GEO, short for generative engine optimization, is the work of making your website easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini to read, trust and quote. For a coach, it mostly means clear service pages, consistent details, and pages that AI crawlers can actually reach.
How AI assistants use your website
Assistants learn about your business in two ways.
- Search, right now. When someone asks a question, the assistant searches the web, opens a few pages and writes an answer, often with links. This reads your live pages, so changes you make today can show up soon.
- Training, earlier. Models also learn from pages crawled months before. That shapes what an assistant “knows” about you without searching.
The first is where coaches win clients today. It’s also the part you control: whether crawlers can open your pages, and whether those pages answer the question clearly.
GEO and SEO
GEO overlaps with good SEO. Fast pages, clear titles and pages that crawlers can reach help both. The difference is the goal: SEO aims to rank in a list of links, GEO aims to be the page an assistant quotes in its answer. That rewards pages that answer directly, stick to one topic and agree with the rest of your site.
Google says its AI features need no special files or markup; the usual Search guidance applies (Google’s guidance on AI features). Be wary of anyone selling a secret file that guarantees AI mentions.
What GEO looks like on a coaching site
Obi GEO scores each page on six rules. Here’s what they mean for a coach:
- One topic per page. A page for each service rather than everything on one long page.
- A clear headline. It says what the page is about: “Leadership coaching for new managers”, not “Welcome”.
- The answer near the top. Who you help, the result, and how to start, in the first paragraph.
- Connected pages. Services, about, pricing and FAQs link to each other.
- Fast pages. Big images and heavy effects slow down people and crawlers alike.
- Clean facts. The same email, prices and booking link everywhere, so an assistant isn’t left guessing.
What GEO isn’t
It isn’t stuffing pages with keywords, hiding text for bots, or writing for machines instead of people. Nobody can guarantee that an assistant will recommend you. What you can do is remove the reasons it wouldn’t.
Where to start
- Run a free check. See which AI crawlers can reach your site and how clear your main pages are. The free AI visibility check.
- Unblock what’s blocked. Fix robots.txt rules or firewall settings that stop AI search crawlers. Which crawlers to allow.
- Rewrite the top of your main service page. Who it’s for, the result, how to start.
- Make your details match. One email, one booking link, the same prices on every page.