What Does a GEO Agency Do? (And How to Choose One)

A GEO agency helps your company appear in AI-generated answers: the responses that tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews produce when buyers research software categories, compare vendors, or ask for recommendations. If your company isn’t showing up in those answers, you’re invisible during the earliest and most influential stage of the buying process. That’s the short version. The longer version involves understanding what these agencies actually do day to day, what deliverables you should expect, and how to separate genuine expertise from repackaged SEO services with a new label. B2B software buyers have changed how they research. They’re asking AI tools questions like “best contract management software for mid-market” or “how does X compare to Y” long before they visit your website or fill in a demo form. A GEO agency’s job is to make sure your brand is part of those AI-synthesised answers, cited accurately and in the right context. The rest of this piece breaks down exactly what that work looks like and how to pick the right partner for it.

What is a GEO agency?

A GEO agency specialises in Generative Engine Optimisation, which is the practice of influencing how AI models represent your brand, your product category, and your competitive positioning. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in search engine results pages, GEO focuses on the sources AI tools pull from and the way they synthesise information about your company.

This distinction matters because AI answers don’t work like search results. There’s no “position one” to chase. Instead, AI models assemble responses from multiple sources, weigh authority and consistency, and present a synthesised answer. If the sources AI tools rely on describe your competitor more clearly, more consistently, or more frequently, that competitor gets the citation. You don’t.

GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO. Strong SEO foundations are actually an input to GEO work. But GEO adds a layer of focus on how AI models learn about your company: which sources they reference, how consistently your positioning is described across the web, and whether you’re cited in the right contexts. AI usage among B2B buyers has grown significantly over the past two years, and the trend is accelerating. For SaaS and tech companies with £2M to £20M ARR, being absent from AI-generated answers means being absent from shortlists.

What a GEO agency actually delivers

The deliverables from a GEO agency should be concrete and measurable, not vague promises about “AI visibility.” A good agency will produce work across four main areas: audit and strategy, content and entity building, technical implementation, and ongoing monitoring.

What separates a credible GEO agency from one that’s simply relabelled its SEO offering is specificity. You should see clear documentation of how AI tools currently describe your company, where the gaps are, and what the plan is to close them. The work should tie back to your buyer journey and your competitive set, not generic best practices.

Expect a structured programme of work, typically running in monthly cycles, with defined outputs and clear metrics. If an agency can’t tell you exactly what they’ll deliver in month one, that’s a red flag. The sections below break down each area of delivery in detail.

GEO audit and strategy

Every credible engagement starts with an audit. This means systematically querying ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews to document how each tool currently describes your company, your product category, and your competitors. The audit captures what sources each AI tool pulls from, where your competitors are cited instead of you, and what gaps exist between your actual positioning and what AI models have learned.

At Gripped, for example, the GEO audit maps out exactly which third-party sources AI tools reference, then compares that against the client’s competitive set. The output isn’t a generic report. It’s a gap analysis that shows, in plain terms, where you’re missing and why.

The strategy that follows should be specific to your category and buyer personas. A GEO strategy for a DevOps platform looks very different from one for an HR tech company, because the questions buyers ask AI tools differ, the sources AI tools trust differ, and the competitive dynamics differ. If the strategy you receive could apply to any SaaS company with minimal changes, it’s not good enough. Research from multiple sources shows that AI Overviews now appear for a substantial share of commercial queries, making this audit work genuinely urgent for companies competing in crowded software categories.

Content and entity building

Once the audit identifies gaps, the agency builds content designed to close them. This isn’t traditional blog content written for keyword rankings. It’s content architecture built around the questions buyers ask AI tools, structured to help AI models understand your company’s positioning, expertise, and relevance.

Topic clusters play a central role here. A good GEO agency will map the questions your buyers ask AI tools across the buying journey, then build content that answers those questions with the kind of clarity and authority AI models favour. This means detailed, well-sourced content that takes a clear position rather than hedging.

Entity building is the other half of this work. AI models build an understanding of your company from signals scattered across the web: your website, review sites, press coverage, industry publications, partner pages, and third-party mentions. If those signals are inconsistent, if your company description varies wildly from source to source, AI tools struggle to form a confident picture. The agency’s job is to make sure your brand is described consistently across all the sources AI models reference, with accurate positioning and clear differentiation. This includes ensuring review coverage on platforms like G2 and Capterra aligns with your messaging, because AI tools treat these as high-authority sources.

Structured data and technical work

The technical side of GEO involves making sure your website gives AI models the clearest possible signals about who you are and what you do. Structured data markup, specifically schema.org implementation, helps AI tools parse your site accurately. This includes Organisation schema, Product schema, FAQ schema, and author markup for content.

Teams that fix their structured data tend to get cited more often because AI models can extract and verify information more reliably. A GEO agency should audit your existing schema implementation, identify gaps, and either implement fixes directly or provide detailed specifications for your development team.

Beyond schema, the technical work includes ensuring your site’s crawlability is optimised for AI model training data collection, that your content is accessible and well-structured with clear heading hierarchies, and that your site meets performance standards. For SaaS companies, we’d expect Lighthouse scores above 90 and Core Web Vitals in the green. These aren’t just SEO hygiene items: they affect how confidently AI tools treat your site as a reliable source. Agencies doing genuine GEO work will also look at your robots.txt and AI-specific crawler directives to make sure you’re not accidentally blocking the very systems you want to be visible in.

Monitoring and reporting

GEO isn’t a one-off project. AI models update constantly, competitors publish new content, and the sources AI tools reference shift over time. A good agency runs ongoing monitoring to track how your visibility in AI-generated answers changes week to week.

The metrics should be specific. You want to know: how often is your brand cited in AI responses for your target queries? Which competitors are cited alongside you or instead of you? Which sources are AI tools pulling from, and are they the right ones? How has your share of AI citations changed since the engagement started?

Reporting should connect to business outcomes, not just visibility metrics. If you’re tracking CAC, LTV, and pipeline velocity, your GEO agency should be able to show how improved AI visibility correlates with changes in inbound interest and qualified pipeline. At Gripped, this work runs in 30-day sprints with real-time reporting, so clients can see progress without waiting for quarterly reviews. The reporting cadence matters because AI models can shift quickly, and you need an agency that reacts in days, not months.

How to choose a GEO agency

Choosing the right GEO partner requires asking specific questions and evaluating the answers critically. Here’s what to look for:

• Ask them to show you an example GEO audit. If they can’t produce one, or if it looks like a standard SEO audit with “AI” added to the headings, walk away.
• Check whether they monitor multiple AI platforms. A credible agency tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews separately, because each model pulls from different sources and behaves differently.
• Ask how they measure success. The answer should involve AI citation tracking, share of voice in AI responses, and connection to pipeline metrics. If they only talk about rankings or traffic, they’re selling SEO, not GEO.
• Look for category expertise. An agency that understands B2B SaaS buyer journeys will produce better GEO work than a generalist, because they know which questions buyers ask and which sources AI tools trust in your space.
• Ask about their technical capabilities. GEO involves structured data, content architecture, and entity building. If the agency outsources all technical work, you’ll lose speed and quality.

The right agency should feel like an extension of your marketing team, not a black box that sends monthly reports you can’t act on.

What to watch out for

The GEO space is new enough that plenty of agencies are repackaging old services under a new name. There are several warning signs that should prompt caution when evaluating potential partners.

Be wary of agencies that guarantee specific AI citations or “position one in ChatGPT.” No one controls what AI models output, and anyone making guarantees either doesn’t understand how these systems work or is being dishonest. Similarly, avoid agencies that treat GEO as purely a content play. Content matters, but without the audit, technical work, and entity building, you’re just publishing more blog posts and hoping AI tools notice.

Watch for agencies that can’t explain their methodology in plain terms. GEO is complex, but the principles are straightforward. If an agency hides behind jargon or proprietary “AI visibility scores” they won’t explain, that’s a problem. You should also be sceptical of agencies that don’t track competitors. GEO is inherently competitive: your visibility depends partly on what your competitors are doing. An agency that only looks at your brand in isolation is missing half the picture.

Finally, check whether the agency has genuine experience with AI optimisation or whether they pivoted overnight from a different service. Ask for case studies, timelines, and specific examples of how they’ve improved AI visibility for other clients.

Common questions

How much does a GEO agency cost?

Pricing varies widely. At the lower end, you’ll find agencies offering basic AI audits for £1,000 to £3,000 as a one-off project. Ongoing GEO programmes typically run between £3,000 and £10,000 per month, depending on the scope of work, the number of AI platforms monitored, and whether the agency handles content production and technical implementation directly.

For B2B SaaS companies, the relevant question isn’t “what does it cost?” but “what does it cost relative to the pipeline it influences?” If your buyers are using AI tools to build shortlists before they ever visit your site, and AI tool adoption among B2B researchers continues to climb, then being absent from those answers has a measurable cost in missed opportunities. Compare the monthly GEO investment against your current cost per SQL and the value of getting onto shortlists you’re currently missing entirely.

Should you hire a GEO specialist or a full-service agency?

A specialist GEO agency brings deep focus, but GEO doesn’t exist in isolation. It depends on strong SEO foundations, good content, consistent brand messaging, and technical site health. If you hire a pure GEO specialist, you’ll still need someone handling the underlying SEO, content, and technical work that feeds into AI visibility.

A full-service agency that includes GEO alongside SEO, content, and paid media can coordinate these efforts more tightly. The risk is that GEO becomes an afterthought rather than a genuine capability. The test is simple: ask the agency who does the GEO work. If it’s a dedicated team with specific GEO expertise, that’s a good sign. If it’s the same SEO team with an extra task added to their list, you’re unlikely to get the depth of work that moves the needle.

For SaaS and tech companies looking to get their GEO, SEO, content, and demand generation working together under one roof, Gripped focuses exclusively on B2B SaaS and tech and tracks success through pipeline and revenue, not vanity metrics. If you want to see where your gaps are, get your free growth audit and find out how AI tools currently describe your company versus your competitors.