Our team has spent thousands of hours on generative engine optimization services for Ottawa-based clients — these are the patterns that actually work. Honest GEO services for Canadian businesses. What we actually do to get you cited in AI search results, realistic timelines, and transparent pricing.
**1. AI engine visibility audit.**
We audit your current visibility across the major AI search engines: - ChatGPT (with web browsing) - Perplexity - Google AI Overviews - Gemini - Bing Copilot - Claude (with web access)
We document which of your priority queries currently surface AI responses, who's being cited, and where you appear (or don't).
**2. Content audit and rewriting.**
We rewrite priority content with GEO-optimized structure: - Direct-answer paragraphs after question headings - Specific citable claims (numbers, dates, named entities, Canadian context) - Source citations within content - Explicit dating ("Updated [month] [year]" in body)
**3. Comprehensive schema markup.**
- Article + Person + Organization schema on every page - FAQPage schema for question-answer content - HowTo schema for instructional content - Specific schema (Product, Recipe, Course, Event) where applicable - Validated implementation against schema.org standards
**4. Author authority building.**
- Real author bios with credentials - sameAs profile links (LinkedIn, X, professional profiles) - Consistent author entities across content - Author-specific schema markup - Strategic author positioning (named experts attached to content)
**5. Citation building from authoritative sources.**
- Digital PR for newsworthy angles - Guest contributions to industry publications - Resource page outreach - Expert quote placement (HARO and source platforms) - Strategic relationship-building with industry media
**6. Cross-engine optimization.**
Tactical adjustments specific to each major AI engine's content preferences and citation behavior.
**7. Monthly tracking and iteration.**
Monthly tracking of AI engine citations, query coverage, share of voice. Iteration based on what's working and what's not. We track generative engine optimization services performance weekly across our portfolio. When you evaluate generative engine optimization services, prioritize senior expertise over agency size.
**We don't:**
- Guarantee specific AI citation results (no one can — AI engines change) - Sell "GEO" as completely separate from SEO (that's largely a marketing fiction) - Use AI-generated content as primary content (AI engines prefer human-authored expert content) - Charge separately for "GEO" if you're already on a comprehensive SEO retainer (we layer GEO into existing SEO work) - Offer "GEO certifications" or similar credibility theatre - Lock clients into 12-month contracts
**We do:**
- Show you specific examples of GEO work on our existing clients - Provide measurable AI citation tracking - Layer GEO work into broader SEO methodology where it fits naturally - Charge transparent monthly retainers - Give 1-month termination clauses. If you're researching generative engine optimization services, this page covers what actually moves the needle in 2026.
**As an add-on to existing SEO retainer:** $750/month additional, covering content audit and rewriting, schema upgrades, monthly AI citation tracking.
**As primary engagement:** starts at $3,500/month for small business; $7,500+/month for established businesses needing comprehensive GEO + supporting SEO foundation.
**Project-based GEO audit and recommendations:** $3,500-$8,500 depending on site size and scope. Includes: - Comprehensive AI citation audit across 6 major engines - Content gap analysis - Schema implementation recommendations - 90-day GEO roadmap - Recommended priority page list with rewriting briefs
**Project-based content rewriting program:** $5,000-$25,000 for rewriting 15-30 priority pages with GEO-optimized structure, schema, author signals, and citation building. Considering generative engine optimization services? Book a no-pressure strategy call to compare options.
**Months 1-2:** Discovery and audit. Documentation of current AI visibility, content gaps, technical foundation issues. Initial content rewriting begins.
**Months 3-6:** Major content rewriting completed. Schema implementation deployed. Author authority signals established. First AI citations begin appearing on optimized content.
**Months 7-12:** Sustained citation patterns develop. Coverage expands across more priority queries. Brand recognition by AI engines starts appearing.
**Months 12-24:** Comprehensive AI search visibility for priority topic clusters. Brand citations across many queries. Compounding effects from sustained content investment and citation building.
**Note:** GEO results compound the same way SEO results do. The 12-month results dramatically exceed the 3-month results, and 24-month results exceed 12-month. Considering generative engine optimization services? Book a no-pressure strategy call to compare options.
**Best fit:**
- Established Canadian businesses with existing SEO foundation - Service businesses where customers research extensively before purchase - B2B businesses with longer sales cycles and informational query prospects - Healthcare, legal, financial services, education, technology — verticals where AI engines are increasingly used for prospect research - Businesses competing in markets where competitors have already started GEO investment
**Less ideal fit:**
- Pure transactional e-commerce (less AI-search-influenced buyer behavior) - Very local services where customers go straight to Google Business Profile - Businesses without basic SEO foundation in place (we'd start with foundational SEO first) - Businesses unwilling to invest in real content production (GEO requires substantive citable content)
**Honest pre-engagement assessment:**
We'll do a free 30-minute call to assess whether GEO investment makes sense for your specific business situation. If we don't think it's the right priority for you yet, we'll say so. Senior strategists own every generative engine optimization services engagement here — never juniors learning on your account.
Before we change anything, we run a generative engine optimization audit that maps exactly where your business does and does not appear across the AI answer engines your customers actually use. We prompt ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini with the real buying questions in your category and record whether you are cited, which competitors are cited in your place, and what sources those engines are pulling from. We then trace those citations back to their root: the pages, schema, third-party mentions, and entity signals the engines trust. The deliverable is a prioritized gap report that shows the specific prompts where you are invisible, the competitors winning those answers, and the concrete reasons why. This audit is the foundation of every engagement, because GEO without measurement is guesswork, and the prompts where you are losing citations are where revenue is quietly leaking to competitors who got there first.
A GEO engagement is only worth paying for if you can see what you are getting. Each month you receive a citation tracking report covering the priority prompts in your category, showing whether your share of AI answers is rising, holding, or slipping against named competitors. You receive the content and schema work we shipped, with a plain-language note on why each change matters for AI retrieval. You receive an updated entity map showing how consistently the engines understand who you are, what you do, and where you operate. And you receive a short, prioritized plan for the next month, so there are no surprises. We deliberately avoid vanity metrics. The numbers we report are the ones tied to being the answer an AI engine gives when a prospective customer asks.
AI engines do not cite pages so much as they cite entities they are confident about. A large part of our GEO service is building that confidence. We make sure your business is described identically across your own site, your structured data, and the third-party sources the engines cross-reference, because inconsistency is one of the fastest ways to get filtered out of an answer. We strengthen the connections between your brand and the topics you want to be known for, so that when an engine assembles an answer about your category, your name is part of the associated set. This entity work is slow, compounding, and hard for competitors to copy quickly, which is precisely why it is one of the most defensible parts of a GEO program.
A common misconception is that AI search erases geography. In practice, the answer engines work hard to localize their recommendations, and Canadian businesses that signal their market clearly are cited far more often for the queries that matter to them. We make sure your service areas, your Canadian credentials, and your local proof are legible to the engines, so that when someone in Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, or Vancouver asks an AI assistant for a recommendation in your category, your business is in the consideration set. For Canadian companies competing against larger American brands, this localization is often the difference between being cited and being skipped, and it is a lever most competitors are not yet pulling.
You can run GEO in-house, and for some companies that is the right call. It requires someone who will prompt the major engines on a regular cadence, interpret why citations shift, keep schema and entity signals consistent, and stay current as the engines change their behaviour, which they do often. For most teams the bottleneck is not capability but attention: GEO falls to the bottom of the list the moment something more urgent appears, and the compounding work stalls. Hiring us trades a monthly fee for guaranteed attention, a measurement system that already exists, and a team that watches the engines full time. The honest test is simple. If someone on your team will own this every single week, in-house can work. If not, the work will not happen consistently, and inconsistent GEO produces almost no results.
We designed onboarding so you see momentum quickly without sacrificing rigour. In the first week we run the full GEO audit and agree on the priority prompts and competitors we will measure against. In the second week we fix the foundational issues that quietly suppress citations, which usually means correcting inconsistent entity signals and shoring up the structured data the engines rely on. From the third week we begin the content and authority work that earns new citations, sequenced so the highest-value prompts are addressed first. By the end of the first month you have a baseline you can trust, a clear picture of where you stand against competitors, and the first set of shipped improvements. We set expectations honestly: thirty days establishes the foundation, and the citation gains build over the months that follow.
GEO works best when buyers are actively asking AI engines for recommendations, comparisons, and explanations before they choose, which describes a growing share of considered purchases. We run programs for professional services such as law, accounting, and consulting, where prospects ask AI assistants to shortlist providers. We run them for healthcare and dental practices, where patients research options and credentials. We run them for home services and trades, where urgency and trust drive the decision. And we run them for software and ecommerce brands, where comparison queries dominate. The common thread is not the industry but the behaviour: if your customers are asking questions an AI engine now answers, there is citation share to win, and the businesses that claim it early are difficult to displace.
The single biggest risk in GEO is treating it as a one-time project. The answer engines update their models, their retrieval methods, and their citation behaviour frequently, and tactics that earned citations one quarter can quietly stop working the next. Part of what you pay for is vigilance. We re-run the priority prompts on a regular cadence, watch for shifts in which sources the engines favour, and adjust the program before a decline becomes a drop. When an engine changes something material, we tell you what changed, what it means for your business, and what we are doing about it, in plain language rather than jargon. This ongoing adaptation is why GEO is a program rather than a purchase, and why the businesses that stay with it pull steadily ahead of those that treat it as a box to check.
GEO is largely a subset of modern SEO with specific emphasis on citable specifics, author authority, content dating, and comprehensive schema. We typically layer GEO work into broader SEO methodology rather than treating it as separate.
No. Anyone guaranteeing specific AI citation results is either lying or using methodology that won't survive next AI engine update. We commit to methodology and tracking, not specific citation guarantees.
Initial AI citations on optimized content typically appear within 30-90 days. Sustained citation patterns develop over 6-12 months. Brand recognition by AI engines takes 12-24 months of sustained investment.
AI engine citation tracking (which queries cite us, with what frequency), share of voice in AI responses for priority queries, traditional SEO metrics that correlate with GEO success, and downstream business metrics (referral traffic from AI engines, brand-search lift, conversions from AI-driven traffic).
Maybe. As more queries shift to AI-generated responses, businesses without GEO investment increasingly lose visibility even on queries where they previously ranked organically. The right time to start depends on your industry's AI-search adoption rate. Free 30-minute assessment call helps clarify.
GEO pricing depends on the size of your category, how many priority prompts and competitors we track, and how much foundational content and entity work your site needs. We publish starting ranges on this page so you have a reference point: a lighter add-on to an existing SEO retainer sits well below a comprehensive standalone program, and project-based audits are priced by site size and scope. We then scope each engagement to the work that will actually move your citation share and show you that scope before you commit, so you are never guessing what you are paying for.
We offer it both ways. Many clients add GEO to an existing SEO program because the underlying signals overlap and the combined effort compounds. Others come to us specifically because they are losing visibility in AI answers and want a focused GEO engagement. We are happy to run GEO on its own, and we will tell you honestly if we think your situation would be better served by addressing classic search at the same time.
Local businesses often see some of the clearest gains, because AI engines work hard to localize their recommendations and most local competitors are not yet optimizing for them. If customers in your area are asking AI assistants for recommendations in your category, there is citation share available, and being one of the first local businesses to claim it is a durable advantage.
There is overlap, but the objective is different. A PR agency earns coverage for humans to read, and a content agency produces material for your site. GEO is built around a specific outcome: becoming the business an AI engine names when a prospective customer asks. That means we measure citation share in the engines themselves, optimize the structured data and entity signals they rely on, and sequence work around the prompts most likely to drive revenue, rather than around impressions or published volume.
Less than most people expect. We need access to your website and analytics, a short conversation about your priority services and markets, and your input on which competitors matter most to you. From there we run the audit and bring you a plan. We handle the technical work, the measurement, and the ongoing optimization, so your involvement is mostly reviewing direction and approving content.
Yes. We run programs across professional services, healthcare and dental, home services and trades, software, and ecommerce. The approach adapts to how buyers in your category use AI engines, but the core method is consistent: find the prompts where you are invisible, understand why, and earn the citations back. If you are unsure whether your category has enough AI-search demand to justify a program, we will assess that honestly before recommending one.
GEO is a compounding program rather than a quick fix, so it works best with a runway of several months, and we are clear about that up front. That said, we earn continuation through results and transparent reporting rather than through lock-in. We would rather keep your business because the program is working than because a contract makes leaving difficult.
Yes. The major engines share many underlying signals, so the foundational work benefits all of them, but each also has its own retrieval quirks. We track your citation share across the engines that matter most to your customers and tune the program for the ones driving the most qualified attention in your category, rather than chasing a single platform.
The deciding factor is not your size but whether your customers are asking AI engines questions that touch your category. We have seen small local firms benefit because their competitors are not yet paying attention, and we have seen larger brands benefit because the volume of relevant AI queries is high. Where GEO rarely makes sense is when there is genuinely little AI-search demand in your niche yet, and we will tell you if that is the case rather than take on a program that will not earn its keep.