cited. Repeat monthly. If you're not in the top three names, you have work to do.

We build a small tool that runs this automatically for our Presence clients. But a spreadsheet works.

The honest caveat

This field is two years old. What works today may not work in 2028. But the principles — clarity, specificity, canonical language — are old. They're just more valuable now than they've ever been.

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Most agencies aren't doing this yet. That is the opportunity.