March 9, 2024
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Your clients are not typing their coaching questions into Google the way they did two years ago. They are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot. And those AI engines are not returning a list of ten blue links. They are generating a single, conversational answer, sometimes citing a source, sometimes not. If your coaching brand is absent from those answers, you are invisible to a growing share of your market.
This shift demands a different marketing strategy. Traditional SEO still matters, but it is no longer enough on its own. The discipline that fills the gap is generative engine optimisation (GEO), and it is already changing how coaches, consultants, and service providers win new clients.
GEO focuses on making your content easy for AI models to find, understand, and cite. When someone asks an AI engine, "Who is the best business coach for pricing strategy?" or "How do I productise my consulting services?", the model pulls information from sources it trusts. GEO is the work of becoming one of those sources.
The difference between GEO and traditional SEO is the end goal. SEO targets keyword rankings on search results pages. GEO targets AI citations inside generated answers. A page can sit at position one on Google and still never be cited by ChatGPT if it lacks the structural elements that AI engines look for. Research from Princeton found that content with clear citations, statistics, and structured data saw visibility improvements of 30 to 40 per cent in generative engine responses.
For a business coach, this means the articles, case studies, and landing pages on your website need to do double duty. They must rank in traditional search and be structured so that AI models treat them as authoritative, citable sources.
Gartner predicted that AI-driven search would reduce traditional search engine volume by 25 per cent by 2026. ChatGPT alone reports over 800 million weekly users. Perplexity processes 780 million queries each month. AI-referred website sessions jumped 527 per cent year over year in the first five months of 2025, according to the Previsible AI Traffic Report.
These numbers tell a simple story. The people who used to find you through Google are increasingly finding their answers inside an AI-generated response. If your coaching brand is not mentioned in those responses, your competitors will take that traffic and those leads instead.
The window of opportunity is wide open. According to industry data, 47 per cent of brands still have no GEO strategy at all. Coaches who move first will build a citation advantage that compounds over time, much like domain authority did in the early days of SEO.
AI engines favour content that directly answers a question in the first 200 words, then supports the answer with structured data and specific evidence. Rewrite your top-performing blog posts so that each section opens with a clear, citable statement. Use headers phrased as questions that mirror what people actually ask AI tools: "How much should a business coach charge?" will outperform a generic header like "Pricing information." Add schema markup to your website so AI crawlers can understand the relationships between your services, case studies, and author credentials.
AI models weigh expertise and trustworthiness before citing a source. For coaches, this means your author bio pages need verifiable credentials, years of experience, and links to published work. Earning brand mentions and backlinks from reputable industry publications tells AI engines that your expertise has been validated by third parties. Client testimonials, case studies with real outcomes, and speaking engagements all serve as authority signals that generative engines factor into citation decisions.
AI engines now pull content from Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, and industry forums when generating answers. Coaches who answer questions on these platforms with honest, detailed responses build positive sentiment around their brand. This community engagement creates a secondary layer of AI visibility that website content alone cannot achieve. When someone asks Perplexity about business coaching, the AI may pull from a Reddit thread where you provided a thoughtful, specific answer.
Generative engines, particularly those with real-time retrieval like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, weigh content freshness. A blog post from 2022 will lose citation share to a competitor who published an updated version last month. Coaches should maintain a regular publishing schedule focused on the questions their target audience asks most often. Each new article is another entry point for AI citations and another reason for generative engines to treat your site as a current, trustworthy source.
You cannot improve what you do not measure. Traditional metrics like organic traffic and keyword rankings still matter, but they do not tell you whether AI engines are citing your content. Use tools that monitor your brand's appearance in responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and other platforms. Track your share of voice against competitors. Measure the sentiment of AI-generated responses that mention your brand. These metrics will tell you where your GEO strategy is working and where it needs attention.
GEO is not a replacement for SEO. The two disciplines overlap significantly. Pages that rank well in traditional search often perform better in AI citations, too, because many AI engines use web ranking as one of their trust signals. The practical approach is to layer GEO on top of a solid SEO foundation.
This means continuing to use relevant keywords, building quality backlinks, and improving site speed, while also restructuring content for AI comprehension, adding structured data, and monitoring your citation rate across AI platforms. Agencies that specialise in both SEO and generative engine optimisation, such as those offering dedicated GEO services, can help coaches build a strategy that covers both traditional and AI search from day one.
Every month you delay, your competitors are building the citation history and authority signals that AI engines will favour in the years ahead. Citation authority compounds, just like domain authority, did. The coaches and consultants who establish themselves as trusted sources now will own the AI-generated conversation in their niche for the foreseeable future.
If you are unsure where to begin, start with an audit of your existing content. Identify the pages that already attract organic traffic and restructure them for AI citation. Add statistics, link to verifiable sources, and reformat headers as questions. Then create a publishing calendar that keeps your content current.
For coaches who want a structured, full-service approach, working with a Levy Online digital marketing team can speed up results. Their specialists combine SEO and GEO into a single strategy designed to maintain visibility across both traditional search engines and AI platforms, so you can focus on coaching while your online presence grows.
The search world is splitting in two: the old world of links and rankings, and the new world of AI-generated answers. Business coaches who learn to operate in both will find more qualified leads, stronger brand recognition, and a marketing strategy that does not break every time Google releases an update. GEO is not a fad. It is the next chapter of how people find expertise online, and the time to write yourself into that chapter is now.
The primary difference is the goal. SEO aims to get your website to rank high on a search engine results page. GEO aims to have your content used and cited as a source within the answers that AI engines generate for users.
While SEO is still vital, user behaviour is changing. Millions of people now get answers directly from AI tools, bypassing traditional search results entirely. If you ignore GEO, you become invisible to this large and growing audience.
Start by auditing your most popular blog posts. Rewrite the main headings into questions that your ideal clients would ask. Then, make sure the first paragraph of each section provides a clear and direct answer to that question.
You need to track your AI citation rate. This involves using specific tools that monitor how often your brand, services, or content are mentioned in the responses from major AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini.
Yes, it can be very effective. AI models index content from these community platforms to find real-world expertise. Providing helpful, detailed answers on these sites creates another way for AI to find and cite your knowledge, building your authority.
