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The 7-Step GEO Workflow: Audit to Attribution (2026) | GEOly | GEO Data Platform for DTC Brands
The 7-Step GEO Workflow: From Audit to Attribution
Summary
GEO isn't a one-time fix but a seven-step loop — diagnose, build your entity graph, monitor, discover, execute, attribute, iterate — and running it every quarter is what keeps a brand cited as AI models constantly re-rank their answers.
2026/07/05
6 min read
The GEO workflow is a repeatable seven-step loop — diagnose, build your entity graph, monitor, discover gaps, execute fixes, attribute revenue, then iterate — that turns generative engine optimization from a one-off tweak into a measurable operating rhythm. You don't earn a lasting spot in ChatGPT or Perplexity by dropping schema on your homepage once; generative engines re-rank what they recommend constantly, so the brands that win treat GEO as a lifecycle they run every quarter. Below is each step, the metric that proves it, and how to connect the whole thing back to revenue.
Key takeaways
GEO is a continuous loop, not a launch. The seven steps run in order, then repeat — models update their answers far faster than a page you optimized once.
Baseline before you build. Run a 29-point GEO audit and record an AIGVR (a 0–100 AI-visibility score) so every later change has a number to move.
The entity graph is non-skippable. Organization and Product schema, an llms.txt file, and sameAs links are what let an engine understand your brand before it can recommend it.
Monitor all seven engines, not just ChatGPT. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews each cite different sources.
Attribution is the hardest step and the one that keeps the budget. Tie AI-referred traffic in GA4 to conversions to answer "does this actually drive revenue?"
GEO is a loop, not a launch
Generative Engine Optimization — the practice of getting cited and recommended inside AI answers rather than ranked in blue links, a term introduced in 2023 research — behaves nothing like a set-and-forget SEO project. Model providers ship new versions on a rolling basis, retrieval indexes refresh, and a competitor's fresh citation can quietly displace you from an answer you owned last month. The workflow below exists because the only durable advantage is the cadence itself. If you're new to the discipline, start with what GEO is and what GEOly AI does, then come back to run the loop.
The seven steps
1. Diagnose: baseline your AI visibility
You can't optimize what you haven't measured, and AI engines read your site very differently from a human or a traditional crawler. Start by establishing where you stand on four dimensions:
Crawlability — are you accidentally blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or Google-Extended in robots.txt?
Understandability — is your brand a defined entity, with clean schema and a Knowledge Graph presence?
Citeability — do high-authority sources already mention you?
Convertibility — can an AI shopping agent actually reach a product and complete a purchase?
Run a 29-point GEO audit to score all four and set your starting AIGVR. This single number becomes the anchor for everything that follows.
AI search visibility dashboard tracking mention rate, AIGVR and Share of Model across ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI engines — Source: GEOly AI (app.geoly.ai)
2. Build the entity graph: the foundation
Engines reason in entities and relationships, not keywords. Before optimization can land, the model needs to know who you are and what you sell.
Implement Organization and Product structured data (schema.org).
Publish an llms.txt file to point AI crawlers at your canonical, machine-readable content.
Add sameAs links to authoritative profiles (LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Wikidata) so the Knowledge Graph resolves your brand to one consistent entity.
This is the step teams most want to skip and the one that quietly caps everything else. A strong graph is the start of a semantic moat.
3. Monitor: a real-time pulse across seven engines
Now watch what the engines actually say about you. Is ChatGPT recommending a rival? Is Perplexity citing last year's pricing?
Track AIGVR over time and your Share of Model against named competitors.
Watch mention and citation rates per engine across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews.
Alert on negative sentiment and hallucinated facts so you can correct the record fast.
GEOly's industry-level AI database (category trees, topic maps, brand leaderboards, and citation sources across the seven engines) is built for exactly this triage.
Share of Voice and Visibility Score benchmarking a brand against competitors in AI answers — Source: GEOly AI (app.geoly.ai)
5. Execute: close the gaps
This is the work: turn the gaps from Step 4 into shipped changes.
Content — rewrite key pages to answer specific buyer intents directly, the core of answer engine optimization.
Citations — earn placements in the sources engines already trust (industry reports, review roundups, reputable press).
Technical — fix robots.txt blocks, broken schema, and slow or agent-hostile checkout paths.
Pull audit and monitoring data straight into your stack with GEOly's MCP server, CLI, and Skills so optimization tasks land in the tools you already use — see the MCP protocol primer and a survey of AI SEO tools.
6. Attribute: connect visibility to revenue
Eventually someone asks whether any of this drives revenue. Prove it.
Segment AI-referred traffic in GA4 by referrer — chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com.
Measure conversions from those sessions, not just visits.
For commerce, track product-card activation — whether your products surface as buyable cards inside AI shopping — the front edge of agentic commerce and the new share-of-card metric.
Attribution is imperfect because engines don't always pass clean referral data, so correlate visibility spikes with traffic and revenue patterns to bridge the gap.
7. Iterate: defend and expand
Models change; your strategy has to move with them.
Re-run the Step 1 audit to confirm fixes actually shifted your AIGVR.
Re-baseline when a major model ships (a GPT-5-class update can reshuffle citations overnight).
Expand to new categories, regions, and languages once the loop is stable.
Set the cadence
Treat the first pass as a sprint and the rest as a rhythm: Steps 1–5 take roughly two to four weeks, monitoring and attribution (Steps 3 and 6) run continuously, and a full re-diagnosis belongs on the calendar every quarter. Browse /blog/tag/geo and /blog/tag/ai-visibility for tactics at each stage.
FAQ
How long does one cycle of the workflow take?
The initial build sprint — Steps 1 through 5 — usually runs two to four weeks depending on how much technical and content debt the audit surfaces. Monitoring and attribution (Steps 3 and 6) are always-on once configured. Plan a full re-diagnosis and strategy refresh every quarter.
Can I skip the "build the entity graph" step?
No. Without clean schema, an llms.txt, and a resolved Knowledge Graph entity, your optimization in Step 5 works far harder for less, because the engine still can't confidently tell who your brand is or what it sells. The graph is what makes later citations stick to the right entity.
Which step is the hardest?
Attribution (Step 6), because AI platforms don't reliably hand over referral data the way search engines once did. The workaround is correlation — line up visibility gains against GA4 traffic and conversion movements — plus commerce signals like product-card activation. Tie both back to the visibility KPIs you set in Step 3.
Do I need a tool, or can I run this manually?
You can run the first cycle by hand, but manual prompting across seven engines doesn't scale past a spot check. A platform like GEOly automates the audit, monitoring, and competitive discovery; you can try it on a free three-day trial or compare plans on pricing. See what GEOly AI is for the full feature set.
