Most GEO advice tells you to optimize content. Add citations. Structure your headers. Implement schema markup. From my experience running AI visibility campaigns for 50+ B2B companies, this advice skips the most important step. AI doesn't cite the best-optimized content. It cites the sources it already trusts. If ChatGPT doesn't know who you are, no amount of content optimization will save you.
Here's the uncomfortable exercise nobody's talking about: Ask ChatGPT to rate your expertise. The answer will tell you exactly where you stand.
TL;DR
- Run the audit: Ask ChatGPT to rate your expertise from 1-10. Most people score lower than they expect.
- Authority beats optimization: AI cites sources it already trusts. Content structure is secondary.
- Niche advantage is real: Becoming top 5% in "GEO for cybersecurity" requires 10x less effort than "SEO."
- The math is achievable: 3 podcasts + 2 conferences + 1 major publication = enough signal for most niches.
- Be proactive: Sometimes authority exists but AI hasn't connected the dots. Schema and cross-linking help.
The Audit
The Audit That Changes Everything
Before you spend another hour optimizing content for AI, you need to know where you actually stand. Not where you think you stand. Not where your LinkedIn followers tell you that you stand. Where the models themselves place you.
Open ChatGPT. Run this prompt:
Copy This Prompt
You are evaluating professional expertise for [YOUR INDUSTRY/NICHE]. Based on what you know about [YOUR NAME] and [YOUR COMPANY], rate their expertise and authority from 1-10. Explain your reasoning. What sources inform your assessment? What would increase their score?
Now run variations:
Variation 1: Competitive Context
Who are the top 5 experts in [YOUR NICHE]? Where would you rank [YOUR NAME] among practitioners in this space?
Variation 2: Recommendation Query
I need help with [YOUR SERVICE AREA]. Who should I talk to? What companies specialize in this?
Variation 3: Source Check
What do you know about [YOUR COMPANY]? What are they known for? What sources inform your understanding of them?
What you're looking for:
- Recognition: Does the model know you exist?
- Accuracy: Does it describe what you actually do?
- Source attribution: What informs its understanding?
- Competitive positioning: Where does it place you relative to others?
What Most People Discover
The model either doesn't know you exist, knows you but can't articulate what makes you different, or conflates you with competitors. This isn't a content problem. It's a reputation problem. The web hasn't told AI enough about you for it to form a clear picture.
How AI Evaluates
How AI Actually Evaluates Your Content
When AI encounters a piece of content, it doesn't just read the words. It evaluates the source. The questions it's implicitly asking depend on who created the content.
How AI Evaluates Content Authority
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The key insight: AI is building a mental model of who you are and what you're qualified to discuss. It does this by synthesizing signals from across the web. Your content is one input. Everything else the web says about you is the rest.
Authority First
Why Authority Comes Before Content
The traditional SEO playbook says: create great content, build links to it, earn authority over time. For AI visibility, this is backwards.
LLMs don't discover content the way search engines do. They synthesize understanding from training data. By the time you're optimizing a blog post, the model has already formed opinions about who matters in your space. Your content optimization is noise layered on top of signal that was established months or years ago.
The Real Order of Operations
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Think of it this way: AI is forming an opinion about you based on what the web says about you, not what you say about yourself. Your website is one voice. Podcasts, conferences, publications, forums, profiles, interviews: that's the chorus. AI listens to the chorus.
The Niche Advantage
The Niche Advantage Nobody's Exploiting
Here's where it gets interesting. The authority bar is contextual. Becoming a recognized expert in "marketing" means competing with thousands of established voices. Becoming a recognized expert in "GEO for cybersecurity SaaS companies" means competing with maybe a dozen.
The web operates on long-tail principles. AI does too.
Broad Niche: "SEO Expert"
Extremely Difficult
- Competing with: 10,000+ voices
- Required signals: Massive
- Time to authority: Years
- Examples: Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, Brian Dean
Narrow Niche: "GEO for Cybersecurity"
Very Achievable
- Competing with: <50 voices
- Required signals: Modest
- Time to authority: 6-12 months
- Examples: Almost nobody yet
The narrower your niche, the faster you can become the signal AI relies on. This isn't about limiting your ambition. It's about being strategic with where you plant your flag first.
The Compound Effect
Once you're the recognized authority in a narrow niche, expanding into adjacent areas becomes dramatically easier. AI already trusts you. It's more likely to cite you on related topics. The niche is your launchpad, not your ceiling.
Niche Authority Expansion Pattern
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The Math
The Math: What Authority Actually Requires
Here's what we've seen work across dozens of campaigns. For a narrow B2B niche, this combination of signals is typically enough to reach the top 5% of perceived authority:
The Authority Signal Stack
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Notice what's not on this list: hundreds of blog posts, thousands of backlinks, years of consistent publishing. Those help. But for AI authority in a narrow niche, concentrated signals from diverse sources beat diffuse signals from a single channel.
| Signal Type | Why AI Weights It | Effort Level |
|---|---|---|
| Podcast appearances | Third-party validation, usually transcribed, creates multiple source mentions | Medium |
| Conference talks | High-trust venues, recorded content persists, event pages link to you | Medium-High |
| Major publications | High domain authority, AI training data over-indexes on established media | High |
| Expert quotes | Contextual authority signals, name + expertise + topic in same content | Low-Medium |
| Community mentions | Organic validation, diverse sources, often surfaces in training data | Low |
Be Proactive
Be Proactive: Help AI Connect the Dots
Here's something most people miss: sometimes you already have authority, but AI hasn't connected the pieces. The signals exist. The model just hasn't synthesized them into a coherent picture of who you are.
This is where you can be proactive. You're not faking authority. You're helping search engines and LLMs build their knowledge graph about you.
Building Your Knowledge Graph
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Three Ways to Help AI Connect Your Signals
1. Schema Markup with SameAs Links
Person schema tells AI who you are. The sameAs property tells it where else you exist on the web. This creates explicit connections between your website and your presence elsewhere.
Schema Markup Example
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Your Name",
"jobTitle": "Your Title",
"worksFor": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Company"
},
"sameAs": [
"https://linkedin.com/in/yourprofile",
"https://twitter.com/yourhandle",
"https://github.com/yourhandle"
],
"knowsAbout": ["Topic 1", "Topic 2", "Topic 3"]
}2. Cross-Reference Your External Content
When you write a guest article, link back to related content on your site. When you're on a podcast, make sure the show notes link to your author page. When you speak at a conference, ensure the speaker bio links to your professional profiles. Each link is a signal to AI that these pieces belong to the same entity.
3. Consistent Author Bios Everywhere
Your bio on your website, on guest posts, on podcast appearances, on conference pages. They should all reinforce the same expertise, use similar language, and link to the same profiles. Inconsistency confuses AI. Consistency builds recognition.
Pro Tip
Add an "As Featured In" or "Media" section to your website that links to all your external appearances. This creates a single page that explicitly connects your identity to your authority signals. AI can crawl this page and understand the full picture of your expertise.
The Stack
After Authority: The Technical and Content Layers
Once AI knows who you are, the traditional optimization advice starts working. Now your technical foundation ensures AI can access your content. Now your content quality determines whether you get cited on specific queries.
The Three-Layer AI Visibility Stack
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The technical and content layers matter. But they matter most after you've established the authority layer. Optimizing content that AI has no reason to trust is like decorating a house with no foundation.
Tracking Progress
How to Know It's Working
Run the audit monthly. Track these specific changes:
| Metric | Baseline | 90-Day Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Recognition | "I don't have information about..." | Accurate description of who you are |
| Expertise rating | Not rated / low confidence | 6-8/10 with specific reasoning |
| Source attribution | No sources cited | 2-3 specific sources mentioned |
| Recommendation queries | Not mentioned | Included in top 5-10 suggestions |
The shift usually isn't gradual. You'll see a step-change once enough signals accumulate. One month AI doesn't know you. The next month it does. That's the threshold you're building toward.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Most of what's being published about GEO and AI optimization focuses on the easy stuff. Schema markup. Content structure. Technical tweaks. These matter, but they're not the hard part.
The hard part is earning the right to be cited. That requires getting out from behind your keyboard and building a reputation in the real world. Podcasts. Stages. Publications. Communities. The kind of work that can't be automated or scaled with AI tools.
The Bottom Line
AI doesn't cite who optimizes best. It cites who it can't ignore. Run the audit. See where you stand. If the answer disappoints you, that's useful information. It means you know exactly what to work on, and it's probably not another blog post.
Your Next Steps
Run the ChatGPT audit todayUse the prompts above. Document results. Face the truth.
Identify your narrow nicheWhere do you have expertise + few established voices?
Audit your existing signalsWhat authority do you already have that AI hasn't connected?
Implement schema with sameAs linksHelp AI build your knowledge graph.
Start one new signal this weekOne podcast pitch. One speaker application. Momentum matters.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yuval Halevi
Yuval, an expert in SEO with over a decade of experience, helps startups simplify their digital marketing strategies. With a focus on practical solutions and a track record of success as a digital nomad and successful company builder, he drives growth through effective SEO, growth hacking, and creative marketing.