The short answer: most small businesses should start with GEO tools and a clear internal strategy, growing companies usually benefit most from a GEO specialist or agency, and larger companies with significant organic-search revenue often need an in-house GEO lead supported by specialized external expertise.
The right choice depends less on your company size than on how important AI search visibility is to your acquisition strategy, how quickly you need results, and whether you have the technical and content resources to execute GEO yourself.
And GEO is becoming harder to treat as an optional experiment.
In 2026, 49% of U.S. adults say they have used AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. Even more importantly for marketers, 42% say they use chatbots to search for information, while 38% of employed adults use them for work-related tasks.
At the same time, Google is increasingly answering queries directly inside the search results. One Ahrefs study of 300,000 keywords found that pages ranking #1 for queries with AI Overviews had a 58% lower average CTR than comparable pages without AI Overviews.
So the question is “What is the most efficient way for us to do GEO?”
Here’s how I’d approach that decision.
Tools vs. agency vs. in-house GEO: the quick comparison
| Option | Best for | Main advantage | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| GEO tools | Small businesses, early experiments | Low cost and fast access to data | Tools don’t create or execute strategy |
| GEO agency | Growing companies and businesses entering AI search | Strategy + execution without building a team | Higher ongoing cost |
| In-house GEO specialist | Larger companies with substantial search revenue | Deep ownership and integration with marketing | Expensive and difficult to hire |
| Hybrid model | Companies with an existing SEO/marketing team | Internal ownership + external expertise | Requires good coordination |
The important distinction is that a GEO tool, a GEO specialist, and a GEO agency are not interchangeable.
A tool can tell you what is happening.
A specialist can determine why it is happening and what to do about it.
An agency can provide both strategy and the people needed to actually implement the changes.
First, what does a GEO specialist actually do?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving a brand’s visibility in AI-generated answers across platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot.
Traditional SEO primarily asks “How do we get this page to rank?”
GEO adds another question: “How do we make this brand or source the one an AI system chooses to mention, cite, or recommend?”
That requires more than adding keywords to existing articles. A serious GEO strategy can involve:
- technical SEO and AI crawler accessibility;
- website architecture and internal linking;
- entity optimization;
- structured data;
- content restructuring for AI extraction;
- building authoritative external mentions;
- improving E-E-A-T signals;
- monitoring AI citations and brand mentions;
- analyzing the prompts your potential customers actually use;
- comparing your visibility with competitors;
- creating content that answers complex, conversational queries directly.
This is why simply subscribing to a GEO platform doesn’t automatically make a company “GEO optimized.” The software is only one part of the workflow.
Option 1: GEO tools — best for small businesses and experimentation
If you’re a small business, startup, solo founder, or marketing team that is just beginning to investigate AI search, you probably don’t need to hire a GEO specialist immediately.
Start with tools. A good GEO platform can help you answer questions such as:
- Does ChatGPT mention my brand?
- Which competitors appear for our target prompts?
- How often are we cited?
- Which sources does AI use when discussing our category?
- Which prompts are we currently invisible for?
- Is our AI visibility improving over time?
This is particularly useful when you don’t yet know whether AI search represents a meaningful acquisition channel for your business.
When tools are enough
Tools can be a good choice if:
- you’re a small company;
- your website has relatively little content;
- you already have a competent SEO/content person;
- you’re comfortable analyzing data yourself;
- you’re still validating whether GEO matters for your audience;
- you have enough time to execute recommendations internally.
For example, imagine a B2B SaaS company with a founder, one marketer and a developer – buying a GEO visibility platform may be perfectly reasonable.
The marketer can monitor 30–50 important prompts, identify competitors that appear in AI answers, and gradually improve the company’s content and digital footprint. There’s no reason to build an entire GEO department for that.
But remember one important thing: GEO tools measure visibility. They don’t magically create it.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions I see.
You can have beautiful dashboards showing:
AI visibility: 23%
Competitor A: 41%
Competitor B: 36%
…and still have absolutely no idea what to change on your website.
That’s where expertise becomes valuable.
Option 2: Hire a GEO agency — best for growing businesses
For many companies, an AI SEO/GEO agency is the sweet spot.
This is especially true if you already have an SEO or marketing team but don’t want to hire a full-time GEO specialist yet.
You get access to specialized expertise without adding another permanent role to your payroll.
An agency can typically combine strategy, technical SEO, content, entity building, AI visibility monitoring, execution.
That’s particularly important because GEO is not isolated from traditional SEO.
- Your website still needs to be crawlable.
- Your content still needs to be useful.
- Your brand still needs authority.
- And your technical infrastructure still needs to work.
In fact, I would be suspicious of any GEO strategy that completely ignores traditional SEO.
When an agency makes sense
Consider working with a GEO agency if:
- organic search is already an important acquisition channel;
- you’re entering a competitive market;
- you’re launching internationally;
- your competitors are already appearing in AI answers;
- you don’t have GEO expertise internally;
- you need results faster than an internal team can realistically deliver;
- you need both SEO and GEO rather than GEO in isolation;
- you have developers and content people but need someone to coordinate the strategy.
This is also where the hybrid model becomes particularly powerful. Your existing SEO/content team keeps ownership of the website, and the agency provides the GEO strategy, diagnostics, frameworks and specialized execution.
You simply add expertise where the internal team doesn’t have it.
Option 3: Hire an in-house GEO specialist — best for large companies
An in-house GEO specialist makes the most sense when AI search is already strategically important enough to justify a permanent role.
Think:
- large SaaS companies;
- fintech companies;
- marketplaces;
- major e-commerce brands;
- enterprise technology companies;
- companies operating across multiple countries;
- businesses with large SEO/content teams.
If your company publishes hundreds of pages every month, has several SEO/content specialists, a PR team, developers and significant organic acquisition, having someone internally responsible for AI search can make a lot of sense.
An in-house specialist can work across departments rather than treating GEO as a standalone campaign.
For example, SEO, content, PR, product marketing, digital PR, brand, developers can all contribute to AI visibility. Having one person responsible for connecting those signals can be extremely valuable.
But hiring too early can be a mistake. GEO is still evolving rapidly. That means you don’t necessarily need to create a full-time GEO position simply because AI search is trending.
If your company has 20 employees, one marketer, 50 website pages, and limited organic traffic, then hiring a full-time GEO specialist is probably overkill. You’d be paying for a specialist when you could instead buy a focused audit, strategy and several months of implementation support.
The fourth option: the hybrid GEO model
Instead of choosing between “agency” and “in-house,” combine them. Here’s how I would do it.
Internal team
- owns the brand;
- creates subject-matter content;
- works with product and sales;
- implements recommendations.
External GEO specialist or agency
- develops the strategy;
- audits technical GEO;
- analyzes AI visibility;
- identifies competitor gaps;
- creates the content framework;
- monitors AI citations;
- provides specialized technical support.
This works particularly well because nobody knows your product better than your internal team. But that doesn’t mean your internal team knows how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and other AI systems interpret your brand.
You don’t have to choose between “we do everything ourselves” and “we outsource everything.” Often, the smartest answer is somewhere in the middle.
How much should you spend on GEO?
There’s no universal GEO budget, because the economics depend heavily on the value of your acquisition channel.
A useful way to think about it is: GEO investment should scale with the amount of revenue potentially influenced by AI search.
For a small local business where AI search generates almost no qualified leads, spending thousands every month on GEO makes little sense.
For a B2B SaaS company where one enterprise customer is worth $50,000 ARR, the calculation looks very different.
And AI traffic can be commercially valuable. Adobe’s analysis of the 2025 holiday season found that traffic arriving from generative AI sources converted 31% better than other traffic sources, while AI-driven revenue per visit was 254% higher year over year.
So, AI referrals shouldn’t automatically be treated as low-value traffic. For some businesses, they may be disproportionately valuable.
A simple decision framework
Here’s the framework I’d use before deciding what to hire.
Choose GEO tools if:
You are small + early-stage + experimenting.
You want to understand what’s happening before committing significant resources.
Your goal:
Measure → learn → test.
Choose a GEO agency if:
You are growing + already have marketing infrastructure + need specialized expertise.
Your goal:
Strategy → implementation → measurable visibility growth.
This is probably the most practical option for many mid-sized businesses.
Choose an in-house GEO specialist if:
AI search is already a major acquisition channel + you have enough scale to support a dedicated role.
Your goal:
Own AI search as a permanent marketing function.
Choose the hybrid model if:
You have a strong internal team but lack GEO expertise.
Your goal:
Keep ownership internally while accelerating the learning curve with external specialists.
Don’t hire anyone until you answer these 5 questions
Before buying a GEO tool or hiring a specialist, I’d recommend answering:
1. Do your customers actually use AI to research your category?
Don’t optimize for AI search simply because everyone on LinkedIn is talking about it.
Check your audience. In 2026, 49% of U.S. adults report having used an AI chatbot, and 42% use chatbots for information searching.
But adoption varies dramatically by demographic and market. Your actual customers matter more than the global average.
2. Which AI platforms matter?
You probably don’t need to optimize equally for every AI engine.
Depending on your market, your priority might be:
Google AI Overviews → ChatGPT → Perplexity
or:
ChatGPT → Gemini → Google
or another combination entirely.
3. What queries matter commercially?
The valuable prompts are often things like:
“Best accounting software for startups”
“Best crypto exchange in Georgia”
“Alternatives to [competitor]”
“Which [product category] is best for [specific audience]?”
These are the queries where AI visibility can influence consideration.
4. Are you currently visible?
Establish a baseline before changing anything.
Track:
- brand mentions;
- citation frequency;
- recommendation frequency;
- competitors mentioned;
- sources cited;
- sentiment;
- share of AI answers;
- commercial prompts;
- changes over time.
Otherwise, six months later you’ll have no idea whether your GEO investment actually worked.
5. Can your existing team execute the work?
Suppose your audit discovers:
- 30 technical issues;
- 15 content gaps;
- weak entity signals;
- poor internal linking;
- missing structured data;
- no authoritative external mentions.
Who is actually going to fix all of that?
If the answer is “our marketing manager will find some time,” you probably have a capacity problem.
And another tool won’t solve it.
Where Linkrel Agency fits in
At Linkrel Agency, we work with businesses that want to improve both traditional organic search visibility and visibility inside AI-generated answers.
That distinction matters because we don’t treat GEO as a collection of prompts or a dashboard metric.
Our work combines:
- technical SEO and AI crawler accessibility;
- GEO content engineering;
- entity and brand authority building;
- AI citation and visibility tracking;
- competitor and prompt analysis;
- ongoing SEO + GEO strategy and execution.
The agency’s current client work has generated 5M+ organic visits, while its case studies include growth from 50K to 7M users driven by organic traffic and AI-search programs generating 100+ AI leads monthly.
We also work alongside existing marketing and development teams. That’s often the most practical model for companies that already have good people but need specialized AI-search expertise.
FAQ: Tools, agency, or in-house GEO?
Is GEO worth it for a small business?
Sometimes. If your customers use AI tools to discover and compare businesses in your category, GEO can be valuable even for a small company. However, start with measurement rather than immediately hiring a full-time specialist.
Should I use a GEO tool or hire a GEO agency?
Use a tool if you mainly need visibility data and already have someone capable of interpreting and implementing it. Hire an agency if you need strategy, technical expertise and execution.
Is GEO the same as SEO?
No. There is significant overlap, but GEO focuses specifically on how AI-powered search systems discover, interpret, summarize and cite information about your brand. Traditional SEO remains an important foundation for GEO.
Can an SEO specialist do GEO?
Yes — if they understand more than traditional keyword optimization. Strong GEO work requires knowledge of technical SEO, content architecture, entities, structured data, AI crawlers, citations and how AI search systems retrieve information.
How long does GEO take to work?
There is no universal timeline. Some changes can influence AI visibility relatively quickly, while broader improvements in authority and entity recognition take longer. At Linkrel Agency, for example, the team reports that Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can begin citing optimized content within roughly 2–4 weeks, while broader citation gains in ChatGPT and Claude may take 6–12 weeks.
What is the best GEO strategy for a startup?
Start small. Identify your highest-value commercial prompts, establish an AI visibility baseline, fix obvious technical and content problems, and monitor competitors. Scale investment only after you know that AI search is relevant to your audience.
There isn’t one “best” way to do GEO. But in general, GEO/AEO is about becoming a source that AI systems can discover, understand, trust and confidently recommend when your potential customer is making a decision.