You’re ranking well. Your website is loading fast. Your content’s solid. So why is traffic down?
Answer: because your next customer received an answer from a Large Language Model (LLM) – and it recommended your competitor.
The good news is that a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) audit can help you become the go-to answer instead.
This matters for businesses because:
- Your customers prioritize trust, so appearing in these results will prove that you’re a reliable source of information
- If you don’t do it, then your competitors will, taking your potential customers and revenue away
- You capture high-intent buyers at their decision point, positioning your business as the recommended solution for their queries.
Yet you may not be aware of what a GEO audit is, let alone how to apply one to your content marketing and current SEO strategy.
Read on to find out more about this search revolution, and the action your company can take to appear in these vital AI search results.
Table of contents:
- Beyond blue links: The rise of AI-driven search
- What is a GEO audit?
- Your 6-Step blueprint for mastering AI visibility: How a GEO audit works
- What your business should do with GEO audit results: A roadmap for action
- Get AI visible with Mint Position
Want to learn more about our 6-step GEO audit or set up services? Book a no-cost consultation with the Mint Position team, and we’ll show you the blueprint to increased visibility in the AI era.
Beyond blue links: The rise of AI-driven search
For years, traditional SEO has been guided by a clear goal: to rank as a listing in the top 3 of organic results, known as blue links, on a search engine like Google.
The entire optimization strategy – from backlinks and technical SEO to keyword research – was built around appearing on top of that first page. If you hit the right metrics and keep an eye on your benchmark competitors, you could steadily climb the rankings and increase online visibility for valuable traffic.
But there’s now an important new shift to this model.
Your potential customers are now increasingly getting their answers from large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even Google, whether they choose to or not.
These AI Overviews and AI-powered chatbots don’t return 10 blue links – instead, they deliver a single, citation-based response, often referencing just a handful of online media sources.
If your brand isn’t part of that handful, then you’re losing visibility with a growing segment of high-intent users.
“The Great Decoupling”
Welcome to the new era of zero-click search.
As AI Overviews continue to roll out across Google, businesses are seeing a sharp divergence in a once-reliable set of metrics: impressions are rising, while clicks are falling.
If your Google Search Console graph looks like a crocodile’s jaw – wide open, with impressions climbing and clicks tanking – you’re witnessing what a recent Ahrefs report refers to as “The Great Decoupling.”
“The crocodile’s jaw” – what your GSC might look like right now
Source: Ahrefs
Here’s what’s happening: top-ranking content is now being surfaced in two places, once in the classic organic results and again in AI-generated answers.
That means more impressions, but fewer clicks, as users get what they need directly from the AI summary.
The old rules of “ranking = traffic” no longer hold. And if your content isn’t being cited in these overviews? You’re missing both the impression and any potential clicks.
Like always, the click is the important part here, but it is now so much more valuable than before. According to Ahrefs, visits from AI search convert 23x better than visits from traditional search.
The bottom line? The Great Decoupling is making top-of-the-funnel traffic disappear. But AI search clicks are a huge opportunity. They’re the new search gold standard, and getting these should now be a top priority for any ambitious company.
This is exactly why a GEO Audit is so important: it’s designed to increase your search visibility in LLM results (like Google’s AIOs), which should bring those valuable clicks back up.
What is a GEO audit?
A GEO audit is the vehicle you will use to take you to important new AI search traffic discoveries, including:
- Which sources are currently favored for a search topic
- Where your brand is positioned about them
- Where and how you should optimize your content to improve your GEO.
In short, a GEO audit is a review of how often your brand, website, or product is mentioned, cited in online media, or linked in answers generated by large language models (LLMs).
It measures how your business performs across the “answer layer” – the AI-driven layer of search that increasingly bypasses traditional search engines.
The findings connect directly to critical business outcomes, including:
- Brand authority: Are LLMs treating your company as a trusted source? If not, they won’t cite you.
- Product discovery: Are your business’s tools or services being recommended when users ask AI assistants for the “best” solution?
- Trust & credibility: Is your brand being represented accurately and consistently, or is the AI referencing outdated, incomplete, or incorrect information?
A GEO audit delivers actionable insights that go far beyond vanity metrics. It gives you a real-world benchmark for how discoverable and credible your business is in today’s AI-powered search environment.
And it provides a roadmap for optimization so that when AI delivers answers, your name is part of the conversation.
A 6-step process for improving AI visibility: How our GEO audit works
First, below is a table with quick definitions of our 6-step GEO audit.
We dive deeper into each step and their deliverables just below.
1. Prepare for AI with a technical GEO audit
Even the best content won’t surface in AI answers if large language models (LLMs) can’t access or understand it.
A technical GEO audit ensures your site is optimized not just for traditional search engines, but also for AI models.
Start by adding schema markups to your site. This special code helps LLMs identify key facts, entities, and relationships within your content, which is critical for citation.
You can generate this in several ways, including:
- Using your CMS’s built-in settings
- A WordPress plugin like Yoast SEO
- Manually generating JSON-LD code with tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
You’ll need to choose a relevant schema type (e.g., Organization, Product, Article), then add the code to your site where the relevant – product schema should go on product pages, for example.
Finally, you’ll need to validate your markup, which you can do via Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator. Semrush’s recent guide takes you through this process step-by-step.
Next, check for no-index or disallow directives that might block LLMs from crawling your pages. Content that’s invisible to search engines is also invisible to AI.
The final piece? Add an llms.txt file to your root directory. This emerging standard works like robots.txt but is designed specifically for LLMs, helping you control how AI interprets your brand and business.
TLDR actions for your business to take
Run a technical GEO audit with a checklist:
- Create, add, and validate schema markups for your pages
- Lift no-index barriers
- Upload llms.txt to your root directory to make sure LLMs are interpreting your business the way you want them to.
2. Start monitoring high-value search prompts
Once your site is technically crawlable, it’s time to identify which search prompts your brand is already visible for – and which you’re not. This builds your baseline and helps to establish the keyword-to-prompt transition at the heart of GEO.
To do this, you’ll need to convert your best-converting SEO keywords into AI-friendly search prompts.
Instead of optimizing for Google, you’re now optimizing for answers to questions posed to AI.
First, start by checking Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or your CRM to see which pages are driving the most conversions and identify the keywords that led people there.
Next, you can use a tool like Otterly.ai to turn these into 25 to 50 natural-language search prompts. Let’s say you’re ranking highly for ‘SME accounting platform UK’. Otterly will give you the top 10 suggestions (ranked by relevancy) for you to try out.
Otterly’s top 10 search prompt ideas
You can also use ChatGPT to help convert your SEO keywords to GEO search prompts. (Note: ChatGPT can also provide “estimated monthly intent volume” for each search prompt, but as volume is measured differently for GEO prompts, keep in mind that this is an emerging metric that is likely not fully refined as of the time of writing.)
The next step is to track these prompts across major LLMs, and Peec.ai is excellent for this. This tool runs your prompts daily across these engines, then compiles visibility insights per model. It even suggests new prompts in case you’re not getting the traction you’re looking for.
Peec.ai offers visibility insights per AI model
The longer you use Peec, the richer your AI visibility dataset becomes. You’ll quickly see how consistently your business is being cited – and where competitors are stealing the spotlight.
Keep in mind: ChatGPT has the most variable results of all LLM platforms, often returning different answers to the same prompt day by day. That’s why cross-LLM comparison over a long period will be key.
You can then use this data to create a Priority Search Prompts list and an AI Visibility Spreadsheet – this is now your starting point for targeted AI content improvements and brand optimization going forward.
TLDR actions for your business to take
- Identify your top-converting keywords using data from GA4 or your CRM
- Turn them into high-value natural-language search prompts with Otterly.ai
- Track their search prompt visibility daily across LLMs using Peec.ai.
- Use the results to build your Priority Search Prompts list and AI Visibility Spreadsheet – your roadmap for AI-driven discoverability.
3. Use entity brand rankings and link analytics
Now that we know how well LLMs are citing your brand, the next step is to boost your authority.
Large language models (LLMs) rely heavily on entity recognition, which means they’re looking for structured, consistent brand mentions across trusted sources.
If your brand is cited often and accurately on platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, blogs, and other online media sources, you’re more likely to be pulled into AI-generated answers.
Peec.ai is your friend here: it will give you a list of the most cited sources for each prompt so that you know which forums, social media, and third-party sites to target.
For example, the sample below lists Wikipedia as a top citation source for this search prompt, which means the company should make sure its Wikipedia page is accurate, well-cited, and regularly updated to strengthen AI citation and visibility.
Next, we’d go through all other top sources to ensure that our brand is being mentioned on those sites in a way that we wish it to.
Peec.ai’s list of cited sources
This isn’t just about backlinks in the traditional SEO sense, but recognizable digital brand mentions that reinforce your brand’s relevance and trustworthiness.
A case study, podcast mention, or Crunchbase update can sometimes have more impact than an entire blog post when it comes to AI visibility.
It’s also important to monitor brand sentiment and brand mention frequency.
Are you being cited under different names or aliases? Are those pages linking to the right place?
These are slightly tedious but important checks that can make a huge difference.
TLDR actions for your business to take
- Audit your presence on high-impact sites and platforms.
- Make a priority list of which business accounts to update (e.g., LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Wikipedia) or third-party sites to publish on (such as with guest posting)
- Update, publish content on, or optimize those that feature prominently to increase your brand’s AI citation potential.
4. Create a GEO content gap analysis
One of the most actionable parts of a GEO audit is identifying where your brand should be showing up in AI answers – but isn’t. This is your content gap.
Using prompt visibility data (from tools like Peec.ai), you can pinpoint buyer-intent queries where your competitors are being cited, but you’re nowhere to be found.
From there, organize the missing mentions by content type:
- Product-focused: Is your solution not being recommended for your customer’s core problems?
- Audience-focused: Are you missing from results tailored to your ideal customer (e.g., “best SME tools in the UK”)?
- Industry/landscape-focused: Are you absent from discussions around trends, comparisons, or market shifts?
Categorize each gap by urgency – how relevant, high-intent, and competitive the prompt is – so you know where to focus content creation or revision efforts first.
You don’t necessarily need to start from scratch; often, updating existing articles with clearer context, structured data, or third-party citations can do the job.
TLDR actions to take
- Use an AI Content Gaps spreadsheet to categorize missing brand mentions by type and urgency. This becomes your content roadmap for improving visibility where it matters most.
5. Create a 3-month GEO content strategy roadmap that AI wants to cite
Once your audit has revealed content gaps, the next step is turning your gap analysis insights into action.
A strong GEO content strategy does three key things:
- Fills AI visibility gaps – targeting high-priority search prompts where your brand is missing.
- Publish on AI-favored sources – including popular sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit, as well as blogs and media that are often cited as sources in LLM answers for your target search prompts.
- Boosts your share of AI voice – the percentage of prompts where you’re named, recommended, or cited.
Focus on repurposing your best-performing content to match the format and tone that large language models recognize – clear, structured, and well-cited.
Use tools like Otterly and Peec.ai to feed your strategy, helping you prioritize content types and publish on platforms or websites that AI is most often using as sources for your targeted search prompts.
TLDR actions for your business to take
- Design a three-month content strategy and publishing calendar based on your GEO audit.
- Identify top sources being used by AI models in your target search prompts, and content those sites to publish on them.
- Include specific content deliverables tied to search prompt gaps, platform targeting, digital PR, and share-of-voice goals.
6. Keep AI visibility on track
Like with SEO audits, GEO checks are a one-time task that is meant to set you up for long-term goals. Where the audit ends is where regular monitoring begins.
AI models are changing fast, and so are their sources. That’s why ongoing search prompt testing and monthly reporting are key to maintaining performance.
Running your search prompts daily across AI models, as mentioned, is crucial because results fluctuate, particularly with ChatGPT.
Each month, review how often your brand was cited, which prompts drove the most mentions, and where competitors are gaining ground. This turns your visibility data into a live dashboard for action.
TLDR actions for your business to take
- Set up an automated tracking and reporting process for your top 25–50 search prompts.
- Review performance monthly, and adjust your strategy to improve or defend your AI presence over time.
What your business should do with GEO audit results: A roadmap for action
A GEO audit is more than just a scorecard – it’s your roadmap for action. When done right, it will strengthen your AI visibility where it counts.
Remember to bear these thoughts in mind when you’re carrying it out:
- Double down where you’re winning
Identify valuable search prompts where your brand is already cited and build more content around those topics to boost authority and stay ahead of competitors.
- Refresh overlooked assets
Some pages may be well-written but ignored by AI. Use your audit to find and rework them with a clearer structure and citations.
- Fill high-impact content gaps
Prioritize creating content where competitors are visible and you’re not, especially for buyer-intent, product-relevant search prompts.
- Shift from keywords to search prompts
AI responds to natural language, not just search terms. Use your GEO findings to pivot toward content that answers search prompts directly.
- Think beyond content
GEO insights can inform product positioning, too. If you’re not being mentioned for key use cases, your messaging or features may need refining.
Bottom line: The real value of a GEO audit is in execution. Treat it like a living strategy that fuels both content planning and brand differentiation in the age of AI-driven search.
Get AI visible with Mint Position
AI-driven search isn’t on the horizon anymore: it’s already here. And it’s rapidly rewriting the rules of online brand visibility.
For ambitious businesses, this shift is a high-stakes opportunity to leapfrog the competition, and teaming up with Mint Position is a strategic move that’s paying off for brands.
We’ve helped brands move beyond traditional SEO and into the AI answer layer, where real influence is now won.
Take the #1 citations we earned on Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews with a South African funding platform that helped earn them over 700 B2B organic links a month.
Our GEO Audits don’t just highlight what’s broken; they give you a clear roadmap for fixing it and outpacing competitors in LLM-driven search.
You’ll know where your brand stands, where it’s missing, and exactly what to do next.
This is about showing up in the right answers, in front of the right prospects, at the right time.
Ready to get more customers with a GEO audit? Get in touch with us and we’ll show you how we can help your business grow in the AI era.
