GEO & AEO tactics, ranked by evidence.
Every tactic is scored on source credibility, independence, recency, and consensus— then ranked. This list puts the best-evidenced tactics first and shows exactly what the research does and doesn't support.
Technical foundation
Can AI find and read you? Weeks 1–3. A pass/fail gate: nothing else works until this clears. Bot access, rendering, indexation, sitemaps, page speed. Exit test: key pages indexed in Google and Bing, AI bots showing up in your own server logs, content readable in the raw HTML.
Entity foundation
Do AI systems know who you are? Weeks 2–5. One canonical brand description, an About page that states it plainly, Organization schema, consistent profiles everywhere, named authors with bios. Exit test: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini “What is [brand]?” and they answer correctly, without confusing you for someone else.
Baseline measurement
Where do you stand? Week 4, then ongoing. Build a set of 50–200 real prompts (category, comparison, problem, branded), run them per platform, and log who gets mentioned and cited. Exit test: a baseline scorecard per platform, plus a target list of the domains already winning citations.
Content that can be quoted
Is there something worth citing? Month 2 onward. One page per real question, answer-first sections, comparison tables, statistics and cited sources, a refresh schedule for anything time-sensitive. Exit test: every priority prompt has a page that answers it better than whatever's currently getting cited.
Off-site mentions
Do others vouch for you? Month 2 onward, and the biggest lever in the data. Pitch the domains already cited for your prompts, get into “best of” roundups, build YouTube presence, earn digital PR off your own data, show up genuinely on review sites and forums.
Measure and iterate
Monthly. Re-run the prompt set and track share of voice, mentions and citations per platform. Every new domain that starts getting cited becomes a Phase 5 outreach target; refresh whatever loses citations.
A recurring process rather than a single tactic: run it monthly using the Phase 3 prompt set.
Not sure where to start?
Follow the six-phase workflow above, from the technical gate to off-site mentions, or check a specific claim against the evidence.