GEO in Montréal: getting cited by AI, built on SEO
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work that gets a business to appear as a source in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews. I practice it inside an SEO engagement, never alongside it. Both rest on the same foundation, and strengthening that foundation is how a business earns its place in generated answers.
An AI cites what it finds accurate and confirmed about you. GEO means making that information easy to find and verify, on your site and elsewhere.
Why I don’t sell GEO separately
Since answer engines arrived, “GEO” offers have popped up everywhere, presented as a new discipline to buy on top of SEO. I don’t offer one.
An AI answering a question relies on pages it has found, often through a search engine. If your site is poorly crawled, confusing or lacking authority, no specialized work will make up for it. A site that is solid on the SEO side, on the other hand, has already done most of the work. GEO adds a layer of precision on top of that foundation, and I build it into the SEO engagement instead of billing it as a separate service.
So when people ask me about GEO, my job is to bring the conversation back to what matters: a site Google understands and AI can cite without risk of getting it wrong.
How an answer engine chooses its sources
Faced with a question, an answer engine generally starts by gathering relevant documents. It then composes its answer from the passages it considers reliable, and cites the ones it used.
Two qualities weigh heavily in that choice. The first is clarity: a sentence that answers the question directly, without depending on the previous paragraph, is easy to reuse. The second is consistency, since information confirmed by several independent sources inspires more trust than an isolated claim.
A page can therefore rank well on Google without ever serving as a source, because it buries its answer in generalities. A more modest page, precise and echoed elsewhere, can become a regular reference.
What GEO adds to an SEO engagement
The technical and editorial foundation remains SEO. On top of it, GEO work focuses on a few specific points.
- Choosing the questions. I keep the ones your clients actually ask AI in your industry, which don’t always match the keywords typed into Google.
- Shaping the passages. Each important answer is written to stand on its own, with the facts and context needed for an accurate citation.
- A consistent identity. Your name, your services and your service area must be described the same way on your site and on the outside sources AI systems consult.
- Honest structured data. This markup describes your business to machines. It states exactly what the site proves, with no invented reviews or awards.
Recruitment: more than half of leads coming from AI
A recruitment firm wanted to appear in AI answers, where its potential clients were starting to look for advice. The work was done as part of its SEO engagement, using a two-step method.
First, for each industry where it places candidates, we listed the questions employers ask themselves when hiring. Each one got an answer written from their point of view, backed by the firm’s hands-on experience.
Those answers are then kept up to date with recruitment trends. The job market moves fast, an outdated answer loses its value, and an AI has every reason to prefer a recent source.
Today, more than half of this firm’s leads come through AI. No inflated markup or self-made comparison was needed: the engines cite it because its answers hold up on the questions people ask them.
Measuring your presence in AI answers
I track a client’s presence using a list of questions representative of its market, asked regularly to the main answer engines. We look at whether the business is cited, and what the answer says about it.
This measurement has limits I’d rather state up front. The same question doesn’t always produce the same answer, and results vary depending on who asks. So we read trends over several weeks rather than a single snapshot. The most telling indicator remains the business’s own: prospects who say they found its name through an AI.
What I don’t promise
No one can guarantee that an AI will cite your business, or in what terms. Models evolve, so do their sources, and a firm promise in this area describes a certainty no one has.
I don’t try to manipulate the answers either. Some agencies fabricate rankings or rig their data to get recommended, and I explain on a page about fake SEO agency rankings why the client ends up paying the price. My rule in GEO is to make AI say what is true, nothing more.
Finally, if your site still lacks a foundation, I’ll tell you: in that case, GEO will wait.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need a different website to get cited by AI?
No. AI systems read the same site as Google. What changes is how certain pages are written: clear answers that make sense without the rest of the text, and information other sources confirm.
Do AI systems cite small businesses?
Yes, when they are the best available source on a specific question. That is often the case for local or highly specialized topics, where big brands have little to say. Size matters less than the accuracy of the answer.
How long does it take to appear in AI answers?
It mostly depends on the state of your site at the start. On an already solid SEO foundation, the first effects can come fairly quickly. Without that foundation, it has to be built first, and the timeline is measured in months.
Can you do GEO without SEO?
Rarely to any benefit. A site that search engines crawl poorly or find unreliable has little chance of serving as a source, however good its writing. That's why I always start with SEO.
It all comes back to the SEO foundation
If you landed here looking for a GEO specialist, my advice is to look at your SEO first. Work on your site’s SEO foundation, from the audit to authority by way of targeting and content, is what benefits your presence in AI the most. GEO then refines what that work has built.
Let’s talk about where your business stands in search, on Google and in AI answers.