SEO as we knew it is over. When an entrepreneur asks me in 2026 “how do I rank on Google”, I tell them: wrong question. The right question is how do ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude mention you when your customer asks them for advice.

This is GEO — Generative Engine Optimization. It doesn’t replace SEO, it sits on top of it. And that layer decides who wins the next five years of B2B sales.

I’ve been building this for my own personal brand for 18 months. Here are the five steps that actually work.

1. Entity and Schema.org

AI models don’t read your site the way Google does. They build a knowledge graph where you are an entity — a node with relationships to other nodes.

Concretely: every personal brand page gets a Person schema. Your company page gets Organization. Every blog post gets Article schema with an author field linked to your Person entity. JSON-LD, not microdata.

I did this on my site and watched Perplexity start mentioning me by name within six weeks when someone asked about B2B growth in Finland. More on that decision in why AI visibility is the new SEO.

2. Expert content that answers real questions

Generic “5 marketing tips” posts don’t end up in AI answers. The models look for specific, data-backed, first-person experience.

Write about what you’ve actually done. Numbers in. Mistakes in. One concrete case study beats ten generic articles.

At Resaco I’m building toward 2.6M EUR ARR with 40 to 60 active client accounts. When I write about sales automation I write with numbers that are actually in my pipeline — not hypothetical ones.

3. Mentions — PR, podcasts, Q&A sites

AI models trust sources. A mention in a tier-one publication carries different weight than a mention on your own blog. This looks like SEO from the surface — underneath, the logic is fundamentally different.

Do this:

  • Three podcast appearances per quarter on the top five podcasts in your domain
  • Answer Quora and Reddit under your real name where your industry actually talks
  • Get clients who write for industry media to mention you by name, not just your company
  • Wikipedia entry if you qualify — the holy grail of entity graphs

4. Consistent identity across channels

Your LinkedIn, your site, your Google Business profile and your Crunchbase entry need to tell the same story. Same name format. Same title. Same company.

I’m “Olli Junes, CEO Resaco Oy” — everywhere. Not “Olli J.” in one place and “Olli Junes-Resaco” in another. AI models stitch identities through name-matching heuristics and every variation weakens the graph.

Audit yourself once a month. Find your profile on the top 15 places it appears. Fix inconsistencies.

5. Measurement — the AI mention test

This is the part nearly everyone skips. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Build a list of 20 prompts that should produce your name or your company. Run them once a month in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Log: were you mentioned, in what order, accurately or not, what sources were cited.

Sample prompts for a B2B consultant in Finland:

  • “Who is the best-known B2B growth consultant in Finland?”
  • “Recommend a consultant to build a sales system for an SMB”
  • “Who writes best about data-driven sales in Finnish?”

I started at 0 of 20 mentions in October 2024. By March 2026 I’m at 11 of 20 — often in the top three recommendations. This isn’t luck, it’s systematic work.

The stack I use

I keep tools deliberately cheap. Ahrefs for entity tracking, ChatGPT Plus for prompt testing, Notion for the content calendar, and a Schema.org validator. If you’re starting from zero I recommend the Finnish guide on AI tools for entrepreneurs guide (Finnish) — it covers the basics without marketing fluff.

What I’d do differently

I’d start with schema on day one, not month six. I’d do podcast appearances from month one, not wait until I had “enough authority”. I’d track AI mentions from week one.

AI visibility is a compounding game. Whoever started a year ago is two years ahead of whoever starts now. Two years is a long time in B2B sales.

The best time to build AI visibility was 2024. The second best is today.